Artificial intelligences are in vogue these days and they appear in the Polity series. Although they don't feature as heavily as I would have expected. Augmented humans get the starring roles here.
The Prador are an alien race that humans have been communicating with, but have not yet seen. The book opens with the first physical meeting of the two species. Of course things go horribly wrong. The Prador are enormous crab-like creatures with a taste for humans and a tendency to eat each other as well. If they had moustaches, they would twirl them like Snidely Whiplash. Unfortunately, they must instead clack their mandibles in unholy joy when their villainous plans are successful.
Our main human protagonists are Jebel Krong and Moria Salem. Krong was present at that disastrous first encounter and saw his lady love die there. As a result, he has become a Prador hunter extraordinaire. He occasionally threatens to reduce them to crab paste or to use mines to blow them to bouillabaisse. Moria, on the other hand, chose the wrong augmentation surgeon to go to and ended up with an unusually powerful aug. She becomes a protégé of one of the AIs and gets seconded to assist in the war effort.
This would make an excellent cartoon. It is very melodramatic and there are plenty of guns and bombs. Lots of stuff goes boom. I'm sure those drawing it could find some way to suggest all the death and dismemberment done by the Prador without being graphic.
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