Giant robots become giant murder victims in Giga #1 preview

Vault Comics has released a preview of writer Alex Paknadel and artist John Lê's creator-owned series Giga, which puts giant robots that once fought a world-destroying war at the center of human life – with the mechs, known as 'Giga,' serving even as habitats for the human beings left after their war.

But when disaster strikes and one of the Giga is murdered, one man will find himself at the center of a conflict that involves his very way of life.

"Nobody knows why the skyscraper-sized mechs known as 'Giga' fought their bitter, centuries-long war. All they know is that when the fighting finally stopped, the dormant Giga became humanity's new habitat and new gods in one," reads the official description of the series. "When disgraced engineer Evan Calhoun finds an apparently murdered Giga, his society and the fascistic tech-centered religious order that controls it are rapidly thrown into chaos."

Check out this preview:

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"You've seen giant robots battling mechs and kaiju, but what happened decades – even centuries – after the fighting stopped? Our book depicts a world in which the robots destroyed every metropolitan center on Earth, instantly rendering a good chunk of the human race homeless," states writer Paknadel.

"Then, when their war inexplicably and abruptly ended, they went dormant for so long that humanity moved in. The robots that destroyed our cities became our cities, and – perhaps inevitably – objects of religious worship to boot."

But that reliance on the Giga will all come home to roost when the pitfalls of this system are exposed by tragedy.

"Now, imagine what would happen if one of these gods-cum-living skyscrapers was murdered. That's our book. That's Giga," he continues. "I joke that Giga is a murder mystery with giant robots, but in truth, it’s a book about a deicide – about what happens when gods and their attendant belief systems die."

The ramifications, says Paknadel, spiral out through the entire society and world of Giga - and it could all lead to something revolutionary.

"Sometimes history deems these deaths necessary, even if they lead to great schisms, demagoguery, or even war; however, the lesson from history – and, I would argue, from our turbulent present – is that we need to be very careful in how we go about replacing our gods. Giga is set in a world on the cusp of one of these convulsions."

Giga #1 goes on sale on October 28.

Vault Comics also recently announced Heavy, a new creator-owned series from Say Anything frontman Max Bemis.