Love Machines #3

By Josh Trujillo, Dave Valeza, Patrick Horvath

Are we spending too much time on our phones? Or not enough?

Love Machines #3 by writer Josh Trujillo ventures off to answer this question among many others. This one in response to Applications, which is the first of the two stories surrounding the concept of love in this issue. Something a lot of people have probably been wondering while out in public and seeing people walking around like drones while looking into their phones (but they’re so much fun!). This story follows around Xavier, a young man who goes to get a new phone, but ends up getting much more than that (and no, it’s not the super-deluxe promotion package the phone company tries to sell you).

On the artwork side of this issue is Dave Valeza. The artwork is done in black and white and stays more on the simplistic side (not highly detailed), but works well to serve the story. The story itself glides pretty quickly from one panel to the next and the style of the artwork serves to do this as well. We’re given Xavier’s adventure with this new phone, something he is using to meet new people and obtain happiness, though not is all as it seems.

The opening scene of Xavier going to get his new phone does well to show off Valeza’s artwork style alongside Trujillo’s writing. As Xavier makes his way through the store while following along with an employee you see the ever amazing phone growing closer and closer – all while Xavier seems skeptical, but still in need of a new phone.

The second story in this issue is drawn by Patrick Horvath and is titled Lung. Much like the fist story this one too revolves around a piece of technology as a means to meeting new people in search of happiness. This time however, it isn’t a phone, but rather an iron lung. Harvey, a young man, is using a machine to help him breathe and stays in the hospital under the care of Mattie – his nurse. Though it appears Harvey is fine he insists on staying – something must be keeping him there? Horvath does his artwork in black and white as well and takes a different approach than Valeza by often using thinner lines and more facial expressions in his art.

In the scene where Harvey claims to the doctors he isn’t fine enough to leave yet, Horvath does a great job to show the breaking down of this character through his reactions. Both of these stories express love in many ways. We’re shown how isolated people can be, and how technology can serve to help us with that.