Writer/Artist: James Kochalka
Price: $14.95
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
ISBN: 1-891830-36-8

James Kochalka's MONKEY VS ROBOT AND THE CRYSTAL OF POWER, the sequel to his landmark book MONKEY VS ROBOT, shows a certain mercilessness to his characters that has rarely surfaced in his work.

The original MONKEY VS ROBOT has been adapted into a cartoon and a song. The first book was simple in its execution: a monkey fought a robot and readers found themselves cheering on the monkey.

Monkeys are inherently cute and utterly irresistible to comic fans. There's something pure about monkeys. Perhaps it's that when thinking about monkeys people are able to see where they are on the evolutionary ladder. Perhaps it's the opposable tails. It's difficult to say exactly why people like monkeys so much. Maybe it's simply because they're so cute. Thus readers found themselves cheering on the monkey and hoping for it to best the robot.

Ah, robots. The robot is the perfect opponent to a monkey. The monkey represents nature and the robot represents technology. Both characters figure heavily in comics' history. We've known many great robots from the Doom Patrol's Robotman to the Fantastic Four's H.E.R.B.I.E. There's something cool about robots.

Kochalka's MONKEY VS ROBOT takes a schoolyard debate to a higher level. Who would win in a fight, a monkey or a robot? It's hard to say. I'd have to see the robot. What kind of monkey are you talking about? A chimp? A baboon? Kochalka's line-work places both the robot and the monkey as soft, cartoony characters, and being comic characters, it's seemingly easy to displace any fear of their safety. The wonder of comic characters is that one can perform any number of torture on a comic character and they'll bounce right back.

Chris Onstad creator of the Achewood comic strip, once remarked: "As far as the safety of the characters goes? I don't really care. They're cartoon characters. Pull their arms off - reattach them backstage. They have eternal life." Not so in THE CRYSTAL OF POWER.

As many readers of the first book readily identified the robots as the antagonists and the monkeys as the protagonists, THE CRYSTAL OF POWER seeks to establish both groups as being equally motivated by self-preservation.

The robots need a crystal to power their home and their selves. The crystal is an ancient monkey artifact buried in a monkey gravesite. At the opening of the book, a monkey's life-energy is being sucked from him by a device in the robot's home. The monkey escapes and the robots set out to pursue him. On the way, this monkey sees the robots disrupting the gravesite and stealing the crystal of power. The monkeys and robots clash. Unlike the first book, the fighting is much more intense. Robots are smashed and destroyed, their arms ripped from their sockets. Of course, the robots can always make new arms so it's difficult to feel any empathy for them.

What's strange, though, is that it is easy to see that the forces dominating the robots' actions are perhaps more pure than those influencing the monkey's actions. The robots are cold, lifeless, technological beings that are acting out of self-preservation. They've discovered that the Crystal of Power will fuel them without them having to drain the life-essence from the monkeys.

The monkeys are already pissed off about the robots even being there, as the robots are constantly sucking out the monkeys' life-essences. The robots are a bit clueless to the plight of these asshole monkeys. Both groups trigger involuntary reactions. Kochalka himself would deny that MONKEY VS ROBOT is a parable about nature vs technology, and the comparison does lend itself perhaps too easily to the subject. It could simply be that the story is about monkeys fighting robots, and that's it. Why is it so hard to just enjoy a good monkey and robot fight?

It's hard to do that because Kochalka's work has previously shown so much depth. From his daily diary strips, available in the three volumes of THE SKETCHBOOK DIARIES and on his website, to SUNBURN, it's clear that Kochalka's first priority in his art is the affirmation of life.

It's alarming at first to see the brutality of the robots' fight against the monkeys. I have little empathy for a robot missing an arm, I come from the STAR WARS generation and C3P0 spent most of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK in pieces. It's okay because I know that someone will fix him. Or, it's okay because he's not really alive anyway. The monkeys are squished, stomped and torn asunder by explosions. Someone will take the robot backstage and fix him. There is no one to fix the monkeys though, and that's the crux of the conflict. Despite the fact that the robots are acting out of self-preservation, their actions are still harming the monkeys. That lack of empathy on the robots' part involuntarily defaults them to the role of antagonists.

Kochalka has stated that the original MONKEY VS ROBOT was written for an adult audience, but had a strong appeal for children. In the case of his PINKY & STINKY novel and the PEANUT BUTTER & JEREMY series, these are comics that are clearly for children, but with a strong appeal for adults.

These books are like the best of children's literature, in that they appeal to the joyfulness of literature and art that appeal so much to children, while adults can enjoy the structure and techniques. Adults can also project their own opinions on the work's themes and goals. Like Shel Silverstein, Maurice Sendak and Dr Seuss before him, Kochalka's series of graphic novels for children are the kind of lasting work that can grow with its audience, adults and children alike.

So, yes, while MONKEY VS ROBOT AND THE CRYSTAL OF POWER is much more graphic and brutal in parts, there is a purpose to it. On the one hand it's the natural progression of the monkey versus robot conflict, but it's also a bit more than that. Using the nature versus technology parable, by the end of THE CRYSTAL OF POWER it's apparent that neither nature nor technology will prevail. The conflict will bring destruction to both sides and unless the robots and the monkeys can learn to live alongside each other, their conflict will never be resolved.

Frank Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.