SCENARIO #1999: Robots
I believe the children are our future. Also the robots.
Hello there! All month, we're running the teen slasher numbers in honor of Dead Teenagers, which is out March 18 from Oni Press. You can get ready with this unexpectedly deep interview with me, Jimmy Gaspero and Caitlin Yarsky over at Comics Cryptid.
DILF: Did I Leave Feminism is still available, in both book and smell form, wherever fine books are sold. Be Not Afraid will be out in collected edition in July.
If there’s one thing that we, as a nation, know about Teens, it’s that they are cool. Cool as in countercultural; cool as in rebellious; cool as in completely unwilling to respect traditional authority figures, or to adhere by the dominant culture’s social codes, or to play by your generation's stale old rules, maaaaannnn.
What happens, then, when a Teen meets something that is nothing but adherence to rules and codes; something that always obeys its programming, and its masters, without question; something completely set in its ways, and incapable of deviating from the path laid out for it? What happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable Teenager — what happens, friends, when Robots meet Teens?
The answer, of course, is murder. Robots hunt, maim and kill teenagers across the reaches of the canon — this includes the blockbusters and anime classics you’re undoubtedly thinking of, but it also includes a much richer and stranger sub-strata that you’ll only find buried in the direct-to-video slush heap, free streaming platforms, and poorly-aged back archives of comics.
In the eternal war of Robots vs. Teenagers, these battles are hardly remembered — yet each of them is a monument to the teen gift for rebellion, and a stern indictment of adult society, which seeks to mute their individuality and turn them into unthinking, obedient automatons, maaaaannnnn. Herewith, we detail three such clashes in the Robot-Teen Wars.
Chopping Mall (1986)
The Problem: Teens hanging out at the mall.
What happens? Four teens convene for that most all-American of teenage activities — an after-hours sex party in the furniture store at a local mall. (“We’ve all been there,” he says, in the tone of a man who has definitely had sex.) Unbeknownst to them, the mall has unleashed a new fleet of robot security guards, and the punishment for loitering is…. Death!!!