Well, I have a new standard for weird comics.
A young orphan named Tommy and a sex slave team up to find a new heart for his dying sister. Matt Pizzolo builds a world that trades in flesh and blood, and Tommy’s a hot commodity because of how clean his blood is. Everyone wants a taste of him—or more.
The “or more” leads to some incredibly uncomfortable moments, including sexual assault and all-but-explicit rape. It’s a world of intrinsically interlinked sex and violence, and a lot of that is hard to read and hard to come to terms with. That discomfort is, without a doubt, intentional. At the end of the first volume, the lore and rules of this world are still vague, but Pizzolo demonstrates a clear understanding of its rules.
Wieszczyk’s mixed-media art is my favorite thing about Godkiller. It combines photography, collage, traditional pencils in various stages of completion, and computer-generated graphics. All the while, it bounces between different visual styles. An intimate, sketchy, gray-scale scene gets interrupted by red-hued, anime-styled villains. Characters who fly into a rage become loose sketches of themselves as they lose composure. The visuals on the page live and breathe with what happens scene-to-scene. Its art is unlike any other comic I’ve read.
Godkiller is my new standard for weird. It’s also my new standard for difficult recommendations. There is a tremendous amount of talent and style in it. Any hesitation I have comes from how dark and violent it is—especially in terms of sexual violence. It is hard to stomach. If you think that will be a problem for you, I’d err on the side of caution.
Collected in
- Godkiller: Walk Among Us, Vol. 1 (#1-3)
Credits
Writer: Matt Pizzolo | Artist: Anna Muckracker Wieszczyk | Cover: Ben Templesmith | Production Artists: Vincent Kukua, Matt Harding | Additional Illustrations: Anna Muckracker Wieszczyk, Ben Templesmith, Tim Seely, Amancay Nahuelpan