Oh, my.

So, Kill or Be Killed does not have a bad ending.

Nope, not bad.

You see where I’m going?

What’s a thousand times worse than bad? Horrendous? Is horrendous enough? Kill or Be Killed has a horrendous ending. Writer Ed Brubaker does a greatest hits of lousy writing choices, including protagonist Dylan telling the reader all about narration. Oh, wait. I forgot. How did I forget.

It opens with a 9/11 missive.

How does something open with a 9/11 missive and get worse? I mean, you could read this comic and find out, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I also won’t spoil it. There are numerous spoil points in the issue, with Brubaker doing multiple 180s to keep the issue going because he doesn’t—and never did have—a story. It’s been too long since I’ve read it, and I’m not going back, but there’s a not zero chance it’s a riff on a Mark Millar-type story, specifically Wanted. Again, not worth going back.

Artist Sean Phillips sadly never reveals why he does the oddly missized heads. There are lots in the issue, but then the story goes into summary mode, and most of the art is just Phillips doing a New York City travelogue or a mob movie montage, and he’s got enthusiasm for those sequences. It’s the rest he’s checked out on.

Kill or Be Killed would be a terrible comic from any creator, but for Phillips and Brubaker? It’s the pits, and, somehow, it keeps on digging.

Based on the end reveal and what it means for the series-long narration… well, Kill or Be Killed, specifically writer Ed Brubaker’s work on it, goes from disappointing, tedious, and grating to pitiable. He’s even commented on the narration device to the reader before—when this arc started—so promising it’s not something lousy and then it being something worse than lousy….

If this were a script Brubaker had written at twenty and drawered for a couple decades, it’d make so much more sense.

Anyway.

Besides the sad ending, it’s a temporarily exciting issue–Die Hard in a Mental Hospital—but mostly an annoyingly tepid one. Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips, who’ve been doing talking heads scenes for years, entirely fumble this issue’s. Intrepid police detective Lily Sharpe is visiting vigilante Dylan in his mental hospital, and they’re going to talk about right and wrong. It’s a Punisher scene, probably a Punisher scene Brubaker’s written (or at least watched on “Daredevil”), and it’s terrible. Worse, Brubaker tries to soften the reader to Dylan’s perspective with a pointless two-page rambling about climate change and how it’s not liberals versus conservatives; it’s not rich versus rich. Sorry about your colorist, Ed, but we can quickly start with liberals versus conservatives. Especially since it’s less “rich” than capitalism, but he (or Dylan) doesn’t make that observation either.

Such a waste of pages. Though the opening sequence feels like Phillips only wanted to do so much art and no more, including the issue being set during a snow storm, so Phillips doesn’t have to draw the whiteout.

Kill or Be Killed is on me; I made this decision. But, wow, I did not need to know how lost Brubaker got on this book. I also didn’t need to see Phillips’s art continue its descent on it; just bring someone else in, like, wow.

One last disappointment then done forever. Unless they actually get a movie this time.

Writer Ed Brubaker, apparently unknowingly, cracks the Kill or Be Killed conundrum this issue. How could he tell the series and have it work? Individual issues about characters. Without Dylan’s terrible narration, obviously. Got to get rid of the narration.

But this issue’s a return to detective Lily Sharpe. Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near as good as the first Lily Sharpe issue, which was a very traditional police procedural but with more personality than the series had been exhibiting. This is a very traditional police procedural with a twist with the tepid personality the book’s been showing for ages now.

Lily is investigating the death of the vigilante, who Dylan and the reader know isn’t the real killer. Unless we think Dylan somehow astral projected and created a double, which is the opening narration topic. It’s eye-widening bad. Brubaker actually gets away with the twist at the end, he actually manages to do some effective narrative dodging, but he’s starting from one of his pits on the book. Brubaker does seem to understand Dylan’s a dipshit, but he doesn’t seem to understand reading a dipshit’s narration, issue after issue, is exasperating. It never improves.

Then again, nothing ever improved on Kill or Be Killed. It stopped hemorrhaging a while ago, but it’s been a dull, steady bleed since. And artist Sean Phillips is done trying. The art this issue is… not good. The more time spent reading the comic, the worse the art will be. Phillips barely quarter-asses it. What’s less than quarter-assing? Eighth-assing? There’s some eighth-assing. Lily’s partner, who we’ve never met, looks like Robert De Niro half the time, then Sam Elliot the other half of the time. Dylan’s mom looks like a Hitchcock villain. So there’s less than eighth-assing. There’s teenie-assing. It’s so sad to see Phillips churn this out.

This issue tells the story of the imposter vigilante, then how Lily will bring it back to Dylan.

I imagine the next two issues will go wild, desperate, and disappointing places.

However, to go out on a high point… excellent pacing this issue. Brubaker knows how to write this issue, which brings it around to how to do the series better—issues focusing on the people involved with the story. There’s a more extensive cast than it seems, with varied connections, and it would’ve avoided the awful mishandling of the protagonist.

Does writer Ed Brubaker actually not see the possibilities he raises with scenes? It’s fascinating. For the second or third time, Brubaker’s started an issue completely invalidating a possibility the previous one raised. There’s an anecdote about a short story being a room in a house, a novel being a house. Maybe Gordon Lish (but probably not). Brubaker keeps staring out the window in Kill’s room without opening it. It’s restrained in all the worst ways.

However, this issue’s the best in a while.

Dylan speaking directly to the reader is… problematic, but at least Brubaker’s not prostrating himself trying to obscure the narration device. It’s a simple issue. Dylan’s going to off the rapey mental hospital orderly, who looks just like the rapey mental hospital orderly from Terminator 2. He’s got to figure out how to kill the guy and whether or not he wants to confirm the guy’s a creep.

In the background, Dylan’s thinking about the copycat vigilante in New York and his roommate going to the cops (though Dylan can’t know the roommate’s going to the cops yet, which he awkwardly comments on). In some ways, Kill or Be Killed feels like Brubaker trying to take what he’s learned from doing pulp-influenced comics for fifteen years and apply them to a more traditional comic book character.

If the series is a big creative swing from Brubaker, it doesn’t work out, which is too bad. Or it’s just a half-assed attempt at a comic in search of a movie or streaming deal, which makes more sense with the art. Artist Sean Phillips feels like he does not have time or care for Kill or Be Killed. Everyone this issue’s got big head issues; looking like Phillips taped the heads onto the bodies and didn’t take the time to get the scaling right.

Seeing as how the comic’s finally a little more sturdy thanks to Brubaker not having to as constantly deceive the reader, who knows how the series would’ve played straight.

But it’s nice for one of the issues not to be lousy. It’s been so, so long since I thought this book had even a minimal chance, and, at least now, it’s not going to finish as unpleasant as it could.

Knock on wood.

Well, writer Ed Brubaker is not overcomplicating matters with a last-minute reveal. He’s just stumbling along, as usual, the comic suddenly with far less momentum as Dylan’s in a mental hospital.

The slowing down makes sense—after confessing to being the vigilante and finding out there’s still a red-masked vigilante in New York (a copycat, Dylan’s sure), the doctors put him on tranquilizers. He’ll get off the tranquilizers eventually—the passage of time does matter to the bigger story, but Brubaker doesn’t address it—and realize there are bad guys even in the hospital he can take out.

There’s a lot of action, quite a bit of Dylan’s head being disproportionate to his body—I swear, if that detail’s addressed, Kill or Be Killed might be brilliant—and a lot of treading water. Brubaker’s trying to wait out the issue. It’s not a bridging issue because those involve movement from A to B; there’s no movement here, just continued braking.

The end’s simultaneously cryptic and not. Is Brubaker going to try for a Fight Club ending? It’s not impossible. He wrote it for a movie adaptation, so he had to be thinking second act reveal, and we’re closing in.

I’m trying to remember the last time the comic didn’t feel a combination of stale and desperate, like an Entenmann’s coffee cake on remainder. I think it’s been six to eight issues. It’s been ages.

Sean Phillips is fine with everyone else’s head size this issue, which is a plus.

The issue’s other problem is its genericness. It’s a series of mental hospital tropes from other media; there are inanely written psychiatrist sessions, sad visits with the family (all done in montage to avoid character development), and even Dylan’s new target is a trope. In a better comic, it’d be embarrassing. In this one… I just hope Brubaker doesn’t finish too badly.

But, wait, what if Dylan’s a ghost and he’s been dead the whole time?

Okay, writer Ed Brubaker doesn’t end the issue on that reveal, but he ends it on one much more similar to it than I’d have thought. It’s definitely an intriguing cliffhanger, though Brubaker’s either going to do something interesting with it, and the first fourteen issues of the comic will be—at best—a partial waste of time (unless we’re looking for clues he’s a ghost), or it’s just a way to gin up an unlikely cliffhanger, and it’s not going to be at all significant.

Honestly, I’m leaning toward the latter. I’ve no faith in Brubaker to turn Kill or Be Killed around. And not just because he makes a crack about the comic not being “epistolary,” meaning Dylan’s first-person narration isn’t to a psychiatrist, but instead a direct address to the reader. You know, the suckers who’ve been buying the comic in the first place.

And also not just because Brubaker brags about a film deal in the back matter. I’ve been avoiding the back matter in the comic for ages; I was just skimming, and it jumped out. Also jumping out is Dylan’s complaint things have gotten so bad in the world the Nazis are back when Kill or Be Killed’s colorist is… well, let’s just say the phone call’s coming from inside the house. Not to mention Brubaker sort of blew off the politics earlier in the series, and now Dylan’s telling us how the world’s so changed only he should’ve been telling us as it changed. Or, more accurately, revealed itself.

Anyway. None of those troubling elements are the main one I don’t trust Brubaker to write the book out of its hole. It just doesn’t have anywhere to go. Dylan might somehow end up vaguely sympathetic but pitiable. It’ll also raise some ableism questions. But the writing on the other characters? The other characters’ writing will always be bad no matter what happens with Dylan.

And Sean Phillips’s art is clearly never going to get over its problems. It’s a little better this issue… except when it’s not. For whatever reason, Phillips just can’t draw regular people in the modern-day. Or he can’t draw them in this comic.

There’s still a lot of Kill or Be Killed to go; this issue kicks off the last arc with Dylan in a mental hospital, the demon having hounded him into a public enough outburst he got put on a psychiatric hold.

It’s an exhausting comic and for no good reason.

Despite finally giving full context for the bookend writer Ed Brubaker started in the first issue, the comic still can’t make it interesting. The bookending device is less interesting the more protagonist Dylan talks about it, and he talks a lot about it this issue. Well, he talks about the next part of the plan. We’ve been seeing part one over and over.

Part two involves getting the Russian mob off his back through social manipulation. It’s a good enough plan, but it doesn’t translate to comics. They do it in montage, a series of panels showing the various wheels of the plan rotating. There’s nothing to the wheels, though, just Dylan telling us they exist. It’s boring.

Though the final payoff is flat too. Even before the ending reveal changes everything we know about Kill or Be Killed (again), nothing before it can compare. Without the big surprise, it seems like the cliffhanger might center on Dylan and his roommate. The roommate’s barely been a character; he used to date Kira, and now she’s told him she’s with Dylan. Dylan and the roommate have a tense confrontation about Kira, and Dylan refuses to back down. There’s a little visual forecasting the situation’s not resolved, but the big reveal is entirely unrelated to everything else.

Dylan’s got lots of narration in this issue. None of it particularly good, none of it particularly bad. He tells himself he wants to retire from being the vigilante, but then he tries to talk himself out of it.

Sean Phillips’s art is incredibly loose. The stand-off with the roommate is probably the worst since the roommate gets a splash page, and the figure’s awkward. Then the actual panels with the conversation, both the roommate and Dylan have the oddly sized head thing going on.

The comic seems to be promising it will be interesting soon for sure this time.

Guess we’ll find out, though, if Brubaker took fourteen issues to catch up to the first one’s opening hook, who can say how long it’ll take for him to actually progress the story.

It’s also peculiar because Dylan’s less likable than the roommate. In their stand-off scene, Dylan’s trying to assert his dominance and play alpha, whereas the other dude’s just trying to talk.

But, again, Brubaker will sort it out later; I’m noncommittally sure.

This issue opens with more of writer Ed Brubaker’s “is it condescending or doesn’t he know how to do this” narration for protagonist Dylan. We’re almost caught up to the first issue’s framing device (the whole comic’s in past tense), but there’s one more story to tell first.

And… there’s actually a story to tell?

Brubaker’s been most successful with Kill or Be Killed when doing an issue unlike any others—introducing new characters (who don’t come back) or focusing on a supporting character (who’s never near as important again despite being the regular co-star). So this issue actually does all right just being a Kill or Be Killed. Dylan and Kira go out to his mom’s house to return her car, and he looks through Dad’s old art collection, and Mom tells him some family history he’d repressed or whatever.

There’s actually… searching, earnest narration. There’s bad narration, there’s gatekeeping (better Google Tristan Shandy if you want to be in the real know), and the cliffhanger’s a mess, but when Dylan’s learned something about his Dad, it’s a good sequence. It’s a shock.

And not a surprise Brubaker can’t maintain it. He didn’t start the issue so well; why finish it on a high point?

It’s such a good plot point. One has to wonder why we’re getting it thirteen issues into the series. Dylan’s lack of a relationship with his father—who committed suicide when Dylan was ten—has always been on a far back burner. So far back, it didn’t seem relevant for issues, then Brubaker revealed the demon in Dad’s art, but now Dylan’s decided the demon haunted Dad too.

Or something. The comic doesn’t seem to acknowledge Dylan not remembering his house growing up might also mean he doesn’t remember four specific paintings of his father’s he wasn’t supposed to be looking at anyway.

His mom gets more page time than ever before, but still very little to do but drop a plot revelation on Dylan. There’s a weird standoffishness from Dylan towards her, which might be interesting if explored, but I’ve got no hopes or expectations for Kill or Be Killed. Brubaker’s highlights are way too inconsistent; this issue’s a perfect example. Usual blah, okay, surprisingly good, usual blah minus.

Sean Phillips’s art is more of the rushed, not great variety. He doesn’t have the big head problem, but he still seems like he’s pasting features onto faces. Kira especially.

So, problematic as ever, but also the most successful the concept’s ever been. Shame an editor didn’t tell Brubaker not to bury such a big lede thirteen issues in.

So.

I'm not sure how seriously one can take this issue with even the briefest historical context. There's a lengthy section of Dylan's narration where he talks about how he's not just some alpha who protected his woman from the wolves. Given Kira's Harry Potter costume, if it were written these days, it would feel like writer Ed Brubaker wanted to in-virtue signal.

But then there's the The Edge thing. The Edge is an Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins action movie from the nineties, written by David Mamet. It apparently greatly inspired Dylan. He talks about it at length, with Brubaker again unable to make the narration not sound condescending or acknowledge his readers might have seen The Edge. It's… amateurish writing at best. If you told me Brubaker was putting his name on someone else's script at this point, I'd believe it. It's embarrassing for an experienced writer who was never so desperate with "pop" culture references before.

The A plot is Dylan deciding he's going to take out the Russian mob "family." I mean, I'm not an organized crime expert—though Dylan researched them, so he ought to be at least informed, but he's not either. Okay, a quick Google says "family" is not the term, so Brubaker couldn't be bothered to Google, which also explains a lot.

Anyway.

He's going to take them out so he and Kira can be together safely. They go to a Halloween party together and have a great time and pointless filler conversations. But, of course, he's too busy thinking about how he's Tarzan and she's Jane, so he's not listening to her either. The emphasis is on the "going to" take them out. This issue's just bridging.

The art's fine? No significant oversized head issues from Sean Phillips here, which is something of an achievement since it's usually in scenes with Kira and Dylan. The Dylan-in-disguise scenes are a little silly, but why wouldn't they be?

There's also a weird copaganda bent to the story: vigilante Dylan just sees himself doing the job the police can't. Kill or Be Killed was never particularly forward-thinking, but if Brubaker makes a swing, it turns out to be a big miss.

Or maybe I'm just misremembering, and The Edge isn't laughably bad.

Whatever.

The issue opens with Dylan narrating the shootout from the first issue, explaining how narration works. Unfortunately, it’s an entirely pointless few pages, with writer Ed Brubaker unintentionally making the narration incredibly condescending. As if we weren’t talking about narration devices any well-read fifth grader would be comfortable with.

Then Dylan takes us to therapy, where he’s back on his meds and getting his life back together. No more killing—six weeks have passed, though the narration makes it seem much longer—he’s doing school work again and even ready to hang out with Kira. We find out he dumped Daisy for stealing his dad’s art as a surprise to him; she just did it to impress her boss, he tells Kira during their chemistry-absent conversation.

They make a date for Halloween, and everything seems right with the world. Dylan even writes a letter to the papers telling them the vigilante’s retired. But just because the NYPD gives up the search doesn’t mean the Russian mob is as forgiving (especially not after six weeks). And then there’s the matter of the demon.

Dylan’s convinced he didn’t see the demon in his dad’s artwork as a kid because he remembers everything from being a kid (I’d forgotten how moronic the character’s ideas get, Brubaker was doing better with it for a while). So the demon must have been haunting his dad too! Or, wait, maybe he just had bad falafel.

The last scene, with Dylan returning to the Frank Castle impersonating, is pretty good. Easily Sean Phillips’s best art in the book, which is otherwise very, very lazy. The talking heads scene between Dylan and Kira looks terrible. I’m also not going back to see if they reused the art from the first issue for this one. If no one’s got time to make this comic well, why make this comic?

It’s a flimsy start to the third arc, and I shouldn’t really be… but I’m surprised. I figured, this far along, Brubaker would be better at bullshitting his way through the comic.

Nope.