Image Comics
Creators: Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser
Release date: August 2018
I have come to trust this creative team. Ed Brubaker is a great writer with a number of my favorite stories under his belt from Captain America to Detective Comics to Gotham Central to Velvet. He and Sean Phillips have also proven themselves an adept duo with past collaborations such as Scene of the Crime, Criminal, Fatale and Fade Out. And Elizabeth Breitweiser has also been an important ingredient in many of the above successes, adding nuance and mood with her colors. So it is no wonder I enjoyed Kill or be Killed, an incredible series by this creative powerhouse team.
But I’ve always been more of a story guy even though I certainly like the mix of words and art that comics provide. And as good as Phillips’ art and Breitweiser’s colors are in this series — and they are valuable contributions to the whole — the writing is what clinched the deal with me when I got and read the first trade collection of this series.
I liken Kill or be Killed to “Ozark,” a Netflix original series that dropped its second season a few months ago. In a nutshell, “Ozark” is the story of an accountant and his family caught up in working for a Mexican drug cartel and trying to stay alive while doing some truly horrible things along the way. Jason Bateman plays the father, and Laura Linney plays his wife. Neither were perfect people before they got caught up laundering money for the cartel they come to work with. There is validity in saying there are no likable characters on the show. And yet you find yourself rooting for various characters to succeed in what they are trying to accomplish. They are so well written, it is possible to see yourself in them just enough to wonder, “What would I do in that situation?” or “Would I be able to commit murder or have someone killed to protect my family?”
That is how Brubaker writes Dylan Cross, the main character in Kill or be Killed. Readers’ introduction to Dylan — before we even know his name — is of him catching not one but two men by surprise and killing them with a shotgun. This is on the first page. The next two pages show the masked gunman proceeding to kill several more people in the same office, home, we don’t know where. There is very little dialog beyond the startled shouts of the men Dylan kills and caption boxes with Dylan’s narration, spoken directly to the reader. Obviously, the pictures are showing a violent person committing horrible acts of violence. But that narration draws the reader in, shows them a friend who has a story to tell, a story they want to continue reading despite the violence depicted.
I liken Brubaker’s writing skills, at least in this narrative, to Stephen King’s. King does not always follow the conventional rules of writing prose. His sentences are not perfect. His structure is sometimes lacking. But King creates characters readers want to know, want to learn about. He creates characters people want to read about. Ones they relate to. That is part of Brubaker’s skill as well. Dylan doesn’t always do the “right” thing or the “smart” thing. He isn’t even that sympathetic a character sometimes. But you still care what happens to him.
Dylan’s story — mixing elements of crime fiction and commentary on social ills, mental health issues, relationships and life — grabbed my imagination, and I had no hesitation in ordering the second, third and fourth volumes as they were solicited. I did not know the fourth volume was the final arc until a few weeks before it hit the stands. I avoided spoilers, but I saw an article that indicated the series had ended with issue No. 20, as planned, and that the forthcoming fourth trade would contain the final issues. That only added to my anticipation of reading the final chapters. That fact, combined with the long six-month delay between trades, made me decide to re-read the first three trades right before reading the final one. I wanted to refresh my memory of all the parts of the story as I read the ending, and the earlier portions were a quick but enjoyable read the second time around.
A lot of writers mess up the ending these days. Television programs leave loopholes for future story possibilities in the hopes they get renewed. Limited comic series merely lead into the next limited comic series. And I understand the profit motive behind that mentality. But it makes us afraid to end a story, to put a final period on something. That doesn’t happen here. Dylan’s story has an end. And it is a good, solid ending. One well worth reading.
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