3 out of 5

An incredibly compelling story… but I’m not too sold on the format.

Supplemental text in comics has worked for me, and I think the short story illustrated format can also be successful. These are both addendums to the rest of a book which is more traditional panels and word bubbles, though. When we start to stray into, essentially, full-length prose with images, outside of YA books, it’s a harder sell. Why that is is hard to say, but there’s a larger conversation about how we connect the visuals with the themes, and how “mature” books are written a certain way that may not fully lend itself to spot illustrations. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I just have not had one of these land yet.

Peter Tieryas’ Kill Or Be Killed, part of a line of “illustrated novellas” on the AWA imprint, should be a good candidate for making the format work, as Tieryas is often writing in a space that blends tomorrow-technology with grounded characters, and I could see artist Mike Choi’s weighty figurework providing for some quality profiles along the way. Choi decided to do a kind of digital overlay on his imagery – the story is concerned with social media profiles, so that’s often what we’re looking at – and it’s a little chintzy but, still, not a bad idea.

Still, not an entirely successful one, though. While the story concerns AI, and so it’s thematically “right” to do kind of uncanny valley, photostat-looking imagery – imagine drawing over photos, then adding flat colors to them to give them a video game-y vibe – it gives the book a retro vibe (think 90s digital comics) when it should maintain its modern edge in order to be effective. When the visuals push our thoughts towards Lawnmower Man cheese, it only highlights some of the more rushed elements of Tieryas tale.

Which is mostly a page turner, but the format is again not helping: a page limit requires key climactic moments to be sped up, such that a couple big punches are quite underwhelming. Standing back, these are great plot beats, but the pacing isn’t dialed in. I appreciate that Tieryas favored giving us a solid build up instead of rushing the beginning, as that definitely roped me in (and made the conclusion of our lead’s arc more satisfying), but it sucks when you can see the bones of an amazing story that doesn’t have room to breath.

In Kill or Be Killed, social media app Chingu is being used as a platform for an odd serial killer: one who threatens to kill a friend or family member unless you kill someone else and livestream it. Cecil, a c-suite type employed by Chingu, fell prey to this, and chose to kill his neighbor to spare his wife. A decision which he doesn’t regret, but has obviously had a massive impact upon his life. Since then, Cecil has dedicated his time to tracking down “The Friendship Killer,” and with the significant amount of AI involved in Chingu, it starts to become harder and harder to determine if the various “people” he interacts with in his investigations are digital or analog.

Riddled with you-know-it’s-real advanced tech, and grounded by Tieryas excellent sense of dialogue and characterization, the buildup of clues in Cecil’s case is gripping stuff, until the aforementioned limitations of this style of comic set a ceiling on how good the book can be.