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REVIEW: Kill Lock #1 "Brace Yourself For This: A Completely New Idea"

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2019 09:00:07 -0600

(IDW Publishing, creative team: Livio Ramondelli, Tom B. Long)

Brace yourself for this: a completely new idea. Creator Livio Ramondelli, who many know for the depth and emotion his art put into giant robots licensed from Hasbro, takes on the task of writing as well in a totally fresh science fiction concept and absolutely nails it on the first pass. Let's start with the idea: four mechanical life forms (a guilt-wracked soldier, a sociopath engineer, a formerly drunk laborer and an amiable and amnesiac youth) have committed crimes their society deems unacceptable and sentenced them to a fate worse than death.

The careful, almost playful means by which the layers of this tale (and therefore this fictional universe) get peeled back is a sumptuous pleasure and each character gets plenty of time to shine. If you liked Triple Zero in the Doctor Aphra book, the Artisan will be your kind of mechanoid. All of that is before we get into the visual genius of this work, evoking emotion from faces that do not move (a la Pedro Pascal) and showing up with a stark, haunting beauty. This work is dazzling and you should pick it up right now. RATING: ENTHUSIASTIC BUY.

Each found guilty of an irredeemable crime, four robots find themselves banished from their home world and bound together by the Kill Lock—a programming link that means if one of them dies, they all will. Now a soldier, an addict, a murderer, and a child find themselves forced to protect each other while in search of a cure to survive.
AVAILABLE: December 2019
CREATORS: Livio Ramondelli (Author, Artist, Cover Artist)

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