‘If Destruction Be Our Lot’ Review: The Robots Are Just Like Us, Unfortunately

Robot-takes-over-the-world stories usually give us something super advanced, organized, and a little sterile. If Destruction Be Our Lot immediately got my attention because its world is basically the opposite. Humans have apparently been gone for around sixty years, but the robots they left behind are not living in some technological paradise. There are homeless robots asking for spare parts, machines still doing jobs they were programmed to do even though there are no humans left to serve, cops, addiction, social classes, and a lot of robots who seem just as lost as we are.

Basically, humanity disappeared and somehow left all of our problems behind (Great job, I guess?) So are here to talk about If Destruction Be Our Lot Vol. 1.

Abe is a robot built to look like Abraham Lincoln, complete with his memories and personality, which already gives the book one of its strangest and funniest ideas. He is absolutely a machine, but because he looks and behaves so much like a person, he ends up feeling almost human compared to everyone around him.

We do not know exactly what happened to humanity yet. Everyone just accepts that humans have been gone for decades, until Abe sees one.

And apparently seeing a human is a problem.

The Robots Are Just Like Us, Unfortunately

The worldbuilding is what I loved most. Some robots are still doing whatever humans originally programmed them to do, even when that job makes absolutely no sense anymore. That is funny, but also kind of depressing when you think about it. If you were literally created for one purpose and that purpose disappeared, what are you supposed to do?

The book does not spend pages explaining this society either. You just see it happening around Abe. Robots struggle for parts, go to work, follow pointless routines, deal with authority, and try to find something resembling a normal life. It makes this completely ridiculous robot world feel weirdly believable.

Andy MacDonald’s art is a huge part of that. The robots come in every shape imaginable, with a lot of them still visually connected to whatever purpose they were originally built for. Everything also looks worn, messy, and used instead of shiny and futuristic. Abe stands out immediately because he looks so human among them, which makes his whole presence in this world even stranger.

Bus, Speed, and the Weirdest Road Trip

Abe’s journey also gives us two fantastic robot companions. First there is Bus, who is literally a bus and somehow became my favorite character. He is ridiculously charismatic, optimistic, talkative, and basically has the personality of that friend who assumes everything will work itself out. Abe and Bus are traveling together when they see the impossible human, and shortly afterward Bus goes off a bridge. I was genuinely upset about the bus, which was not something I expected to say when I started reading this.

Then we get Speed, who has a completely different energy. He is foul-mouthed, angry, impatient, and constantly seems one inconvenience away from losing it. Honestly? Relate. Pairing him with Abe’s very Abraham Lincoln way of speaking is hilarious, and their conversations became one of my favorite parts of the book.

The dialogue in general is so good. It is funny without desperately trying to make every character funny, and Rosenberg and Rosenberg manage to give these machines more personality through conversation than a lot of books manage with actual humans.

You Saw a Human? Time for a Factory Reset

After Abe admits what he saw, the police try to erase his memory. When they cannot, he and Speed end up being taken somewhere Abe is basically supposed to get factory-reset. Naturally, they find the human Abe saw inside the same place.

So Abe is not crazy. Humans still exist somewhere, and somebody really does not want the robots knowing about it.

Abe and Speed escape, but they lose the human again, leaving Abe with this massive thing he knows is true and absolutely no way to prove it. This leads into what might be my favorite idea in the series so far: spark.

Spark is basically robot drugs. Robots use electricity to get high and temporarily forget things, and Abe starts turning to it because he cannot deal with what he saw or tell anyone about it. It sounds funny when you reduce it to “Abraham Lincoln robot does drugs,” but the actual idea is surprisingly sad. He knows something enormous, nobody will believe him, and forgetting becomes easier than living with it.

That is where the whole concept really clicked for me. These robots did not just inherit our world. They inherited us. Our jobs, inequality, bureaucracy, addiction, loneliness, bad coping mechanisms, and apparently our ability to make everything significantly more complicated than it needs to be.

I Need More of This World

We still know almost nothing about what actually happened to humanity after four issues, and I am completely fine with that because the mystery is working. I want to know where the humans went, why the authorities are hiding the fact that at least one survived, and what Abe is going to do now that he knows the world is not what he was told.

More than that, I just want to spend more time with these characters. Abe is funny in this incredibly specific Abraham Lincoln way, Speed is chaos, Bus deserved better, and the dialogue between all of them makes this strange dystopian world incredibly easy to get attached to.

If Destruction Be Our Lot is funny, smart, and has a lot more going on than I expected from “robot Abraham Lincoln discovers a human.” The first four issues make up the opening arc and are collected in Volume 1, that will be out as TPB on October 7. But the series continues from here.

Related Reading

If you liked the way If Destruction Be Our Lot uses technology to talk about very human problems, our The Smart Division review takes AI much closer to our current reality. And if the bigger question of what actually makes us human interests you, our In Bloom review explores that from a completely different and considerably grosser direction.

FAQ

What is If Destruction Be Our Lot about? Decades after humans apparently disappeared, a robot modeled after Abraham Lincoln sees evidence that humanity may not actually be extinct.

Who created If Destruction Be Our Lot? Matthew Rosenberg and Mark Elijah Rosenberg write the series, with art by Andy MacDonald, colors by Francesco Segala, and lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

Is If Destruction Be Our Lot finished? No. The first four issues form the opening arc of the ongoing Image Comics series.

What does Volume 1 collect? If Destruction Be Our Lot Volume 1 collects Issues #1-4.