Writer and Letterer – Ryan Ferrier
Artist and Colourist – Valentin Ramon
Editor – David Hedgecock
Publisher – IDW Publishing
Do you constantly find yourself waking up in the morning filled with absolute zero ambition to start your day? Does it feel like each and every day blends together due to the trap of repetitions you find yourself in? If you are a robot that feels this way, than D4VE is perfect for you! Originally available through Monkeybrain comics digitally, IDW presents the journey again on physical print beginning with D4VE #1.
The titular character of D4VE is a robot that shares the same name as the title of this very comic. Upon the first few panels, D4ve is caught daydreaming at his job. He much rather wishes he was punching in the face of a threatening alien or monster instead of being stuck in his mundane day job. D4ve visually reads that his care for his life is at an all time low. His dress shirt is unbuttoned at the top, leaving his disheveled tie to dangle desperately for purpose. D4ve is currently the account manager for a water power plant. His life wasn’t always this boring as D4ve’s past as a defence bot is revealed in a few pages of exposition that quickly and wittingly establishes this world by Ryan Ferrier.
The planet Earth is now completely inhabited by robots. In what would normally take an issue to explain for some series, Ferrier gets the job done through a mere few pages. Humans created robots for simple jobs; robots began to fulfill more intensive duties; and then the robots completely eradicated the human race. Done. However, the robots got greedy. They wanted not only the Earth for themselves, but the entire galaxy. The robots then began to protect the Earth by any means necessary – by wiping out any alien race that inhabited the galaxy using a group called the defense bots. But, due to the robots success in these plans, their race began to act and inhibit the attributes of the Earth dwellers before them.
Many of the robots, including D4ve, have become exactly like the blue-collar individuals before them and are facing the same day-to-day dilemmas. D4ve hates his boss and his job, has problems at home with his wife 54lly, and is only temporarily relieved of his stresses by visiting a robot strip club with his co-worker Fr4nk. Ferrier even tosses in a few moments of computer humour here and there through the dialogue, such as when 54lly tells D4ve to “force quit” his job if he feels so unhappy.
Valentin Ramon takes the expressionless characters of D4VE and gives them an empathetic feel. Ramon draws and colours the world as if humans were still occupying the Earth. With the single splash page of D4ve holding a warm cup of coffee, standing outside his house in his pajama pants, staring up at the stars above, his mid life crisis feels very real. Through the narration inside D4ve’s head and Ramon’s ability to draw D4ve and others doing human day-to-day activities, there is quite the emotional depth to this first issue. The parallel of our own reality with facing the repetitions of a ‘normal’ life is very evident as well.
As proven by an event that occurs near the end of the first issue, all will not be quiet on the Earth that D4ve and the robot race find themselves on. Ferrier and Ramon have done a good job forming the backstory of this world on such short notice and have dropped a decent enough tease of what is to come. With the first issue establishing quite a bit, it will be very interesting to see the direction that this five-issue mini-series will take.
