First, let me get a couple things out of the way.
1) I’ve been a huge Coheed and Cambria fan for a little while now, and that’s the only reason I even know this exists.

2) I haven’t actually read any of Claudio’s Amory Wars stuff yet, so this is, for whatever reason, the very first thing I chose to read by him.

So, knowing only that Claudio was good at making great music and as yet unproven to me as being good at anything else, I had very low expectations going in, perhaps raised somewhat by the high-concept pitch on the back that seemed right up my alley regardless of who was writing it.

Great pitch or not though, reading is my thing. I cut my teeth on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. I have high expectations for storytelling, and I know what makes a good graphic novel. I had no intentions to ‘go easy’ on this because it was written by the lead singer of one of my favorite bands. In fact, I think in this case, me being a fan of Claudio as a musician made me more skeptical of his storytelling chops than if I hadn’t heard of him beforehand. You just don’t expect someone to be great at more than one thing, ya know?

Maybe the co-author, Claudio’s wife Chondra, had something to do with it, but I was more than pleasantly surprised with this story. In fact, I was blindsided by something surprisingly original and imaginative from a very unexpected place. I really hope the Amory Wars comics hold up to the quality of storytelling on display here.

But enough of all that. What the heck is this thing even about?

well, in simplest terms, Kill Audio is a high-concept story about creativity and art, focusing on music in particular since our protagonist, Kill Audio, is the void for music, sapping it from the world of Sight & Sound to keep the place bland, predictable, and under control. Creativity is a controlled substance, is how they put it. There are other voids, for other forms of art. They reminded me of The Endless in Sandman. Anytime something reminds me of Sandman it’s a good thing. I love anthropomorphic depictions of abstract concepts. It needs to happen more often.

The story starts with a short Wizard of Oz-esque mini-journey wherein KA realizes he doesn’t know what his purpose in life is or even where he came from or how he got where he is. To find answers he sets off to find “The Tower”, making friends along the way. His ultimate goal being to speak with “Clocwork”, the creator of Sight & Sound, the realm where the story takes place.

What follows is an interesting, metaphysical trip of a story in which Kill Audio slowly comes to learn some very interesting things about his brother and sister voids, goes on a quest to capture the fathers of every musical genre and, ultimately, winds up questioning his newfound purpose and creator.
It’s good stuff, trust me.
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