I read a lot of comics. But I don’t read many like “Godkiller: Walk Among Us” #3. It’s the most pervasive and oddly endearing comic I think I’ve ever read. Because it challenged me. It showed me things I wasn’t ready to see, and it didn’t present them as some sort of oddity, but rather a grim reality. It pushed me further than I’ve ever been pushed and it establishes a new level of dialogue in the medium. In short, it’s mandatory reading for anyone who loves comics.
WRITTEN BY: Matt Pizzolo
ART BY: Anna Muckcracker Weiszczyk
PUBLISHER: Black Mask Studios
PRICE: $3.50
RELEASE: November 19, 2014
What may have just happened for me was a little life affirming. You see, there is often talk about what types of narratives are acceptable or engaging. Pizzolo decides to show a grim reality that you can’t possibly look away from. Tommy is put through certain brand of hell that I wasn’t ready to come to grips with, but inside this hell is a telling push against what you typically see. We’re not shown something beautiful, in fact we’re shown something monstrously ugly, something that shouldn’t be acceptable, but here it’s presented to us and we have to digest it.
I recommend that everyone does, because it’s there for a reason. It’s not unbridled chaos for the sake of it, it’s calculated insanity that tests your own limits. Tommy goes through something that would easily break down almost anyone’s will to live. But through it he comes to define himself in a new and incredible way. He’s pushed to the absolute bottom of his world, and somehow rises up from the ashes of his previous existence as something new and stronger.
“Godkiller” has never been for the faint of heart. Yet, it should still be digested by everyone. It’s a surreal deconstruction of the images we build of ourselves, the influence our media consumption has on us, and the narratives we build around it. Within all of this comes a warped sense of reality that the comic takes as fact. It’s not something that everyone will love, or even really understand but it’s not the point. It pushes you to think about your consumption, about how you define your world, and it puts your trauma into perspective.
The world is a terrifying place, filled with horrifying people, but if you have a purpose what will force you to stop? If you follow Tommy’s example then nothing is compelling enough for you to give up.
The themes within “Godkiller: Walk Among Us” show how we value the people we determine “desirable” for consumption. Our society continually eats people up until nothing is left, and here on the page its taken literally. But if you really listen to how these characters value Tommy it’s no different than how we dissect certain people in our lives. It’s something that we’re all guilty of but hardly anyone draws attention to, well, outside the broad spectrum of consuming a person’s personality via the media until they are a shattered husk of what we originally built them up to be… but I digress.
I suppose amidst the incredible and surreal work of Anna Muckcracker Weiszczyk, I got lost in this nightmarish hell. But I didn’t come out with a loss of hope or sense of desperation. I had a life affirming moment. I often push that comics are a medium for telling important stories, and the pages of this comic reconfirmed something I’ve felt in me for a very long time. Comics can show us the ugliest sides of ourselves, as much as the idealized selves. In fact, they go hand in hand with one another.
We like our media to be pretty, presentable, and easily digested. Matt Pizzolo bucks the trend and shows you the unflinching nightmare on the page. But, within that nightmare there is a really important discussion. We can process the horrible nightmares just fine, and we can learn more from them than we thought. We can become better people for having experienced the nightmare, much better than the people we become after reading issues of “Superman.” There’s no such thing as truth and justice. And, the American Way is completely fucking warped. “Godkiller” doesn’t dance around that fact, which makes it necessary and important reading.