Automatic Kafka by Joe Casey with artwork by Ashley Wood
Many thanks to Image Comics and NetGalley for sharing an
advanced copy of Automatic Kafka by Joe Casey with artwork by Ashley
Wood. I didn’t know much about this 9-issue collection from 2002, but the
robotic arm image on the cover and the title attracted me to it. Ashley Wood’s
artwork in this collection is stunning, with a mix of surreal images that
incorporate advertising, pop culture, horror, sci-fi and war imagery, while
Casey’s story and writing veer satire and critique to the absurd. At times, I
found the story a little hard to follow, but Wood’s images help to ground a
complicated story that lampoons super heroes and pop culture through its absurdly
entertaining tale of a renegade robot addicted to a substance known as nanotecheroin.
The National Park Service seeks to reassemble Automatic Kafka’s old team of The
$tranger$, who include Saint Nick, Helen of Troy, and The Constitution, all assembled
by The Warning. The National Park Service is looking to bring Automatic Kafka
back into service for secret missions, but Automatic Kafka has a lucrative life
of product endorsements and hosting a frightening game show called The Million
Dollar Detail, where contestants try to guess the missing detail to often fatal
physical challenges.
Automatic Kafka is a fascinating, if not sometimes
confounding, story that has all the hallmarks of a critique of the George Bush
era’s amped up patriotism and pessimism. In particular, The Constitution is a
gas mask wearing ultra-patriotic warrior, whose red, white, and blue
nationalist tattoos bear a certain resemblance to some current officials
promoting the warrior ethos. Similarly, Automatic Kafka’s shilling of products
and hosting a violent and fatal television show mock consumption and the kind
of entertainment we seek to possibly take our minds of the violence and
bloodshed we witness on the news. It’s a kind of bread and circus that often
distracts citizens from the real horrors that are abound. Additionally, it’s interesting
to see how the comic uses seemingly innocuous government agencies to develop clandestine
operations and programs like The $tranger$, and their willingness to revert to
these options when it seems like society is falling apart. I’m not sure whether
that was the intent of Casey and Wood, who show up in a kind of meta-fourth
wall break, and explain to Automatic Kafka his real intention. I felt like
there was some kind of deeper meaning or more trenchant critique of the world
in the early 2000s that was often marked by increasing government surveillance
and programs couched in a rise in patriotism and nationalism. Automatic
Kafka is surreal and absurd, but also sharply critical and biting in its satire
of consumerism, patriotism, and the government. Plus it has amazing artwork. It’s
a story with sharp, acidic artwork that feels especially relevant today. Recommended!
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