What can I say? Sometimes, you just can’t think of a joke.

It’s been a long-time coming, but, as I promised in a blog post all the way back in July, I have finally gotten off my lazy ass and redesigned They Are Coming For Us! into a robot-themed web comic. Woot woot! Big props to the people at ComicPress for providing such a brilliant and customizable Wordpress theme for me to work with.

A few points right off the bat: Because I’m not good at drawing, I’m using the same layout every time. In the comics biz, using the same layout is called having a “constrained webcomic.” You can find a similar set-up at Dinosaur Comics (though I have a long way to go before I can catch up to their level of hilarity). Also, instead of drawing my characters myself, I’m just using some public domain clip art I found. If you think that’s cheating, then I don’t know what to say except “Meh.”

I should also note that if you’re still looking for the latest news on the coming robot uprising, I will still be updating the blog portion of the site semi-regularly. As it stands, I’d like to write one or two new blog posts and two new comics each week. Hopefully, if I get into a good rhythm, I can increase to a more frequent schedule. We’ll see…

In the meantime, I openly invite any and all criticism on the new look of the site. For that matter, I invite all criticism of anything on the site. If you think my comic isn’t funny, let me know. If you think it is funny, let me know that too. If you want to share your criticisms in real time, follow me on Twitter.

Of course, that was before I read this post from the Cnet.com Crave Blog. Apparently, some students from the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech have developed a robotic hand that uses compressed air to grip objects. Go ahead and read that again. That’s right, baby. Air. As in the stuff you breath. How are we going to stop them now?!?

From the post:

Meet Raphael, the Robotic Air-Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments. It’s a gripper that’s powerful enough to hold something heavy, say an Uzi, but delicate enough to grasp human brains without destroying them. Certainly this is what the robotic soldiers of the future will be outfitted with.

The hand uses compressed air that passes through tiny actuators to control each finger separately. A microcomputer dictates how much air is given to each finger through an accordion-like tube. Less air means a softer grip, while more air means a firm grip that could rip out a human’s windpipe.

The students who designed the man-killing machinery will be splitting a $10,500 prize for winning first place in an innovative-design competition sponsored by the Cleveland-based Compressed Air and Gas Institute, the association of manufacturers of compressed air and gas systems and equipment. Besides standalone robots, the hand could be fitted to amputees as a prosthetic, creating murderous cyborgs or, hopefully, humans capable of fighting off the mechanical menace with their own parts.

You see, the party line from the government and the mainstream media says that these robot animals are critical to identifying and arresting poachers who are harming native animal populations. The truth is that the government, on orders from Robot President Obama, is punishing soldiers in the robot resistance. These brave men and women aren’t poachers! They are freedom fighters who are risking their lives everyday to ward off the likes of robot deers, robot turkeys, robot rabbits, and robot bears.

Though the deer in the above picture  may look harmless, you’ll be thinking otherwise when lasers start shooting out of those antlers.

Using data from the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research, the report concludes that we have so many programmers working on so many different projects, it is impossible to have a full understanding of just what the hell we’re actually doing.  In other words, we’re screwed. Get used to seeing these guys around a lot more often.

Perhaps it is the stark contrast between the two threats that drives my terror. While a robot takeover would be brutal, there would probably be fewer human casualties. It’s far more likely we’d be conscripted into slavery, perhaps as robot batteries like in The Matrix. With the undead, if the threat becomes too large we’d simply have to board up cities and let the zombies feast, a chilling prospect indeed.

On the other hand, robots would be far more difficult to resist and are already in control of the world’s major financial networks, transportation networks, communications, and anything else that operates using computers. A zombie outbreak, if caught in the early stage, could be disposed of by a posse of tough nosed former convicts and their leader: a retired Army sergeant who, while gruff on the exterior, has a heart of gold.

The most dangerous threat of all, as depicted in the above picture from RobotZombie.com, is, of course, the Robot-Zombie hybrid. Can you even begin to imagine the sheer terror of a Zombie’s bloodlust with a robot’s cold internal logic and vastly superior strength, speed, and efficiency. It is a truly devastating and horrifying combination.

I don’t think there would be any stopping a large and organized robot zombie army. There is simply no precedent to deal with that kind of threat. The only way to even begin planning for such a terrifying assault would be to memorize Max Brooks’ Zombie Survival Guide and Daniel H. Wilson’s How to Survive a Robot Uprising, and combine their advice into some kind of super encyclopedia of defensive tactics.

According to this report from CNET,

“[the process] involves a helmet full of electroencephalography and near-infrared spectroscopy sensors that monitor electrical brainwaves and cerebral blood flow, signals that alter slightly during the human thought process. The robot controller thinks of one of a limited number of specific gestures it wants from Asimo, which has been fitted with a Brain Machine Interface.

The data is then analyzed on a real-time basis to distinguish what the user imagined and transmitted wirelessly to the bot, which makes corresponding movements.

Sounds like a bunch of fancy science speak for “we link our brains to robots in a sick and twisted blasphemy against God.” I guess this technology represents a stunning breakthrough in robotics technology and could potentially help thousands of physically disabled individuals lead lives of independence, but at what cost! It won’t be long before these robots are controlling our minds, and then what? You’ll have fully functional, coldly logical killing machines.

But you don’t have to believe me. Just check out this piece from the Detroit Free Press: “Robot Killers Could Choose Victims.”

‘Nuff said.