Comics Bulletin logo
Search
  • Columns
    Random
    • Distribution: Diamond Comic Distributors Part One: What is Diamond Comic Distributors?

      Ray Sonne
      May 25, 2011
      Columns, The Burning Mind
    Recent
    • Revisiting the Witchblade/Fathom/Tomb Raider Crossover

      Daniel Gehen
      February 8, 2021
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 2

      Daniel Gehen
      December 4, 2020
    • The Full Run: Usagi Yojimbo – The Wanderer’s Road Part 1

      Daniel Gehen
      October 30, 2020
    • What Looks Good
    • Comics Bulletin Soapbox
    • The Full Run
    • Leading Question
    • Top 10
    • The Long-Form
    • Jumping On
    • Comics in Color
    • Slouches Towards Comics
  • Big Two
    Random
    • Team-Up Review: DC Rebirth #1

      Ray Sonne
      May 27, 2016
      Big Two, Big Two Reviews, DC Comics
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: 6 Most Expensive Comic Books April 2021 Update

      nguyen ly
      April 17, 2021
    • 3.0

      Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia

      Daniel Gehen
      February 22, 2021
    • 4.5

      DCeased: Dead Planet #7 Presents a Hopeful Future (Review)

      Daniel Gehen
      January 22, 2021
    • DC Comics
    • Big Two Reviews
    • Marvel Comics
  • Indie
    Random
    • Valiant Celebrates 1,000,000th Copy of X-O Manowar

      Ray Sonne
      August 17, 2016
      Indie, News, Press Release, Valiant
    Recent
    • 4.0

      Review: Beast Wars #2 another chance to change the past

      Stephen Cook
      March 3, 2021
    • 4.5

      Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Reviews
    • Archie Comics
    • Boom! Studios
    • Dark Horse
    • IDW
    • Image
    • Oni Press
    • Valiant
  • Reviews
    Random
    • 2.0

      Black Panther: The Man Without Fear #516

      Ray Sonne
      April 5, 2011
      Reviews
    Recent
    • Singles Going Steady – Vowels, Who Needs Them?

      Daniel Gehen
      March 8, 2021
    • 3.0

      Review: X-MEN LEGENDS #1 Delivers A Dose of Nostalgia

      Daniel Gehen
      February 22, 2021
    • 4.5

      Review: THE LAST RONIN #2 Hurts So Good

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Singles Going Steady
    • Slugfest
    • Manga
      • Reviews
    • Small Press
      • Reviews
      • ICYMI
      • Tiny Pages Made of Ashes
  • Interviews
    Random
    • David Tischman & Philip Bond: Crafting the Perfect Diversion with "Red Herring"

      Ray Sonne
      November 25, 2009
      Interviews
    Recent
    • Interview: Jon Davis-Hunt Talks SHADOWMAN

      Daniel Gehen
      June 8, 2020
    • Interview: Becky Cloonan talks DARK AGNES and Her Personal Influences

      Mike Nickells
      March 4, 2020
    • Simon Roy

      Interview: Simon Roy on His Inspirations and Collaborations on PROTECTOR

      Mike Nickells
      January 29, 2020
    • Audio Interview
    • Video Interview
  • Classic Comics
    Random
    • The Essential Black Panther Part One

      Ray Sonne
      July 30, 2012
      Classic Comics Cavalcade, Columns
    Recent
    • VISITOR is the Quintessential “SPIRIT” Story

      Daniel Gehen
      March 26, 2021
    • Countdown to the King: Marvel’s Godzilla

      Daniel Gehen
      May 29, 2019
    • Honoring A Legend: Fantagraphics To Resurrect Tomi Ungerer Classics

      Daniel Gehen
      February 15, 2019
    • Classic Comics Cavalcade
    • Classic Interviews
  • News
    Random
    • This Week in Boom!: The Old and the New

      Ray Sonne
      September 9, 2015
      Boom! Studios, Indie, News, This Week in BOOM!
    Recent
    • TIME BEFORE TIME—A HIGH STAKES TIME TRAVEL SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET TO LAUNCH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 19, 2021
    • Image Comics and TMP Announces SPAWN’S UNIVERSE

      Daniel Gehen
      February 18, 2021
    • SAVAGE DRAGON IS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH THIS MAY

      Daniel Gehen
      February 17, 2021
    • Press Release
    • Kickstarter Spotlight
  • Books
    Random
    • Raymond Briggs, Part Four

      Ray Sonne
      November 6, 2015
      Books, The Long-Form
    Recent
    • Collecting Profile: Disney Frozen

      CB Staff
      November 22, 2019
    • Collecting Profile: NFL Superpro

      CB Staff
      August 31, 2019
    • “THE BEST OF WITZEND” is a Wonderful Celebration of Artistic Freedom

      Daniel Gehen
      September 15, 2018
    • Review: ‘Machete Squad’ is a Disappointing Afghan Memoir

      Jason Sacks
      July 31, 2018
    • Review: ‘Out of Nothing’ is the Antidote to Our Sick Times

      Jason Sacks
      July 23, 2018
    • Review: ‘Bizarre Romance’ Shows Rough Edges in the Early Days of a New Marriage

      Jason Sacks
      July 10, 2018
What's New
  • Collecting Profile: 6 Most Expensive Comic Books April 2021 Update
  • Collecting Profile: Guardians of the Galaxy
  • Collecting Profile: 1990 Marvel Universe Trading Cards
  • Collecting Profile: Red Sonja
  • Collecting Profile: Dr. Doom
  • VISITOR is the Quintessential “SPIRIT” Story
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Contact Us
  • Write for us!
  • Visit Video Game Break!
Home
Indie
Image

Review: Kill Or Be Killed #1

Ray Sonne
August 5, 2016
Image, Reviews

Kill Or Be Killed #1 is either a joke with a really bad punchline, as told by critically-acclaimed Image Comics team Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, or a lengthy trip down mediocrity road. You decide.

From the concept to the setting’s geography, this comic is a mess that makes one question what the thought process must have been leading up to the comic’s publication. Did Brubaker bounce his thoughts off anyone who wasn’t a straight white man before putting words to paper? Did Phillips check the dates on his photo references of NYC before drawing several panels that this New Yorker can’t recognize? Did they even agree on what year this comic was set in before stringing up fucking laundry lines as a plot point? All these questions one has and more, in between possibly incredulous laughter.

After starting and restarting no less than three times, Kill Or Be Killed fully introduces us to its protagonist, Dylan. Dylan is sad – very sad – because the world is so hard nowadays. Among the things he cites as wrong are big businesses controlling the globe, psychopaths running for president, cat calling, police murder of black people, and mass shootings. Not that he has to endure cat calling, or being murdered by police, or belonging to the many groups such Presidential-hopeful psychopaths target. In fact, people who look like him are the ones who are doing the mass shootings, which he proves by talking about them as he’s committing one.

Optimized-Kill or Be Killed #1 - Business

In the hyperviolent, masculine world that is comic books, opening a comic up on a shooting spree is far from the most innovative angle one can use. However, Phillips admittedly nails several panels in this sequence. When Dylan leaves the hotel room that holds the bodies of his first victims, there’s an unsettling openness to the space. Even as Dylan’s back is turned to the reader, it represents his point of view. The hunt is on, and he has the power to leave a once quiet area marred with violence.

We know this because we see the contrast in a later victim, whose face contains the terror of captured prey. Dylan fires a bullet straight into this man’s neck or shoulder from the back and the man lets out a shriek of wordless alarm. The sharp edges of Phillips’ gunfire and word balloons punctuate the suddenness of these attacks while colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser’s blackish blood splatters, demonstrating the wide impact of the victim’s mutilated bodies. Dylan is a merciless killer, one without any particular justification for it.

One gets the sense that this is, in fact, the joke that Brubaker and Phillips are trying to tell. Knock, knock. Who’s there? A sad cisheterosexual white man from a wealthy family. A sad cisheterosexual white man with a wealthy family, who? A sad cisheterosexual white man who shoots people up because he has clinical depression. Isn’t that pathetic, hahaha?

Optimized-Kill or Be Killed #1 - Dead

Wait, what? That’s the punchline?

It’s not necessarily the comic’s implication that Dylan attempts to kill himself because of all the societal woes mentioned beforehand. Instead, Brubaker’s first person narration suggests that he does it because of a horribly reductive and rather misogynist situation wherein his female best friend likes to make out with him while her boyfriend is in the other room. After Dylan survives jumping off of a roof because of prior-mentioned laundry lines (I would walk around to see if we still have any of those in this city, but the stereotype is true—New Yorkers don’t look up), a demon comes to break his arm and inform him that in order to make up for his suicide attempt, he must become murderer, destroyer of bad people.

And thus is the major problem of Kill Or Be Killed #1. Don’t attempt or commit suicide because suicide is evil and instead of being helped, you should be punished.

Brubaker and Phillips depiction of depression itself is poor, at best. In groping for a reason for Dylan to have depression—which has the misguided implication that depression, a chronic illness often caused by genetic factors, ever needs a specific source—they settle on “Dylan’s education was delayed and the woman he covets doesn’t return his feelings.” Although certainly difficulties, we don’t quite get to the nuance of why being a single 28-year-old grad student (which is a perfectly normal situation) fuels Dylan’s depression. Phillips’ art depicts surface emotions, such as exhaustion as Dylan studies in a supposedly-NYU library room (which again, is a space I don’t recognize even though I should) and pain as his friend Kira kisses her boyfriend. Although Phillips repeatedly places Dylan away from his friends in order to evoke the feelings of isolation, these panels don’t quite hit so hard as, say, Owen Gieni’s despair-filled work in Negative Space or E.K. Weaver’s recent autobiographical webcomic on her own experiences with depression.

Optimized-Depression Comic

These problems also don’t compare to the sexism and racism and other biases in society that Dylan makes a point to mention in the very beginning of the comic, signifying that these issues should set the tone of his story. So one must ask: is this on purpose? Are Brubaker and Phillips essentially saying that Dylan is as whiny as some of his individual narrative captions suggest because he doesn’t have it as hard as black people or women? Is Dylan attempting to kill himself a joke about white male entitlement? Because if it is, it dismisses the very real struggle mental illness presents on its own.

And if it’s not a joke on male entitlement and that is, in fact, a deeper read than this comic intended… Well. That says very poorly of Kill or Be Killed #1 because it doesn’t offer much else. Not in developing reader attachment to Dylan’s character, not in presenting a unique viewpoint about the world’s wounds, and not much gripping in concept either. For all of Phillips and Breitweiser’s technical proficiency, their standout work in this comic remains in that opening sequence. However, it’s not enough to make Kill or Be Killed #1 worth a reader’s while through all the other ridiculous, testosterone-fueled mass shootings on the comics shelf.

Ed BrubakerElizabeth BreitweiserImage ComicsReviewsSean Phillips

Share On:
Tweet
Tiny Pages Made of Ashes 8/5/16: Mice, Caprice, and Carrots
Frank Miller’s Ronin Pt. 4: Eyes in the Darkness

About The Author

<a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/byline/ray-sonne/" rel="tag">Ray Sonne</a>
Ray Sonne

Ray is a contributor to Comics Bulletin, Women Write About Comics, and Loser City. Her favorite bread is Challah and white chocolate is the root of all evil.

Related Posts

  • NEW SCI-FI MINISERIES MADE IN KOREA TO EXPLORE A.I. FUTURE WHEN IT HITS SHELVES IN MAY

    Daniel Gehen
    February 5, 2021
  • The Walking Dead Deluxe Gets 6 Connecting Covers From Charlie Adlard

    Ashley Hurst
    September 9, 2020

Support Us!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Friends of the Site

  • SOLRAD
  • Your Chicken Enemy
  • Psycho Drive-In
  • Women Write About Comics
  • The Beat
  • Loser City
RSSTwitterFacebookgoogleplusinstagramtumblr

Comics Bulletin is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, audible.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, Comics Bulletin earns from qualifying purchases.

All content on this site (c) 2018 The Respective Copyright Holders