“Citizen Rex” is a graphic novel written by Mario and Gilbert Hernandez. The highly stylized graphic novel takes place in the future and focuses on the anti-robot movement currently going on. This is a direct response to the scandals that involved Citizen Rex, the most famous and realistic robot ever created.
Anti-robot protestors are first seen on page 33. They are picketing outside of Maxx’s store because he has just signed a deal with a large corporation to sell prosthetic limbs. The limbs are not intended for people who have lost parts of their body in accidents, but for people who desire to change their appearance. It is not necessity, but vanity that drives the sales of these prosthetic limbs.
The protestors’ physical appearance makes their complaints ironic. All of the ones depicted are heavily tattooed and unconventionally pierced while they picket against prosthetic limbs. One protestor even shouts, “No mutilation for beauty’s sake!” while supporting an erupting volcano on her face. In their minds, it is ok to permanently ink and poke holes in their flesh, but not cut off limbs and replace them. Granted, cutting off a limb is much more extreme than a single piercing, but body mutilation is body mutilation.
Reading Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics helped explain stylistic measures taken and explains how the reader is able to understand the comic, but doesn’t necessarily further the irony of the paneled-sequence. The movement of the protestors and Sergio with Hazel is portrayed through closure and an action-to-action sequence. Sergio and Hazel are first observing the mass bodies of protestors in front of Maxx’s store, then they are being confronted by the protestors, and finally they are talking to Maxx, presumably after forcing their way through the crowd. The reader is able to deduce this movement of Sergio and Hazel because the gutter separating each panel suggests that they are moving closer and closer towards their final destination, Maxx’s storefront.
This three-paneled sequence stuck out in my mind because of the irony of accepted vanity and unaccepted vanity in the graphic novel. There is a group protesting against humans cutting off limbs in order to replace them with prosthetic ones because body mutilation is bad. Yet, people of this same group are tattooed and pierced and don’t see any problem with it. This randomly drawn line between what’s allowed and what isn’t exists in many aspects of society and the absurdity of it is pointed out superbly in this sequence.
What is the significance of the robot protestors’ mantra of “Water! Electricity! Meat!”?
