In this review of Artificial #4, Clara makes her final decision between Saul and Mateo.
Artificial #4
Writer: Maria Llovet
Art and Main Cover: Maria Llovet
Variant Covers: Maria Llovet
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: December 17, 2025
This review contains spoilers
We open Artificial #4 on Clara outside of the Date-X headquarters, on the phone and trying to reach a representative about the issues she’s been having with their product. She’s clearly frustrated, particularly when they hang up on her.
She heads to work, where she gets an immediate mood boost: her client’s shoot had gone over really well and she got the role she was after. She’s received some flowers as a thanks. As she leaves work, she encounters Mateo again, and he wonders about the flowers, and if they’re from Saul. He’s informed that’s not the case, and proceeds to give her a flower of his own. It’s that small one he’d had for her earlier on in the story, a little withered after spending a bit of time in his pocket. But she accepts it, and they head back to her place.
But Saul saw them together, and followed them home. And his jealous streak is fully in charge, here. He bursts into the apartment, shoves Mateo aside, starts forcing himself on Clara again. Mateo tries to fight him/keeps getting tossed around the room, and Clara tries a slightly different approach to get him to back down (since her chosen safe word doesn’t match the record): playing along with the delusion and distracting him while she goes for the kill code.
He gets suspicious, tries to kill both her and Mateo…but she finally gets the kill code out, as he finally falls. Clara checks on Mateo’s condition, makes a call, and then sits down with him, the pair holding hands as they decompress from the sheer crazy they’ve just endured.
So, the first thought that comes to mind upon finishing Artificial #4 is: “Hoo, boy, the customer review that could be left for Date-X…” It makes me wonder how long they’ve been around as a company in this universe, and how often situations like Clara’s have happened for them. Did some of the more “cover-all-our-bases so we don’t get sued” terms and conditions come about as a response to prior incidents or were they baked into it from the get-go?
The way flowers were used was pretty effective, I think, especially the huge roses associated with Saul versus the small simple flower from Mateo. She’s got her choice between the showier, more extravagant option that can definitely hurt her (either through thorns or insane jealousy) and the one that’s not quite as large, a bit weathered and wilting…but still very real and has an actual human aspect to it. And she overwhelmingly chooses the human option.
There’s a moment in Artificial #4 where Saul removes Mateo’s flower from behind Clara’s ear and replaces it with one of the roses. Some might look at the gift of a rose as a sweet thing, but in this context, it’s unambiguously his possessiveness taking hold again. Plus, she was the one that’d placed the smaller flower behind her ear in the first place, already choosing the human option over the android.
Also, near the beginning of the story, she’d wished that Mateo would show a bit more backbone. Be willing to fight for her. Push definitely came to shove in this issue, and he certainly showed that willingness to fight for her. Sure, he got thrown around that apartment enough times that I’m hoping his health insurance is fully up to date, but he was there for her when she needed someone.
At the same time, it’s ultimately Clara that resolves the situation when she recites the kill code. If it were only her alone with Saul, I’m not sure if it would have worked out quite as well. It was the combined efforts of both of them that ultimately brought the android down, and that may have been the best way to fully drive home the human connection > AI theme of the story.
Final Thoughts
Artificial #4 gives a strong ending to the story, further cementing its themes of human connection being better than artificial intelligence.
