Automatic Kafka created by Joe Casey & Ashley Wood

Resource

• Automatic Kafka series index
• List of Automatic Kafka Characters

Overview

From the strange and powerful minds of Joe Casey (WILDCATS, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN) and Ashley Wood (Hellspawn, Popbot) comes AUTOMATIC KAFKA, a super-hero series unlike any you’ve seen before. The $tranger$ (Automatic Kafka, Saint Nick, The Constitution, The Warning, Spastic Ben) were huge in the '80s—the biggest super-hero team ever. They were mass-marketed as hard as the latest diet soda or designer sportswear—the Beatles as superheroes. They were the biggest and the best, a rock super-band's promoter's dream-team with the groupies to match. But then the dream was over. The end came, and they went their separate ways...leaving their tin-plated uber-member alone, adrift, lost. Automatic Kafka: Super-hero? Game-show host? Model? Pitchman? Or android junkie? And what of the $tranger$? Where are they now? Which one is being sought for questioning by the National Park Service? Which one is lost in the jungle? Which one is conducting a singular war on terrorism? Only some of these questions are answered in the debut issue of AUTOMATIC KAFKA, the first original concept released through WildStorm Productions' mature-readers label: “Eye of the Storm.” Casey's twisted yet captivating scripts, coupled with the just-plain-beautiful, multimedia artwork of Wood, promise to make this perhaps the strangest series ever published by WildStorm. Not for the weak-willed, AUTOMATIC KAFKA is a brave new look at super-heroes. You only think you know what you’re really in for…

Publishing History

The series followed the life of Automatic Kafka, an android who had been a member of a mass-marketed superhero group called the $tranger$ during the 1980s. After the team breaks up, Kafka is lost, looking for a new direction in life. When he tries a drug for mechanical lifeforms and has a near-death experience: Death herself appears and takes him through his life. They talk about Kafka's desire to have real feelings and be human. When Kafka wakes up he goes on to try different ways of becoming human: drugs, sex and fame among them. The series also visits Kafka's former teammates who each have adapted to their life post-$tranger$ in their own way.

Automatic Kafka was a very experimental comic, Ashley Wood's unique style and Joe Casey's writing made it something between parody, satire and homage. With an abundance of sex, drugs, nudity and violence and complex scripts, it only found a small audience. In the final issue, Casey and Woods themselves appear to explain to Kafka that they do not want to share their creation with other writers and artists and therefore decide to end him with the series.

News

• [Newsarama]: Post Mortem: Automatic Kafka (07/11/2003)

Sources:

• Wikipedia: Automatic Kafka