Hostile Product Recall

Hey, what's this? Can it be? A review of the first graphic novel I bought in 2025, only three months into 2026!

Volume 1 of Jef Bambas' Model: A revolves around a robot that, due to an incident with a weather vane that damages its antenna, stops receiving the command to stay shut down. Making its way out of the storage room, it finds itself in what appears to be a run down factory. Before long he runs into a different model of robot which, given the nightstick it carries, is some sort of security guard.

The remaining five issues are a prolonged chase. First between Model A and that Model B and then, a whole bunch more Model Bs. The story is silent, although Bambas uses caption boxes on two occasions, when the mysterious overseer robot is receiving status updates about all the robots that are being taken out.

Bambas plays the chase like a cartoon, with Model A as Tweety and the Model Bs and Sylvester or Elmer Fudd. Gags where Model A, while evading the attacks of a Model B, causes a girder to get damaged so the entire building falls on Model B. Or gags about Model A hiding in a barrel, looking both ways to confirm the coast is clear, then hopping out and immediately running into a guard.

The factory location provides a variety of settings for those gags. Model A fleeing into a room with only one exit, that turns out to be the arsenal. A stretch of Model A trying to scale the wall of the compound and escape. The Model Bs are building new structures, so there's an issue that's mostly Model A trying to pretend to be part of the construction crew, with all the potential for physical comedy that allows.

Besides the differences in their shapes, Bambas also makes Model A more expressive. Which is impressive for a rectangular prism with one eye. But the bent antenna and the crack in one corner of his casing give him something distinctive. The antenna can flop around as Model A panics and flails. The bent corner causes a crease that acts like an eyebrow when Model A squints at things.

The volume ends with Model A's attempt to scale the wall thwarted by the first Model B he encountered, now significantly more battered. With a bent antenna of its own, it seems to have also gained the ability of more expressions. Like the expression of revenge!