Okay, so I don’t think I was expecting more from this comic, but I wasn’t expecting writer Ed Brubaker to take care of so much old business at once. Because even if he does an at best middling job of it, there’s all that middling at once. Like a greatest hits of tepid songs.

This issue brings back the lady cop—just to say she’ll be important later, but let’s watch all the dudes treat her like a moron—catches Dylan up with Kira after her issue, including the medication reveal (which makes Dylan’s narration exceptionally unreliable since he’s just told his reader about his anxiety attacks not his schizophrenia diagnosis), and then Dylan also finally sees that painting of the demon.

The painting the comic showed us after four or five issues. The painting in a box Dylan has been looking through for almost the entire present action of the comic. He’s just come across it in an exceptionally contrived manner.

Kill or Be Killed has definitely improved—outside the Kira issue, which is the series highlight, Brubaker’s at least raised the floor for the Dylan stuff—but with not everything being bad, it makes the wrong moves more noticeable. It’s better but always at a disadvantage.

Daisy shows up for a few pages; she’s going to be a disposable girlfriend, it looks like; nothing more than Dylan’s rebound from Kira. There aren’t not optics to Daisy being Black and the comic treating her like shit. Though, I guess when she did get scenes, they were better than Kira’s.

Artist Sean Phillips still can’t keep the lady cop’s facial features consistent. Her name’s not important. For better or worse, Brubaker didn’t turn Kill or Be Killed into a police procedural, after all. Phillips does better with Dylan’s weirdly sized head for most of the issue, but there are a couple of the odd-sized head panels. It stands out more than when Phillips is doing it the whole issue. It’ll never not be weird.

We also meet Dylan’s mom, who’s got no character whatsoever. She exists for Dylan to exploit her and lie to her. Cool.

I think I’ve changed my mind on it needing an editor; any good editor would just tell Brubaker to–being nice—put it in a drawer until he’s got better ideas for it or—being honest—tell him to nuke it from orbit.

It’s the only way to be sure.

It’s an all-action issue, which works out strangely well. Dylan’s drug dealer, Rex, who has been selling him fake antipsychotics—why Dylan’s not just getting real meds, given he’s got a trust fund, is left unexplained—is used as bait by the Russians. They’re after Dylan for something he did early in the series; they got a lead on him because of a Russian cab driver a couple issues ago.

Now, when that scene happened, the narration told the reader it would be essential, and they would forget (like Dylan would forget). I mean, I guess if you aren’t paying attention. It didn’t happen like a dozen issues ago. It’s like two, maybe three issues. Writer Ed Brubaker should have some confidence in his readers; whether he does or not—Dylan’s recounting is incredibly forced—he’s broadcasting he does not, which is a strange move. But, like, Kill or Be Killed isn’t tricky. If you’re going to worry about your readers having a problem, it’s probably going to be artist Sean Phillip’s weird head sizes, not the straightforward story.

Anyway.

This issue has a Russian tough guy ambushing Dylan, who’s got the demon in him, so he can fight back; drug dealer Rex gets caught in the crossfire, putting Dylan in one desperate situation after another.

It’s too early to say, but I’m wondering if Brubaker will acknowledge Dylan’s no longer anywhere near a reliable narrator. He’s been on shaky ground the entire series—demons and all—only now Brubaker’s revealed he’s got an untreated mental illness thing. Dylan’s sympathetic in a pitying way now; it helps his targets are comic book criminals, so at least he’s not like hurting nice people.

The pacing’s excellent—Phillips’s head sizes aside (it’s got to be intentional, it’s just got to be), he does a wonderful job with the art. Dylan goes speeds around New York and New Jersey, trying to unravel this latest knot, and it looks great. Not the detail—there’s no time for it—but the action. It’s moody in just the right ways.

Obviously, Brubaker’s got a couple swords of Damocles hanging over the book, waiting to drop—we haven’t seen the lady cop he set up as a co-protagonist a few issues ago since her first appearance, and Kira’s been missing since her issue too.

Being entirely disinterested in how the comic turns out helps reading it way too much.

I wish I hadn’t made the fumetti joke about last issue and the photographs; in this issue, when there are newscasts, artist Sean Phillips just copies and pastes some video captures. Sigh.

This issue’s back to Dylan’s perspective, starting before Kira’s experiences last issue but covering them. When she’s hiding out in his closet during his nookie with his new girlfriend—no longer ex-girlfriend Daisy—he smells her perfume, which kind of lessens the previous issue’s impact. Probably reads terribly in the trade. Going back to Dylan as narrator just reminds how well the comic works without him, especially since he’s so unreliable at this point. He even lies to Daisy about his dad committing suicide, which seems odd given they used to date, and so it’d be a long-term lie? Not to mention Dylan’s never told the reader he’s schizophrenic; we had to find out from Kira last issue.

It’s about a month since his last victim, and the NYPD is cracking down on white guys in hoodies with backpacks. I’m not sure what’s more unrealistic, the NYPD actually cracking down on white guys or the idea they’d do anything if they found him. Copaganda stories have been precarious since the advent of smartphones, but they’re positively molding these days.

Dylan identifies what seems to be a good target—a lobbyist who jobs in Central Park—but in addition to the cops being deployed like there’s some eleven-year-old Black kid accused of stealing a pack of gum, he’s also minus his (fake) medication. His dealer isn’t getting back to him as promptly as usual, which ties into two issues ago’s cliffhanger with the Russian mob. At least Brubaker’s moving things along and not letting the B-plots fester.

It’s far from the worst issue—Dylan and Daisy have an actual conversation about things, they don’t just talk at each other—and Phillips’s art doesn’t have any of the more significant problems, but it is a letdown from last issue. It’s also weird the lady cop angle from a couple issues ago doesn’t continue here either. You usually see this kind of erratic plotting in something with creative changes, not creator-owned works.

But whatever… in for a penny and all that.

Wait, what just happened?

Writer Ed Brubaker just took Kill or Be Killed on a seemingly unplanned detour, bringing back Kira—the friend who started dating Dylan’s roommate but then started sleeping with Dylan (in the first arc)—and entirely redefining the character.

Not to mention giving her a character.

Also, she’s got blue hair now. And Sean Phillips’s art problems are gone. A literal wave washed over the comic, left Kira’s hair blue, and carried away all the cruft. At least for this issue.

The issue’s split between Kira’s narration and her therapy session. In both, we learn a lot more about her life, including she might not have been entirely honest with Dylan—fingers crossed. Until this issue, her one backstory detail was her single mom was a swinger who’d have orgies, and Kira would watch as a kid, which Dylan liked because he’s a fucking creeper.

Nothing in this issue invalidates that story, though nothing confirms it, and the timeline doesn’t work out, meaning—as long as it’s just not a leave-out—Kira lied to Dylan about herself, making the character so much more interesting.

The issue starts with Phillips illustrating photographs from a scrapbook Kira’s mom had. The mom’s sick. Kira’s in therapy talking about it, the scrapbook photos run concurrent to the session, then to the rest of the issue. There’s narrative ambition. In this utterly unambitious comic, there’s finally ambition.

Phillips does a great job with the photographs; so glad they didn’t do fumetti, like a couple issues ago with a newspaper photo. The therapy session suggests Kira needs a new therapist and Brubaker wrote the dialogue based on the ELIZA computer therapist program from the 1960s. Not awesome dialogue—not to mention if you’re going to come for the king (of Aunt May’s “Ultimate Spider-Man” issue), you best not miss—but it works out thanks to Kira’s narration.

And Phillips holding the art together throughout.

I don’t know if there’s a way for Brubaker to right the ship, but this issue knocks the book onto a much better course (though Brubaker’s famous for his inspired, done-in-one fill-in issues). There’s a big reveal at the end, too, coming after a fantastic awkward solo scene for Kira.

The dialogue is much better here too. It’s not just teen soap opera one-liners meant to fill pages; Kira has conversations with her step-sister and mother. I refuse to let myself be too hopeful for this book but damned if Brubaker doesn’t still have it.

I’m trying to imagine my take on this issue if I’d kept reading Kill or Be Killed the first time I tried. Would I have been validated, disappointed, disinterested, indifferent, enthused? Probably not enthused.

Writer Ed Brubaker changes things up this issue entirely, complete with a rationalizing explanation in the back matter, but basically, he’s given up. Kill or Be Killed is no longer an askew generic seventies Marvel white male hero turned vigilante take. It’s no longer Ed Brubaker’s Complete Lowlife Meets Criminal: Crime and Punishment 2017.

It’s now just a cop story.

And not even an original cop story. It’s a cop story with a female detective who got her promotion for optics, and her uniformly male colleagues treat her like shit and demean her for fun. Makes me wonder if Brubaker watched the U.S. remake of Prime Suspect too.

It’s fine. It’s a fine, very traditional narrative. Her boss shuts her down once she realizes a connection between these seemingly random murderers, so she goes to a newspaper. Brubaker didn’t even update it enough for her to go to a news blog.

Now, the inclusion of the female cop isn’t exciting. Sure, it’s Brubaker course adjusting the series, but it’s standard stuff. He’s introducing a joint protagonist, after all. Lots of setup and exposition, all narrated by Dylan. Brubaker forgets Dylan’s been being an obnoxious “Well, actually” snob in his narration for the previous five issues and makes him bashful about using artistic license providing the cop’s backstory.

This tone change comes after Brubaker entirely cops out (no pun) of the cliffhanger resolve, where Dylan’s gunfight with the cops turns into a contrived escape. One artist Sean Phillips didn’t even bother visualizing like the narration describes. Dylan clearly says the cops dive away from his shotgun warning shot. They barely back up. I’ll get to the art. Phillips is done with the action with a capital D.

But then there’s also Dylan’s chance meeting after his escape, which the narration promises will be important later if the reader doesn’t forget like Dylan forgets. For all its faults, outside trying to appeal to white men who buy comics, Kill or Be Killed was never desperate before. Now it’s desperate. Brubaker’s trying to make it accessible.

Dylan hooks up with the ex-girlfriend during his exposition dump about the cop. We get a montage, which is probably Phillips’s best art in the issue, and it’s just a couple Netflixing and chilling with some bong rips too.

The cliffhanger threatens the Russian mob—so now Dylan’s got the cop and a realistic Bond villain after him. Again, desperate to be accessible. But, you know what, it might have worked. It might still work going forward. It just doesn’t work here because, wow, Phillips is checked out.

Not just with the dive, not just with the weird bodies looking like he reluctantly stuck them onto his still lovely New York City urban landscapes, but the lady cop. He draws her a different way every three panels. The first time she shows up, she looks like Kira, the best friend who Dylan was sleeping with (which would’ve made the comic so much better), but then no consistency whatsoever.

It’s a very strange fail for Phillips—especially this issue—besides her boss is photo-referenced to the point they should credit the actor. Maybe lady cop’s shitty boss problems would be more engaging if the art weren’t tediously static.

I don’t just not know what to expect from Kill or Be Killed going forward, but I don’t think Brubaker or Phillips know either. So it’s suddenly a more interesting mess, especially since it’s not even halfway finished.

This issue is where I jumped off Kill or Be Killed the last time I tried reading it. The funny part is I’m now utterly dispassionate about the issue. Sure, I can see where Sean Phillips’s lagging art would’ve bothered me—Dylan runs into his ex-girlfriend (who I think they teased in the first or second issue) and they both have really poorly sized heads through their re-meet cute.

And there’s some weird hostility in writer Ed Brubaker’s narration for Dylan. Lashing out at the reader. But the reader is also whoever’s listening to Dylan’s confession; this issue makes it seem very much like he’s telling someone his story, not just narrating. We’ll see on that one, though. Brubaker likes crime fiction a lot, and crime fiction doesn’t care how tenses work.

In addition to Dylan meeting his ex-girlfriend again—outside his boxing gym, where he goes for lessons since a Russian stripper beat him up last issue (but months and months before, Brubaker’s doing the time jump)—he goes to coffee with Kira. They sit awkwardly like strangers because they’re not knocking boots since she and his roommate broke up.

There are a couple victims in this issue—the demon, who also appears briefly (meaning Dylan hasn’t seen the demon in his dad’s old painting, which was around his apartment, in the two-plus months since the last issue), told Dylan he had to kill one person a month, I think, which means it’s pretty easy to count the passage of time. Not quite a lunar cycle, but close enough.

Anyway, the victims are a little more creative. One’s a dog killer who got off with a temporary insanity plea, and the other’s Bernie Madoff.

The cliffhanger promises nothing’s ever going to be the same starting next issue, so who knows, maybe it’ll at least stabilize. I sure didn’t think so last time, though. I guess I wasn’t ready to be so disappointed but now, bring it on.

Also, while Phillips has problems with the figures and the half splash pages accompanying text aren’t great, he still does a fine job with the New York City scenery.

The most unrealistic thing about Kill or Be Killed is Dylan isn’t a white supremacist. Like, historically speaking. Also, his classes in graduate school. Much of this issue’s about him trying to find his next target, starting with a subway fantasy about taking out a couple punks, but then it turns out he’s just watching too much Death Wish 3 or whatever.

Okay, Dylan watching Death Wish movies is also somewhat unrealistic.

But after the subway shootout fantasy, he opines you can’t just kill Black drug dealers in parks because it’d be racist; besides, they’re just a cog in the wheel. To find bigger fish, he’s got to do research, which means reading newspapers and police blotters. Dylan’s a copaganda-invested vigilante. It leads him to a strip club where he’s sure the girls are human trafficked from Russia, so he’s going to kill their handler.

At the same time, his affair with Kira has accelerated, leading to their content-less soap opera babbling about her boyfriend (and his roommate) taking place while they’re both naked. The roommate’s getting suspicious because Dylan keeps going out every night from 2 to 4 am. This is why The Punisher lives alone.

Overall, it’s an okay issue (relatively speaking). Writer Ed Brubaker tries really, really hard to rationalize Dylan through his narration. It’s not entirely successful, and it seems vaguely half-assed, but at least Brubaker’s trying to be thorough. But it reads like his notes on a project, not a finished project. Kill or Be Killed needs an editor, not Eric Stephenson’s “editorial supervision.”

Artist Sean Phillips gets in some great New York City street scenes, but he’s also got his scale problems. Lots of Dylan’s head looking oversized for his body—in panels where the other people have standard-sized heads—but this issue also has Phillips drawing other characters awkwardly small. Seriously, the whole thing could be explained if it were Dylan’s fantasy he’s playing out with his action figures.

There’s a biggish reveal at the end, along with a wrench in his relationship with Kira; neither are particularly engaging, but at least they’re dramatic blips in a series so awkwardly otherwise without them.

What is the deal with the heads? Seriously, this issue starts with talking heads between Dylan and Kira—which has numerous issues—and it really looks like artist Sean Phillips cut out a head and pasted it on a body. But without adjusting the scale.

It’s comically weird, though it does improve in the rest of the issue.

The scene takes place after Dylan’s first night out Punishering; best friend Kira, who’s dating his roommate and having an affair with him, wants to talk. He’s afraid he’ll confess to her because he’s madly in love with her, and he wants to tell her everything anyway.

Now, Kira and Dylan will go and have their talk later on. He will say nothing; she will talk at him about their problems on a very macro scale without any specifics. It’s actually an improvement over the first scene, which sounds like writer Ed Brubaker got the dialogue from a soap opera trailer.

This issue has two big reminders of why this comic didn’t click with me before. Didn’t click with me, meaning it pissed me off to the point I stopped reading it.

First, Dylan’s obnoxious white college bro philosophy thoughts. Maybe half the issue is just Dylan’s narration, thinking about what he’s done—killed a guy because the demon in his head told him to do it—while going about his day as a graduate student in New York City. There’s a Times Square scene, there are some library scenes, and Kira and Dylan will have their big scene at Coney Island—Phillips is going all out on the travelogue. No wonder he doesn’t have the energy for heads.

But Dylan’s just full of shit. His narration is just stream of consciousness bullshit from an asshole. And it’s unclear if Brubaker knows it. Every time it seems self-aware, there’s something like the second anti-click reminder—the ladies mooning over Dylan without him realizing. Now, suppose Dylan had become a killer vigilante and started seeing the ladies seeing him differently. In that case, he’d be… becoming (see: Manhunter), but he doesn’t notice them agog at his new manliness.

Also, when Dylan and Kira hang out and have no substance or chemistry beyond Dylan’s narration telling us they have chemistry, it’s another sign of trouble for Brubaker’s handle on the situation.

I remain committed to the read-through, even if it just keeps disappointing.

However, it’s not a bad comic overall, just self-indulgent and annoying. It rallies a bit towards the end. It does read way too quick, though.

I’m not reading the back matter on Kill or Be Killed for lengthy reasons, but if there’s some explanation why artist Sean Phillips is drawing the twenty-somethings with odd bodies—their heads are too big for their bodies and slightly too round—I may regret not knowing.

May.

This issue opens with another of the illustrated micro-prose, which writer Ed Brubaker established last issue. On one side of the page is black letters on white, lots of white space because the narration’s relatively terse, even when there’s a lot of it, and images on the right from Phillips. The two things move in unison, what protagonist Dylan thinks about while experiencing or witnessing the visuals.

Except, also not, because Brubaker starts the comic where he ends the comic, and Dylan’s not thinking about the same things at the beginning as at the end because it’s all past tense narration. It’s an entirely acceptable, basically successful technical device—the text alongside the images.

I also don’t like it.

Maybe they’ll win me over, but it seems like a cop-out. The minimally successful approach; basically, it’s just taking the prose specials of the eighties and, instead of type-setting them, having your letterer do them. The comic doesn’t credit the letterer (it’s apparently Phillips), so maybe he’s just using Blambot fonts anyway, and it’s still just type-setting.

Anyway.

I’m not sold on it, though they use the same device later in the issue with better effect; maybe because the white space does something with the visuals later, instead of just pushing them to one side.

This issue has Dylan making his first kill—to appease the demon who’ll kill him if he doesn’t kill an evil person. The demon doesn’t appear. Actually, there’s not much follow-up on the first issue's outstanding things—best friend turned roommate’s girlfriend turned illicit lover Kira wants to chat with Dylan about their status. He puts it off because he’s figured out where to get a gun and, thanks to the gun kicking off a madeleine moment, who to kill.

When Dylan does finally get back to Kira, carrying her to bed, it’s where the figures are so obviously distorted. So Phillips has got to be doing it intentionally. Right?

Especially since the rest of the issue, the other people Dylan encounters—his dealer (who’s a hoot), his mom (who’s always in another room), flashback friends, flashback Dad (the comic rushes through Dad having killed himself and the inevitable repercussions on Dylan)—they all look normal. It’s Dylan and Kira who look like strangely molded action figures.

Dylan’s first victim’s crime is particularly terrible, making him a worthy target, but it’s also a narrative gimme. Brubaker takes two big shortcuts—the gun acquisition and the victim selection—so hopefully, those contrivances will somehow pay off.

After the oversized first issue, this one seems a little too quick, especially since we don’t meet anyone else. We hear about them in Dylan’s narration, but only Kira really gets to exist in scenes, and even then, they’re really quick.

But it’s okay. Full disclosure—this read-through isn’t my first attempt with the series, and I’m trying hard not to get derailed. I’m trying to keep an open mind here.

Hence not reading the back matter.

Kill or Be Killed kicks off with approximately thirty-three pages of story. I feel like it’s got to be thirty-two, but the quick count was thirty-three. And writer Ed Brubaker packs those thirty-three pages.

The comic starts with a bunch of gory action killing as our hero, Dylan, shotguns a bunch of bad guys. Well, presumably bad guys. He only kills bad guys, he assures us in narration; Sean Phillips’s art captures the gloom and gore. It’s a lot to start an issue with, but Brubaker and Phillips get through it as the narrator—who’s talking directly to the reader—decides to fill us in on his backstory.

Dylan’s a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student in New York City, living off inheritance and student loans, older than his peers because one of his suicide attempts got him kicked out of school. He’s got no girlfriend—though we get to meet an ex in a flashback in the flashback—and his roommate has stolen his best friend (dating her). As Dylan’s domestic life gets more complicated, with his best friend, Kira, starting an affair with him behind the roommate’s back, he soon finds himself once again suicidal.

Luckily, he’s got one of those apartment buildings like Selina Kyle in Batman Returns and he survives the attempt… only a demon shows up demanding Dylan kill bad guys to make up for the demon not getting his soul in the suicide. A murder a month to keep the demon away.

The issue ends before Dylan’s done the deed, but we know he’s clearly heading in that direction from the opening.

There’s a lot of narration. A lot of it. Some of it’s tedious, some of it ages poorly (the comic’s from summer 2016 and Brubaker’s not great at future-telling), but it rarely gets to be too much. There’s always gorgeous Phillips art to offset any narration-related lag. The New York City stuff is phenomenal, the character figures—their figures look artificially small—not, but it’s only in medium or long-shots. Close-ups, talking heads, Phillips’s on it.

The comic’s intense, unpleasant, and exceedingly well-produced.