I have combed WE3 a couple of times and have noticed that the majority of this graphic novel is like an action movie. At least three quarters of the story is focused on destruction and mayhem, while the last quarter felt like an attempt at making me care about these cyborg animals. I am left wishing this last part was developed more. These animals were abducted by the government and turned into killing machines. That act is suppose to make me question the rights of animals and how far should biological engineering be pushed. However, the characters weren’t developed enough for me to actually care about them being chased down. The missing posters are there to try and make me care about them, but having never had a pet in my life it didn’t really hit home. I think they should have included scenes of the actual abductions. But instead all I have to link to the past of these animals are 3 pages written by a few 5 year olds.
Maybe the whole purpose of this story is just to show these high tech mechanized pets doing what they do best, which lead to some of the sweetest action spreads I’ve seen in awhile. I just wish there was more depth to the characters and the story in general. I felt cheated walking away from the story with the lessons of “if you militarize something and it messes up; just throw some money at it and move on with your life” and “pets should stay pets.”
Totally with you on this. I randomly read this a few weeks ago and found it to be action for the sheer sake of action; as if someone had said, “Hey, let’s make a comic that’s like anime/manga/sci-fi but not quite.” The sentiment and “lesson” definitely sunk into the shadows of animals running and ripping people to shreds. While I did enjoy the inventive presentation of the tiny squares over the big picture, I was disappointed overall. It felt incomplete.
Pretty sure those three pages with the lost animals on them were used as promo images which in my mind is pretty misleading.
There’s no doubt that there’s a hyperkinetic blockbuster action movie sensibility about We3. And perhaps the attempts to elicit empathy come by cheaply. That’s why I like to read the animals more metaphorically…they’re stand-ins for other things…
Maybe I’m just a big softie, but you really didn’t feel like the characters were pitiable at all? I mean, c’mon, when 3 makes his last stand against the Animal Weapon 4 I almost balled. And earlier when all he’s doing is trying to get someone, anyone, to fix his tail…that was totally heart-wrenching. I think a lot of the “depth” of these characters is explored in the scenes were they are traveling, looking for “home.” Somehow 1 instinctively knows there is a “home,” without exactly knowing what it is to begin with. Then as the story progresses 1 elaborates that home is “run no more,” then it is “warm,” and “gud boss.” I guess what really drew me to the characters, especially 1, was his obvious humanity, despite being animal and cyborg and not human at all. He wants somewhere to be safe (“run no more”), warm, and with someone to love him (“gud boss”), which are pretty much staples of the human idea of home. Without having to be taught what a home is, 1 knows that it is something to be sought after (when supposedly these animals are just cold, calculating killing machines).
I have to disagree with the angle you chose to interpret the novel. The lack of character development in the robotic furry animal serial killers was, in my opinion, completely intentional and surprisingly purposeful in evoking empathy from the audience- pet lovers or not. To me as I read We3, I found myself sympathizing not with the animals themselves, or even for bunnies and labradors all around the world, but rather for the dehumanized, period.
de·hu·man·ize (d-hym-nz)
tr.v. de·hu·man·ized, de·hu·man·iz·ing, de·hu·man·iz·es
1. To deprive of human qualities such as individuality, compassion, or civility: slaves who had been dehumanized by their abysmal condition.
2. To render mechanical and routine.
Taking a more metaphorical approach, I couldn’t help but feel that the animals could easily represent the dehumanized. May it be the “terrorists”, or the hobos and prostitutes of DC, or Michael Jackson, or anyone and everyone without a voice. Maybe the person sitting next to you.
At the human core, there are real feelings, ideas, and dreams, which all stem from real human beings- but what happens when someone becomes dehumanized? And how does one reach to the point of dehumanization?
There are many ways to dehumanize others. Easiest way and most common way is to label them. Give them an identity which doesn’t stand with who they truly are, but make them accept it anyway by treating them as such.
When someone begins to believe to be something they’re not- maybe a tramp, or a ditz, or a failure, or even “positive” labels like a “smart Asian”, or a good Christian, there is a loss of innocence, loss of real passion, and perhaps loss of compassion and sense of civility toward other human beings. Whether someone is told and treated based off of a positive or negative label, ALL labels dehumanize and turn the person into a 2-dimensional figure.
So in my opinion, the eerie dissonance between the “innocent” and almost “naive” quality of the pets yearning for their home, and their terrifyingly inhumane capacities of blowing up any and all faces which posed as threats offered much to be meditated, rather than simply animals capable of bloody massacres.
I think you missed something here. The posters in my opinion are not what makes you feel for the characters. There actions and words are. They are forced to kill and kill and kill, they literally can’t stop because that’s what they were hardwired to do. When in this mess of killing a train engineer gets hurt all 1 wants to do is help. You realize he didn’t actually help because the man was already dead, but the point is he wants to help people but he can’t. And when Roseanne gets shot 1 just says bad dog bad dog it really makes you feel for him. I guess since you’ve never had pets you wouldn’t know but as a dog owner this really did it for me.
Also the animals’ broken English, in my opinion, helped you feel for the characters. If the animals spoke in perfect English it definitely wouldn’t have as much as an effect. The way they talk really seems like the way animals given the ability to talk would. The dog only talks about going home and getting acceptance from men. The cat hates everything. Well I don’t really know how a rabbit would talk, rabbits are kind of stupid pets, but they do poop everywhere and 3 pooped bombs. An example of this is when 1 and 2 are talking about going home, 1 says,”Home is…run no more.” Later he says, “Home is warm.” Whenever the animals say things like this I think of my own animals. If the he said, “Well 2 I do say, I think having a home would be running no more, as well as a nice place to keep us warm” there would be a huge difference. I suppose this story is meant for pet owners and animal lovers, but I really sympathized for these characters.
I was going to do this whole presentation on identity and what it means, but I didn’t get the time to and so I’m not. But these responses are all very much in keeping with that theme. The animals in We3 are simultaneously killing machines and adorable pets. They want home, they want safety and they want love. But all they actually know is killing. The story constantly calls into question who should you feel sorry for. The chief scientist and the general are constantly lamenting the loss of human life, and I had to agree with them. I felt bad every time the We3 killed. But I felt equally bad for the We3 because I knew it wasn’t their fault that they where the way they where. The only character I really didn’t feel bad for was Rachael. She knew damn well what those animals where going to do when she released them. Would it have been right to kill them? No, but the General was very sensible in his reasoning. Instead of taking new born animals and creating a blank slate (an example of the Tabula Rasa Genetic Engineered Killer can be found in issue one of Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman, probably the best superhero comic outside of Watchmen that I’ve ever read) they abducted already raised humanized Pets and dehumanized them, while simultaneously bringing them close to a human level of sentience than ever possible. I can’t help but feel that everyone is essentially to blame for the tragedies in this story. I also believe that in its own peculiar way a story about the nature of identity and how what we know is essentially who we are. If any of that made sense.