Once, Mosely was involved in training AI’s. Now they have taken over the world, and the world is not a better place. How does he acknowledge what he has done and find a new place for himself? Find out in Mosely #1 from BOOM! Studios.
MOSELY #1
Writer: Rob Guillory
Artist: Sam Lotfi
Colorist: Jean-Francois Beaulieu
Letterer: Andrew Thomas
Editor: Sierra Hahn
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: January 4, 2023
Previously in Mosely: In the hyper-technological world of the future, Mosely is janitor with a past that haunts him and the burning desire to bring down the corporations that oppress humankind!
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
Mosely #1 opens with a prelude as Marvin Mosely says good-bye to his wife, Gloria, and their infant daughter, Ruby. He will be away from them for a year. A man in dark sunglasses and a black suit escorts him by plane and by car to an empty-looking suburban environment of identical houses. His pupil is in house #6. His pupil is a robot named Six. His job is to teach; Six’s job is to learn.
Years later, Mosely works as a school janitor, and we start to see more of the world. Some of Mosely’s work is done by a robot, but he still needs to assist with a mop. In the classroom, kids are hooked up to VR while the teacher slumps over her desk. The cleaning robot’s AI makes it sound almost human, and Mosely orders it to talk more like a robot. He looks bitter.
In another part of town, a young woman gets ready to test something in the VR world. This is Ruby, Mosely’s daughter, working with her AI, Atum. This test upgrade connects her prefrontal cortex to everyone else who is currently online. She is thrilled. This connection fills her with positive feelings. Have they figured out a way to give people empathy?
Her work is interrupted by her dad’s visit. It is awkward, to say the least. They are trying to keep up a family relationship, but they have grown apart. Already we get the idea that Mosely is less connected to the virtual world while Ruby embraces it as her job. She sees it as a way to make the world a better place. He remembers when he used to think that way, but the reality did not live up to his own expectations. We also learn that he has a heart problem. When Atum puts in an appearance, Mosely leaves, warning Ruby that she is just an experiment in the hands of the AI.
As he walks away through this hyperconnected world, his thoughts tell us more. Ruby is a lot like him when he was younger. They wanted to make the world a better place, and I get the idea that after his early work with Six, the robots and their AI continued to become more advanced to the point where they were given control over society, which now is a mix between people blithely plugged into their screens and thugs running rampant.
Speaking of thugs, Mosely is grabbed in an alley by a peculiar group, a few robots led by a small child in a floating chair. Mosely feels that the AI has been changing kids, and here is an example. And now he feels driven to fight back. He takes on the robots, and his heart acts up. He gets beaten up and robbed. The kid leaves him for dead, and he starts seeing memories of his life before the machines. And then something happens that changes everything.
LIVING THE CONNECTED LIFE
From beginning to end, the art of Mosely #1 is terrific and has subtle ways of cluing us into the big picture. It is creepy when Mosely arrives at the enclave where he works with Six exactly because it looks like a subdivision where all the houses are exactly the same. A single panel shows us what is probably a camera on a streetlight. And then we meet Six, a robot with an advanced, human-sized body with humanlike hands, yet with a face that is like a blank screen, reflecting what it sees while revealing nothing about the machine behind it.
I like the way the world is revealed to us. It starts out in school where we see the kids with their VR helmets. Then just outside of the school, everyone is on their devices. Even the man who looks homeless has an eyepiece. In later crowd scenes we see just out prevalent devices are, which I think is also a commentary on our present world. And then it becomes even more obvious that alone among the crowds, only Mosely walks around unconnected.
BOTTOM LINE: MAN VS. MACHINE
From start to finish, Mosely #1 is engaging and does not immediately clue us in on where it is headed. Tying the man vs. machine conflict to the family conflict makes the dynamics even more interesting. But the ending leaves me excited to see just where this is headed next.
Dear Spoilerite,
At Major Spoilers, we strive to create original content that you find interesting and entertaining. Producing, writing, recording, editing, and researching requires significant resources. We pay writers, podcast hosts, and other staff members who work tirelessly to provide you with insights into the comic book, gaming, and pop culture industries. Help us keep MajorSpoilers.com strong. Become a Patron (and our superhero) today.
Mosely #1
Mosely was there as the machines rose to power and now he is looking to bring them down!
-
Writing8
-
Art10
-
Coloring9
By day, she’s a mild-mannered bureaucrat and Ms. Know-It-All. By night, she’s a dance teacher and RPG player (although admittedly not on the same nights). On the weekends, she may be found judging Magic, playing Guild Wars 2 (badly), or following other creative pursuits. Holy Lack of Copious Free Time, Batman! While she’s always wished she had teleportation as her superpower, she suspects that super-speed would be much more practical because then she’d have time to finish up those steampunk costumes she’s also working on.