By Zack Quaintance — To be totally frank here, I had forgotten how much I liked The Kill Lock. It wasn’t the book’s fault. The Kill Lock was excellent. It told a story of four robots of different classes (which essentially means different models), who had committed irredeemable crimes and were all banished together, linked in a way that if one of them died, they all did. The story went from there, armed with great twists, killer artwork from Livio Ramondelli (who knows a thing or two about drawing robots, having for years worked on Transformers), and a set of distinct robot personalities that felt as human as any other characters in comics, if not more. No, I forgot about The Kill Lock in part because the pandemic hit a few months after it arrived, and we’ve all lived a lifetime since.

But the thing is, everything I liked so much about that story came rushing back to me this week when I opened up The Kill Lock — Artisan Wraith #1. The book opens with a lean summary paragraph, one that does a perfect job of neatly summarizing the major events of the first book (which is impressive, and I think in general comics editors don’t get enough credit for this kind of thing). And then we’re right back into Ramondelli’s intricate, practiced robot artwork. We are then slammed down onto a front page that gives us a stellar line to push us through the page turn — In about five minutes, my eyes are going to explode. And I require you to be calm when that happens. And we’re off!

I’m not going to overcomplicate things here, at least not this early in the piece — simply put, I think one of the reasons that The Kill Lock — The Artisan Wraith #1 works so well is cool new robots. If the first issue (of seven) in this limited series is any indication, we’ve got essentially a buddy cop duo at the heart of this one. Like the robots in the first series, they are pretty easily identified by the shapes of their bodies as well as by what they’re able to do with them.

One is essentially the leader, an escapee of a prior kill lock situation who now is tasked with hunting down other robots that have done the same. That robot’s partner is a little silver lump of a bot, who carries a big sword. That robot can turn invisible, but doing so takes away his lucidity and memories — permanently — one small chunk at a time. It does in some ways a similar thing to the first book, giving each character a limitation and challenge to accompany them throughout the whole of the story.

Anyway, that duo is tasked with hunting down the villain from last time, the devious artisan who stole the body of the powerful wraith and got away at the expense of his compatriots. As our new hero describes it, they are hunting something horrific and new. By even our standards. And that’s just great comics storytelling, minimalist yet powerful in the right places. What have they hunted in the past? Bad stuff, but nothing quite like the challenge they are about to undertake. I love it.

Just broadly speaking, The Kill Lock - The Artisan Wraith #1 is the type of comic that works hard to give you a cliffhanger at the end of every page, and sometimes more than that. It’s a comic that will pull your eye fast through its panels, hitting you with its muscular and rapid-fire pacing, which is filled with really effective and well-done storytelling like the lines described above. Ramondelli really understands the power that each individual has, and he never overdoes it, giving you just enough for clarity and interest without slowing you down as a reader.

This is also a book that understands that robots function well when you juxtapose them with the behaviors of humanity. My go-to way to describe The Kill Lock is that it’s a story about robots that is among the most human in all of comics. The reason for this is that it pairs its characters down to their roles, their actions, and their desires. Without too many affectations, that list is arguably what makes us all distinct from one another.

The last quality of note here is that this book stands on its own really well. You get that intro paragraph that tells you what a Kill Lock is, but really, past that the only absolutely vital thing you need to know from the first story is who is our bad guy. Sure, knowing his whole character arc will make it more intriguing, but The Kill Lock - The Artisan Wraith #1 does a fine job of filling in any gaps new readers might have, answering the basics of any potential questions.

Overall: 9.0/10

REVIEW: The Kill Lock - The Artisan Wraith #1

The Kill Lock - The Artisan Wraith #1
Writer/Artist: Livio Ramondelli
Letterer: Shawn Lee
Editor: David Mariotte
Publisher: IDW Publishing
The Kill Lock unified four criminals in a quest to escape their seemingly inevitable, linked deaths. They managed to escape destruction by merging their consciousnesses, and now one of the smartest-and most malicious-bots in the universe has an unbreakable body and a planet at his command. Homeworld won't allow it, and so two of the deadliest assassins in the universe are tasked to kill the Artisan Wraith.
Price: $3.99
Buy It Here: Digital
Get the First Kill Lock Trade: Digital / Physical

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He has written about comics for The Beat and NPR Books, among others. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.