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.

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.