In the final issue of Kill or Be Killed, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser get gutsy narrative-wise by killing off their protagonist Dylan on the opening page, trying a kind of alternate ending, and then switching narrators altogether towards the end of the book. It’s unreliable narration at its finest, and Phillips and Breitweiser turn in some final snow blown New York vistas while Brubaker finally unpacks the book’s message in dramatic fashion, which is basically, “Everything and everyone is screwed”. And, in connection to the real world, this message makes much more sense that when the comic first dropped in the relatively halcyon days of August 2016. In a country where children are separated from their mothers and put in cages, women’s reproductive rights are on the chopping block, and there doesn’t seem to be much to be excited for on 4th of July, Kill or Be Killed’s observations about the unbeatable nature of evil sadly ring true. It’s not something that be thrown in jail or gunned down with a shotgun, it simply is.

Continuing a trend that has permeated the series, Ed Brubaker gives the protagonist, Dylan, some great valid points , but when it all boils down to it: he’s a white male gunning down people. The “imaginary” sequence narrated by him from the afterlife where he has a relatively stable life, is in a relationship with Kira, and acquaintances with the police officer who has been hunting him down the whole series culminates in him killing a corrupt cop and continuing to be a vigilante. (Although, he changes his outfit and M.O. every so often to keep the press, criminals, and NYPD off his trail because everyone’s genre savvy beyond the grave.) Brubaker, Phillips, and Breitweiser riff off superhero comics for a bit in these scenes calling Dylan’s vigilante activities “an unsustainable fantasy version of life” and having the images of a masked man gunning down criminals or brooding on a rooftop ring hollow. The ever present snow helps.

Up to this point, I’ve been qualifying Kill or Be Killed #20 and the series as a whole as having a message or point, and it sort of does: the cycle of evil and the futility of violence to stop it. But, to its credit, Ed Brubaker isn’t preachy in the series using the unreliable narrator device to cast doubt on if Dylan is a sympathetic protagonist, and he and Sean Phillips even play to the lizard brain part of humans and give him a kind of “happy ending” that seems unearned and is ripped away for a path of pain and actual consequences. In what constitutes the comic’s third act, Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser relax the stylized panel compositions and dark greys, reds, and blacks for something more neutral and slice of life. Kill or Be Killed has gone from the New York of Death Wish to the New York of the “New York, I Love You” episode of Aziz Ansari’s Master of None although it forgoes its diverse POV for the perspective of a dead white man and a white woman. It’s almost like Brubaker and Philips are apologizing for unleashing Bernhard Goetz 2018 edition on 2018’s New York City.

However, this vibrancy is short lived as Brubaker switches narrators one final time from dead, omniscient Dylan (On a craft level, Kill or Be Killed proves that omniscient narrators still work in comics.) to Kira, whose emotions are filtered out in beautifully lettered captions that are like Todd Klein’s elaborate letters on Batman Year One, but on Sticky Notes. She’s angry that her best friend was ground down by his mental health issues, society around him, and his violent coping mechanisms and coupled with men cat-calling her at every corner, it leads to a breaking point and a literal mirror image of the possibly supernatural inciting incident of Kill or Be Killed. It also made me think about how even more fantastic this series would have been if Kira was the protagonist…

After an action heavy penultimate issue, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser use Kill or Be Killed #20 to play around with traditional narrative expectations and look at how life is both terrible and precious from a beyond the grave perspective. And, in closing, Dylan’s vigilante activities were definitely not commendable, and he needed psychiatric help much earlier than the final arc, but he made some excellent social observations throughout the series.

Story: Ed Brubaker Art: Sean Phillips Colors: Elizabeth Breitweiser
Story: 9.0 Art: 9.5 Overall: 9.3 Recommendation: Buy 

Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Killed or Be Killed #11 kicks off with a tantalizing flash-forward of our protagonist Dylan as a millennial Charles Bronson in the Death Wish sequels in a brutal action sequence that the series opened up with. However, this is just a tease from Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser, and the comic settles down to poke around Dylan’s mental state and hint at the tiniest slivers of redemption before taking a sharp, violent left turn in its final scenes. This lull, then storm plot structure makes for entertaining reading as Brubaker and Phillips make Dylan a likable young man trying to get his friend Kira back, pass grad school, and find some semblance of normal in his life until he decides to kill again.

Kill or Be Killed #11 definitely looks at the “psychological” part in psychological thriller, and there’s an extended scene where Dylan half lies and half tells the truth to his therapist, who reprimands him for going off his meds. Breitweiser’s colors sink to a nice medium palette, and Phillips draws Dylan’s body language as moving away from his therapist instead of listening to what he has to say. It’s nice to see Dylan working on his mental health, but his lack of engagement with his therapist and lies to him makes it seem like he’s just trying to tick off a box on a list and return to “normal” without dealing with the consequences of his murders. Dylan isn’t contrite at all; he just wants to avoid the consequences of his actions, which is why it’s hilarious that he wears a Richard Nixon mask to his friend Kira’s Halloween party towards the end of the issue.

Brubaker, Phillips, and Breitweiser continue to make the reality of the demon that supposedly saved Dylan’s life and forces him to kill fairly ambiguous with a couple pages done in pulpy, painted art style showing that his father’s artwork of the creature. Nonetheless, like clock work, Dylan gets deathly ill two months after he killed a Russian mob member and his drug dealer, and the cause isn’t just undercooked falafel. But he doesn’t immediately go into vigilante mode until he hears a young man in a Russian accent asking for his friend Kira and her “boyfriend” Dylan at a coffee shop, and the demon never speaks to him in Kill or Be Killed #11. The ending of the issue started to really make me question the “devil made me do it” motivation for Dylan’s actions and returns to the desperate final issues of the second arc where Dylan was just out to save his own ass through violent, yet sloppy means. Just when readers start to like Dylan more, he goes off and murders someone.

Ed Brubaker continues to treat Dylan’s mental health with empathy without justifying his actions in the slightest. Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser kick in a little romance and add more light to their usual shadowy art when Dylan interacts with Kira, and the story shifts gears from Death Wish meets Zodiac to a less insufferable early Zach Braff film with two young people rekindling a spark in Greenwich Village after dealing with a host of relationship issues. That tone is short lived when Dylan gets sick, and the art becomes more painterly and apocalyptic. There’s a tension between wanting Dylan to feel better, not wanting him to kill again , and a third, liberating door that it’s an imbalance in brain chemistry telling him this. It’s a moral muddle, and Dylan’s own internal struggle is more riveting and infinitely more relatable than the Russian gangsters on his tail.

After an insanely compelling and action master class of a cold open, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, and Elizabeth Breitweiser so straight slice of life for most of Kill or Be Killed #11 examining Dylan’s post-vigilante motivation and relationship with Kira. But cue the last few pages, and the comic is back to be one hell of (a heavy on the anti) an antihero with a Richard Nixon mask starring thrill ride. (Fingers crossed that he runs into someone in a Hunter S. Thompson outfit at next issue’s costume party.

Story: Ed Brubaker Art: Sean Phillips Colors: Elizabeth Breitweiser
Story: 8.0  Art: 9.5 Overall: 8.8  Recommendation: Buy 

Image Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review