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Children are going missing. We see one of them strapped to a table, a steampunk contraption on his head. Next to him is, of all things, a child-sized automaton.
An off-panel figure puts a rolled-up piece of paper in the automaton’s mouth and paints Hebrew letters on the child. The child screams and dies, and the automaton continues the scream. So in the opening scene of Lady Mechanika: The Lost Boys of West Abbey, we have kidnapping, illegal imprisonment, arguably murder, and blasphemy. From here the villain will get worse—and it will be up to Lady Mechanika to stop him.
Lady Mechanika offers an impressive landscape of ideas. Think of an automaton that’s a teddy bear. That’s great by itself, but here it’s woven into crimes and Jewish mysticism. It’s the springboard to a new character, Rebbe Ephraim, whose knowledge is needed to follow the clues and discover who is taking the children. Ephraim becomes an ally.
There is a Chinese toymaker, Mr Jang, who makes clockwork toys. That includes teddy bears—including specialist ones. And you have to wonder what he and Lewis the tinkerer are going to do together in coming issues.
This set-up here is rich and layered. The murder mystery is part of the engine, but Lady Mechanika herself is the rest of it. She’s thoughtful, inquisitive, and prone to action. She’s fueled less by memories that she can neither call to mind nor dismiss from her soul than by a burning sense of justice. This is a bit of a puzzle, since people usually feel great indignation at injustices they suffer but feel little at injustices inflicted on others.
Lady Mechanika cannot stand by when children are killed. That matters more to her than what happened to her. The parallels stir her memories; they do not control her feelings. She may tell people that she investigates because of those parallels, but I don’t think Detective Singh believes her.
The parallel between the two is that Detective Singh is pursuing this case even though his superiors would have it quietly set aside. They don’t think unimportant poor children are worth the effort. But beneath the chain of command, other thoughts control the day. Singh, Lady Mechanika, Ephraim, and others want the case solved.
Aiding Lady Mechanika is Lewis—a tinkerer, a genius, and a lush. Together they babysit his niece, Winifred, while her father’s out earning a living. She isn’t hostile to Lady Mechanika anymore, and instead of always wearing formal clothes she can wear a pilot's helmet and gloves. She’s finally actually going to have a childhood. And that’s when you realize the subtle reverse parallel: Lady Mechanika lost a childhood, and Winifred is going to gain one.
This more stable domestic situation shows Mechanika building the tapestry of a new family. And it’s a sign of the depth of the story that’s fascinating. It makes the cyborg human.
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