A husband and wife put themselves into cryosleep for 500,000 years in order to return to Earth once it's inhabitable for humans again. They both arrive separately along with some androids to perform certain functions. Due to some circumstances in the book, he ends up going kind of crazy. The book has an interesting story and solid art, but there's a lack of explanation to the story that keeps it from being any better.

I read this a while ago, and I can't believe I didn't write a review already because I still think about this graphic novel. The art was beautiful and the questions that this story explores the answers for is great for starting conversations. It was unpredictable, which is nice for a short one-shot comic.

In this graphic novel, we follow a robot named Alpha after they arrive on Earth. Humans have disappeared and Robert and June, Alpha’s creators, intend on populating it again. However, the plan may not go according to their wishes.

I really liked the art, especially the setting.

The plot was also really interesting, you could see a clear escalation of madness and I believe the ending was fitting for a book like this one.

It was clever and entertaining. A great read.

I was really intrigued by the blurb for the book. Humans being extinct and two scientists trying to repopulate earth!! The art style was really cool!

Many, many years in the future a man named Robert awakens in a post-apocalyptic world after going into orbit Wall-E style, except he's not all fat.
He is alone with some robots and lots and lots of angry apes. His partner and wife, scientist June, has landed somewhere else on the planet but once he discovers what has become of her, he goes mad and becomes all the worst things of humanity he was trying to fight against. Can the one member of his party, the robot Alpha, who has the power to go against orders save Robert and what is left of humanity? This is a very sad, dark look at human nature, and the power of empathy and evolution.

Dnfed--unfortunately the book was archived before I was able to read it. However, I will be back with a review if I am able to read the book in the future!

What does it mean to be human? At the start the reader thinks the last human has crashed on some foreign planet, when in fact he has come to earth 500,000 years after humans left. But there was one visitor earlier; his wife. But they landed 100 years apart and she is no more. She left some AI companions, and our Human has his AI companions. But life is complicated when and AI, in this case Alpha, has more humanity than the human. This is an interesting look at life and what could happen both on this planet and on others. I see these ideas in human natures in the world I live in now. It makes it feel like we humans never grow and never change.

A graphic novel starring an android on a future earth, I was obligated to read that, it's definitely relevant to my interest!
I really liked the main character, a nice android trying to do her best despite the madness of her master.
It was awfully violent, more than I thought it would be, but it was a good story nonetheless. The end was maybe too easy to guess.

** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Copy received through Netgalley

~

Human, by Diego Agrimbau, Lucas Varela
★★★★★
144 Pages
Content Warning: extinction, dictatorship, death, slavery, off-page forced insemination


Human is a graphic novel about what humanity is capable of, the injustices we commit without thought of consequences, the depravity we're all capable of in extreme situations, and the hard truth that the world would be better off without our destructive influence.

That sounds harsh, but it's the truth.

Honestly, when I began reading Human, I wasn't sure what to think. Alpha was an interesting character, though it would have been good to have an idea of identity long before halfway through the story, as I didn't realise Alpha was female until Robert used pronouns. Until this point, Alpha thought their name was Robert, because of the marks on their robotic body RBRT. However, getting past that was easy enough because, in my mind, robots are all genderless. Once Robert came into the story, it became something interesting and new – the last human on Earth – until he reveals that his wife, June, crash landed nearby.

The plot is clever, original and absolutely something I could imagine an egotistical scientist could imagine – take his wife to the distant future, after humans have already destroyed their own world. Emerge in a time when the planet has flourished without humans and recovered from the damage we've done, then repopulate the planet with his wife. Enter = God complex.

How Alpha – a robot who was made with the ability to disobey, if an order was only given once (given twice, they would be compelled to comply) – reacted to all of this was the interesting part. Created by humans, but fundamentally a robot with only rudimentary Empathy programming, Alpha was, by far, the most interesting character. They had a unique view of the situation. At times, they reacted as a robot would, but at others, they showed more foresight, more empathy and understanding of the situation than Robert, with his egotistical and limited human view.

For me, Human was a graphic novel that explored the depths of human nature in less than 200 pages, with stunning sci-fi appropriate illustrations, and a clever and original plot. I loved Alpha and June equally, One was intriguing and Robert was a typical human who couldn't adapt to a changing world. In short, Human was utterly terrifying...because of its realism.

Though it's not billed as a Volume 1, the story left the ending resolved but open to more. I'd definitely be intrigued to see what came next.

Modules land on a peculiar planet, carrying a handful of cyborgs, who either can't really remember what they're about, and/or get pulled apart by the local wildlife. What their human boss/owner/builder says about their new existence is at the core of this perhaps more thoughtful sci-fi piece, which still has drama and blood and guts aplenty to keep everyone interested. With a distinctive look – all grey and shades of red – it is bound to stand out on the racks, and the plot is very different to the usual comic norm, too. For all the simplicity it seems to have in its almost ligne clair approach, and easy to read, logical story, there is also a surprising amount of darkness on show, which I've really had to restrain myself from mentioning. So come to this blind and find out what the heck is going on – but come here. With the only major fault being that the lead cyborg is supposed to be thought of as 'female', although we're never shown how and why to expect that, this is worth a strong four stars.

This was a really interesting story! It kept me on the edge of my seat most of the time. I liked the characters, the setting, and the art. The art is absolutely beautiful. Highly recommend this graphic novel read.

This was a really interesting future possibility. I can totally imagine that we will jump "back to the primitives". As reading the book, I was wondering how to kill Robert. He had a really pushy and I could totally slap him in the face and tell him that "You've gone too far".
The robots were kinda okay, as I can think of. Alpha was the total winner of the story I guess. I really loved her character. She was so humanly loving and kind.
Thank you for the chance to read it. It really made me think of the whole human race.

Humans started to decline thanks to unspecified deterioration of environment conditions here on Earth. So few scientists decide to engage plan to human survival in the form of Project Phoenix. The plan is to wait in cryosleep on Earth's orbit until it becomes habitable again and then repopulate the Earth. 500 000 years later, when the Earth restored its condition, two leading scientists Robert and June (husband and wife) descended from orbit back to Earth. The earth is now in excellent shape and it looks more "alien" in means of plants and weird new species of apes. The landing is rough, but androids, the help for the scientists' couple to execute the mission, rescue Robert from his landing pod and he start his search for June.
Well, the setting is great. The description I wrote is nothing inventive or new, it's rather a common scenario for this kind of sci-fi. But the deeper detail creates a quite interesting scenario. For me, there comes a major flaw. At first, I was happy with the number of pages. But in the end, the 130-ish pages is not enough. There is a lack of information to start with (not necessarily a flaw by itself) and with such an interesting scenario I got a lot of missing links. I love how book pretends it's Robert's story, but it's actually Alfa's one from beginning to the end.
So, on one hand, I like the story, but on the other hand, I'm disappointed in ways how executed it is, how the actual scenario is not elaborated enough. The art is OK, not exactly by my tase but not against it either. In conclusion - this is a nice comic with an interesting story and at least "OK" art, but there is so much unused potential and that could leave the bitter taste after reading

An entertaining story about a post-human Earth. Humanity seems to have disappeared from the planet and this, in turn, seems to be a safe environment for humans to return. However, things are not that simple, and when the plan of a man is shattered, we are shown that "humanity" can also dwell in unexpected places. Loved the moral and development, not so much the graphics, though, although I praise the audacity to show some raw images.

Full review in my blog (JAN 22): https://tintanocturna.blogspot.com/2020/01/comic-human.html

Human (Kindle Edition)
by Diego Agrimbau

October 16th 2019 by Europe Comics
ASINB07YNNSNHQ

A set of robots return to earth, it is abstractly different the world is wild and violent and changed, the robots are in danger. They find a lone human, he leads them to a corpse the lone female who arrived in this world decades before him. The lone human and the robots find that it was earth, and they are alone on the world. The art is very graphic, but would be appealing to apocalypse fans.

Thank you to Europe Comics for a temporary digital edition via NetGalley of ‘Human’, written by Diego Agrimbau with art by Lucas Varela, in exchange for an honest review. It was published in October.

I usually get on well with science fiction but I just found this story confusing and the concept of two humans orbiting the Earth for half a million years, even in cryosleep, strained credibility. I also didn’t like the style or colour palette of the art.

Clearly other members did enjoy it but I concluded that this graphic novel just wasn’t a good fit for me.

From the Moebius-inspired cover image to the very attractive interior artwork and a science-fiction plot that pits human life against an alien environment half a million years in the future, Diego Agrimbau and Lucas Varela's Human has all the makings of a thrilling quality SF graphic novel. If it doesn't quite live up to expectations in terms of delivering any new ideas or insights into what it means to be human it certainly meets expectations elsewhere and is unlikely to disappoint.

Without any dialogue, the opening section presents an intriguing scene of a space-craft making a crash landing on what looks like an alien planet. An AI with its files are corrupted and unable to determine what its mission is emerges from the ruin of the craft and barely has time to grasp the situation to avoid getting ripped apart by one of the primitive red-faced monkey like lifeforms on the planet. Assisted by a robot protector however, it manages to remain in one piece and establish that the remainder of the AI team need saving from threats from other dangerous lifeforms.

The AI discovers that he is Alpha and determines that his duty must be to rescue the human that they have found in a capsule on the half-destroyed ship. When revived, the scientist Robert explains that they are not on an alien planet but have returned to Earth on the European continent in the year 553180. The ship has been orbiting earth for over half a million years waiting for the ecosystems to regenerate, and now he plans to revive his wife June, a cyber-anthropologist who should be nearby and set about rebuilding Earth from scratch. Travelling any distance in this post-apocalyptic world however is going to be dangerous with a reduced team and hosts of unknown creatures.

This you can imagine ought to look fantastic in a graphic novel: and it does. Lucas Varela's artwork is not as much Moebius as the cover image might suggest, but rather a simpler European clear line art style in a limited colour palette of red, grey, flesh and black with a little bit of a Mike Mignola influence in the spot blacks and the creature designs. The whole thing is beautifully laid out and paced to tell the story with the minimum of exposition. Diego Agrimbau's far-future story provides a lot of SF potential that the artwork certainly lives up to, looking at humanity through the eye of an AI, with a view towards where ecological disaster will eventually lead humanity.

It also provides an opportunity to tackle some big basic questions about the nature of humanity, questions of good and evil, right and wrong. And, since it is essentially a new world situation that humanity is trying to control, matters of colonialism and abuse of power inevitably come up. The treatment of these questions is however a little simplistic in outlook, not pursuing any of these topics in any depth. There's nothing for example that is as original, insightful or imaginative in its exploration of human nature and its capacity to develop as Moebius's The World of Edena. Agrimbau and Varela's Human tends to fall back on old ideas and behaviours, but who knows, that might indeed be the reality of being human.

"Human" is one of the best graphic novel that I have read this year.
It's about a futuristic and distopic world where Alpha - a robot - is searching for answers and his memory. He discovers a "new" species - apes - and other robots (who seems they know Alpha). Meanwhile he wake up their creator Robert from a cryosleep of 500.000 years.
From now on there will be an amazing adventure.

I think Robert hasn't lost his humanity, especially with his anger and "idea of colonization" typical of human beings.
While reading I was surprised and a little "angry" with him when appears to put nature vs technology in battles to prove what he can do.

Alpha is my favorite (obvously) and he's like Robert's conscience. The right path to follow when you're lost.
Is a new beginning for a new species.

I liked so much the style and colors of this graphic novel: red, black and white are a powerful combination.

This story was exciting, haunting, cute and extremely gory at times.

This is a very fast paced read and I read in a couple of sittings over a morning. The graphics are stunning and detailed.

The story follows Alpha when her ship crash lands on earth 500,000 years into the future, hunting for other survivors and the humans who are running the mission we encounter the future inhabitants of earth.

After some excellent battle scenes we end on what seems to be a cliffhanger. I'm definitely intrigued to see if this storyline continues.

Some of the human reactions to the future of earth were uncomfortable but very true to life.

I didn't really like this book. I was constantly confused for most of the way, and I couldn't finish it. I didn't particularly care for the art style either.