Thursday 10 September 2009

Naoki Urasawa - Pluto Volume 1

I was a bit nervous reading the first part of this series by Naoki Urasawa as I liked ‘20th Century Boys’ such a lot but no worries in the end, it’s a very good start. It’s a kind of homage to an Astro Boy story by Tezuka called ‘The Greatest Robots in the World’. I’ll have to have a look through my Astro Boy comics tonight and see if I have the original version, I won’t be able to read it much though as all my Astro Boys are in French.

A much loved Swiss robot called Mont Blanc has been destroyed and a human robot activist has been murdered in the same way, torn to bits and with horns stuck out of the sides of their heads. Robot detective Gesicht is put on the case and sets to work finding out what is going on. Could the human have been killed by a robot? Robots are programmed never to kill humans. One robot in the past has killed a human so Gesicht goes to see him in his high security prison, a bit like Silence of the Lambs. But he isn’t any help. He does tell Gesicht that the seven most powerful robots in the world are going to all be destroyed. Gesicht himself is one of these and he sets off to warn the others that they will be next. Right at the end of the book he meets Atom (Astro Boy), a little boy robot.

It’s all set up this book but I am excited to find out what happens next. Sadly I must wait for more books in the series to come out. The drawings great again, loads of futuristic science fiction stuff, flying cars and robots.

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