Godkiller – Walk Among Us (Local Comic Shop Day Limited Release)

As an avid comic book and story collector on top of my predilection for vinyl, I was first introduced to Black Mask Studio’s Godkiller during Local Comic Shop Day 2016.  A review covering the series by Multiversity Comics read, “This is the comic book equivalent of death metal, grunge, and punk all wrapped up in a bow that says fuck you to the socially conditioned norm…”  That was all it took for me to give it a look-see.
I intended to pick up their ‘secret release’ during LCSD thinking it was going to be a limited release book or something along that vein.  Color me surprised when I found out it was a vinyl record and one of 666 limited copies at that.   Color me doubly surprised when I was greeted by some very familiar genre voices such as Lance Henriksen, Danielle Harris, and Bill Moseley.  After doing a deeper dive, finding out AFI’s Davey Havoc led me to a the first in a trilogy of full length illustrated films that formed the basis of the vinyl and series. Combining sequential art, 3D CGI, motion graphics, some top notch voice acting, and a musical score drawing from multiple genre’s and sounds, Godkiller went from merely being a review whimsey to check out to an all out artistic experience that jumped high in my personal ranks. The vinyl artwork alone makes this worth having with the A side featuring work by painter, NEN, and the B side featuring work from Ben Templesmith of 30 Days of Night fame.  Adding the story mentioned above, an all star voice cast, and the fact that Alec Empire and the folks from Atari Teenage Riot scores the piece makes this worth seeking out.

The story comes from the imagination of writer Matt Pizzolo and illustrator Anna Wieszczyk and follows Tommy, a child traversing life in a post-apocalyptic world, and his unlikely friend Halfpipe, an organ stealing slave looking for freedom.  The initial conflict of the story begins as they travel the broken wasteland of their world looking for a new heart for his sister.
All in all, the vinyl release was an awesome ‘gateway drug’ into the series. For vinyl collectors looking to find one of these extremely limited pieces, it’s worth the search.  As mentioned above, the production is top of its class and for fans of AFI, Motion City Soundtrack, and Atari Teenage Riot you’ll be more than pleasantly surprised as you reach Side B.  What looks like a bunch of disparate pieces really works here.  The folks from Black Mask Studio out did themselves here, and we can only hope that they drop another release like this in the future.
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