Alex + Ada Volume 2
Sarah Vaughn: story, script; Jonathan Luna: story, script assists, illustrations, letters, design
Image Comics, 2015
The first volume culminated with the procedure to make the female android named Ada sentient. It's an illegal act, so the story here begins with the couple trying to decide how best to keep the secret. At the same time Ada is learning how being sentient feels, and how to act. There's a funny scene of her first breakfast: Alex has prepared a huge array of food to see what she might like, and she likes almost all of it. Alex's timing in getting the sentience programming done turns out to be especially unfortunate, because the government has just announced a crackdown on sentient androids. There have been some incidents, enough to make many people afraid of androids generally. The inevitable romantic attraction between them also rears its head. Serious discussions about what sentience means and human acceptance of androids are almost obscured by the standard romantic tropes, although they are certainly well done. After separating briefly the pair wind up together by the end. But Ada was filmed publicly behaving in a sentient way, so there appears to be a run from the authorities in the cards for the third volume.
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