The Silver-Metal Lover


By Tanith Lee, adapted by Trina Robbins (Harmony/Crown Books)
ISBN: 0-517-55853-X

During the 1980s, comics finally began to filter through to the mainstream of American popular culture, helped in no small part by a few impressive adaptations of works of literary fantasy such as Michael Moorcock’s Elric or DC’s Science Fiction Graphic Novel line.

Cartoonist, author and comics historian Trina Robbins joined the throng with this deceptively powerful and effectively bittersweet romance adapted from Tanith Lee’s short tale about an earnest young girl in a spoiled, indolent world who discovered abiding love in the most unexpected of places.

In the far-flung, ferociously formal and civilised future everything is perfect – if you can afford it – but human nature has not evolved to match Mankind’s technological and sociological advancements.

Jane has everything a 16-year old could want but is still unhappy. Her mother Demeta provides all she needs – except human warmth – whilst her six registered friends do their best to provide for her growing associative and societal needs. Of her carefully selected peer circle, Jane only actually likes flighty, melodramatic needily narcissistic Egyptia – whom Jane’s mother approves of but considers certifiably insane.

In this world people can live in the clouds if they want, and robots perform most manual toil and tedious services, but it’s far from paradise. Humans still get suspicious and bored with their chatty labour-saving devices and the monumental Electronic Metals, Ltd strive constantly to improve their ubiquitous inventions…

One day Jane agrees to accompany Egyptia to an audition and the fully made-up thespian is accosted by a rude man who mistakes her for a new android. He wants to buy her.

Ruffled by the rude man’s manner, Jane’s attention is then distracted by a beautiful metal minstrel busking in the plaza. The robot’s performance and his lovely song move and frighten Jane in way she cannot understand, and when S.I.L.V.E.R. (Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot) affably introduces himself the flustered girl bolts, running for the relative security of the nearby home of sardonic friend Clovis, where the beautiful tart is in the process of dumping another lover. He proves unsurprisingly unsympathetic to Jane’s confusion and distress, telling her to go home where, still inexplicably upset, she tries to talk the experience out with her mother. Impatient as always, the matron simply enquires if Jane is masturbating enough before telling her to record whatever’s bothering her for mummy to deal with later…

Sulking in a bath Jane is awoken from a sleep by the ecstatic Egyptia who has passed her audition. Bubbling with glee the neophyte actress demands Jane join her at a big party. Avoiding a persistent old letch who is creepily fixated on the fresh young thing, Jane stumbles again upon S.I.L.V.E.R. and once more reacts histrionically to his singing.

As he profusely apologizes for the inexplicable distress he’s somehow caused her, Jane realizes the disturbing mechanical minstrel has been rented by Egyptia for quite another kind of performance later… a private one…

With a gasp of surprise Jane at last understands what she’s feeling and kisses the alluring automaton before fleeing.

Her mother is as useless as ever. Whilst futilely attempting to explain her problem but failing even to catch Demeta’s full attention, Jane gives up and claims she’s in love with Clovis just to cause a shock…

The next day the heartsick waif visits the offices of Electronic Metals, Ltd ostensibly to rent the droid of her dreams – as a minor she has to lie about her age – but is sickened when she finds him partially dissembled whilst the techs try to track down an anomalous response in his systems…

Despondent, she is astonished when Machiavellian Clovis intervenes, renting S.I.L.V.E.R. for Egyptia and convincing the too, too-busy starlet to let Jane look after it for her…

Alone with the object of her affection, insecure Jane’s imagined affair quickly becomes earthily, libidinously real but the honeymoon ends far too soon when Clovis informs her the rental period is over. Crippled by her burning love for the artificial Adonis, Jane begs her mother to buy him for her. When the cold guardian refuses the obsessed child at last rebels…

When Demeta disappears on another of her interminable business trips Jane sells her apartment’s contents, moves into the slums and desperately claims her dream lover with the ill-gotten gains…

Following a tragically brief transformative period of sheer uncompromised joy with her adored mechanical man, reality suddenly hits the happy couple hard as Demeta tracks Jane down and smugly applies financial pressure to force her wayward child to return. Undaunted, the pair become unlicensed street performers and grow ever closer but even as Jane grows in confidence and ability, becoming fiercely independent, public opinion has turned against the latest generation of far-too human mechanical servants. When Electronic Metals recalls all its now hated products, the improper couple flee the city. However the heartless auditors track them down and reclaim Jane’s Silver Metal Lover…

Lyrical and poetic, this is a grand old-fashioned tale of doomed love which still has a lot to say about transformation, growing up and walking your own path, with Trina Robbins’ idyllic and idealised cartooning deceptively disguising the heartbreaking savagery and brutal cruelty of the story to superb effect, making the tragedy even more potent.

Regrettably out of print for years, this is a comics experience long overdue for revival – perhaps in conjunction with new interpretations of the author’s later sequels to the saga of love against the odds…
Illustrations © 1985 Trina Robbins. Text © 1985 Tanith Lee. All rights reserved.