Robot Racism
While the first two issues sped right through the story, this one spends most of its time just spinning its wheels. While I admire the theme of debating the right of hyperevolved a.i. to deemed a living thing or not, it basically gets hammered into your head without finesse. Hank Pym's already been talking about it, but his debate with Monica Chang is so repetitive, and downright confusing since it sounds like she's on his side the whole time. And they keep repeating a lot of the same lines almost verbatum. And then so do some of the government peoples. AND some of the a.i. in the diamond.
The other scenes with the rest of the team weren't all that interesting either. Doombot had minimal screen time, and Mancha was just there to have a crowd go completely raving mad racist. It fits in with the theme, but it's poorly handled. It feels like so many other similar scenes I've seen before, just old news. And honestly, I think the reaction was over-the-top. Sure Dimitrios made an announcement on TV, but how much of his plan has REALLY been enacted yet? It seems none, because nobody's really in a panic, just eager to attack the diamond. Plus, Mancha clearly fought the giant robot and SAVED the people who turn on him. The whole 'mutants killed humans so all mutants are bad!' thing is a bit overplayed at times, but this is taking things a step further too far. Also, metal hands automatically makes him a robot? So what's Iron Man? Or anyone with a robotic prosthetic? I mean, hypothetically, is a crowd going to potentially beat to death a man who simply has implants just because he might be a robot? I think people are sheep, but I don't think they're THAT dumb.
The Vision's scenes were drawn out a bit, and they really solidified the sense of standstill, but they were the only good part of this issue aside from Araujo's artwork. There was the beginning of a fairly intriguing metaphysical exploration here as The Vision explored The Diamond.
In Conclusion: 2/5
This is one of those stories where peace could easily be achieved, but everyone's too instantly stubborn because of very forced sci-fi racism. There's a hint of some interesting deeper moral issues to explore, but this issue just ends up continually recycling the surface while standing in place; a stark contrast in pacing to the other two issues.
