With Kill or be Killed, published by Image Comics between the summers of 2016 until 2018, Ed Brubaker, the master of noir comic book writing who created Fatale, Pulp, Criminal and The Fade Out, has brought his talents to bear on a neo-noir story about mental illness and revenge amidst post-9/11 anxieties.
Kill or be Killed is a story about Dylan, a twenty-something graduate student who, we soon learn, has been forced to repeat his studies due to problems he’s experienced in the past. The problems aren’t clearly defined and are left open to conjecture as we try to piece together who this person is. The figuring out is what drives the tale as Dylan narrates his life from the point that opens the story when he massacres, Travis Bickle style, a building filled with what we can only assume are bad guys. He backtracks constantly and apologises to the reader for going off on tangents, explaining that we need to learn more about what came before in order for his actions to make sense. This includes a flashback to his botched suicide attempt which, in turn, leads to an explanation as to why he attempted suicide in the first place. He lives in an apartment in New York City that he shares with his roommate Mason, a foppish type who is dating Dylan’s best friend and the object of his desire, Kira. Whenever Mason isn’t home, Dylan and Kira fool around, and he takes it to heart when he overhears Kira telling Mason how much she feels sorry for Dylan. Cue the suicide attempt.
As a forty-something pushing fifty, I began to tune out round about here. Not because I didn’t understand Dylan’s character, but because I’d left teenage angst behind me a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, and a 28-year-old whining about his lot in life doesn’t exactly grab me. But to give up on a twenty issue series before it barely had time to leave the gate would have been foolish and ignorant, and so I carried on, lured by my faith in Brubaker’s writing, but also by Sean Phillips’ artwork and an NYC coloured blue and neon by Elizabeth Breitweiser. And I’m glad I persevered, because the introduction of a demon early in the narrative told me that this wasn’t going to be just another crime story. Dylan’s failure at taking his own life meant that he owed the demon in the form of other lives, preferably bad ones, and that he’d have to deliver on a monthly basis to avoid falling seriously ill. Once this Faustian pact was agreed upon, things got very interesting very fast.
The flashbacks are key to this story, and they act as building blocks to create a rich narrative that delves into Dylan’s troubled childhood and adolescent past while explaining why he chooses to execute the people he does. His first hit is on a paedophile, which would seem like an obvious and somewhat overused choice of target, but it’s why he chooses this particular paedophile that makes the story kick. Again, it’s through the use of a flashback that his decision is given the extra weight that makes for an engaging read: an off-hand remark by his childhood friend about how his older brother abuses him plants a seed in Dylan’s brain twenty years later. Brubaker also uses the flashback to flesh out a backstory involving Dylan’s father, a frustrated artist who was forced into illustrating semi-pornographic Frazetta-like images for science fiction magazines in order to support his family. The two sub-plots tie in seamlessly, a trick Brubaker uses time and again throughout the twenty issues as we witness events escalate beyond Dylan’s control and the non-linear narrative begins to knit together.
Another thing that is so admirable about Brubaker’s writing is how he approaches the subject of mental illness. We are never entirely sure if the demon is real or a manifestation of Dylan’s mental state, and the more clues that are given for us to solve, the more compelling Dylan’s plight. This extends to Kira, whose own past is explored through her sessions with a therapist, though I would have liked Brubaker to go a bit deeper here; it felt as though he was scratching at a surface he never fully intended to crack in case it detracted from Dylan’s story.
To Kill or be Killed is a series that improves as it progresses. The action becomes more high octane as Dylan’s vigilantism becomes more far reaching, the themes more complex, until by the end of the final issue, I was left with the feeling that I’d had all my answers satisfied, whilst at the same time wanting to go back to the start to see how Brubaker did it so deftly.
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As a footnote, the benefits of reading the twenty single issue comics of Kill or be Killed, rather than the four volume trade paperbacks, is that you get ‘The Secret Ingredient,’ Brubaker’s enthusiastic run-down of things he’d watched or read during the months between publications, but also, more importantly, a mini-essay at the back of each comic that complements its respective issue. The first three issues feature analyses of three seminal revenge movies by film critic Devin Faraci. In the first, he argues that Death Wish (1974) isn’t about a man exacting vengeance for his family, but about middle-class (read white) America exacting vengeance on the minorities who they blame for NYC’s fall into the abyss. The ascent of revenger Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) draws parallels with Dylan’s brief ascent as he, too, becomes more accomplished at killing. There’s another comparison too: Kersey is rich, and though Dylan’s parents struggled to get by, they believed that locating their family outside of the inner city sprawl might protect them, just as Kersey believed that his white flight into comfortable suburban areas would shield his wife and daughter from the gang who assaulted them. Faraci also covers Oldboy (2003) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978), holding up each film as examples of how revenge movies can offer a different view on both the nature of revenge, and those who perpetrate it.
Issue #4 has a piece by Jess Nevins, whose erudite look back through the history of the Devil and all his dealings in biblical writings and literature brings the Faustian pact to Brubaker’s door in Kill or be Killed. Fascinating stuff. But the pick of the bunch for me are the two-page essays by critic and screenwriter Kim Morgan. From issue #5 through to #20, she covers noir and neo-noir in all its different guises, from Little Murders (1971) to He Ran all the Way (1951). Some of these films I’ve seen, but many are new to me. I’m going to enjoy hunting them down. As always, I’ll be posting reviews as I watch them throughout #noirvember @filmfolkuk.