Isea is lost in Cyrano de Bergerac. She’s watching it on a little floating screen out in the field. It’s a video that Tal recorded. Tal’s her only friend. Lives far away in another city. Isea only knows her from online. Her robot attendant Debree is interested to hear the story, but Isea IS late for class in the little one-room schoolhouse she attends. She rushes past robots leading horse-drawn carriages on her way in. Her adventure is only beginning in the first book of Europe Comics’ graphic novel Hearts of Steel. Writer José Luis Munuera performs a heartwarming steampunk/romance/coming-of-age narrative fusion that is etched into the page by artist/co-writer Béka.

Isea is called out for arriving late to class, but it’s okay: she was expecting as much. She gets through the day with relatively little stress. Then afterwards, there’s a video chat with Tal before another viewing of Cyrano--this time with Debree. Of course...Isea’s mother is going to be upset about the fact that she’s still awake rather late on a school night. She may come across as a bit cold, but she IS concerned that Isea’s entire life revolves around a girl she’s never met and her robot nanny. There’s nothing left to be done but get rid of Debree.

Munuera and Béka allow the story to fade in slowly. It’s a small town inhabited by humans and robots. Feels sweet and idyllic. Isea is delicately characterized as a girl who will soon be entering adolescence and may no longer need a nanny. The sudden loss of the one person she’s closer to than any other sparks an adventure. Munuera and Béka come very close to making a statement about race relations as robots are laborers who find themselves so easily cast aside, but the authors are clearly making a greater statement on the nature of labor in general that’s deep and heartfelt. 

The world of Hearts of Steel is a delicate one. The rural steampunk feel could completely collapse in absurdity if it weren’t for unwavering attention to detail on the part of the artist. Béka has tremendous patience in setting up establishing shots for each scene and making the whole town that Isea inhabits seem totally believable. As it is a small town, there is a great stillness about it. The robots themselves feel very steampunk...pulled directly out of the earliest era of science fiction. Robots from this era tend to be inhuman and expressionless. Béka’s greatest accomplishment may be finding a way to make them look breathtakingly expressive without betraying the overall sense of the inhuman in the great, hulking metal things which bear a single light that serves as an eye. 

It’s beautiful stuff straight through. It’s such an unspeakably cool world...a place somewhere between Mark Twain and H.G. Wells. The heart meets somewhere in the middle of a child’s coming-of-age tale and a story of artificial intelligence. It’s quite an adventure.

Grade: A