Kill or Be Killed: Volume Three

There’s not much new to report in this review. We begin with our anti-hero Dylan shooting up the brothel run by the Russian mob, which is exactly how Volume One kicked off. And again our narrator is aware of how roundabout he’s been in his duties, leading us to think that “this entire story has been the longest flashback in history.” Some readers, he says, may have “been thinking about that the whole time.” Guilty as charged!

Even so, it’s going to take us nearly another hundred pages before we come back to the brothel and are finally “caught up.” “I know, I know,” he’ll say then, “I’m the worst narrator in history for actually getting to the point” (in history again!) But “it can’t all be action . . . right?” Sometimes there’s a need to fill us in with “some stuff you have to know before the action gets going again.”

So when I say there’s not much new to report here, that’s really a comment on the fact that this story has been spending most of its time running in place and not going anywhere. Which means the things I like are all the things I’ve liked so far, and the things I don’t like are the same as well.

Unfortunately, I wish things had been all action, or at least more action, because Brubaker and Phillips do that well. I really love those star-shaped gun blasts and the way the outbreaks of violence are set up and choreographed. The filler is either dull (Dylan’s love life with Kira) or confusing (the business with the demon).

Still, with only one volume left to go some resolution beckons. Dylan has, singlehandedly, taken out the boss of the Russian mob, an improbability that’s credited to his belief in some wisdom he picked up from the movie The Edge: “What one man can do, another man can do.” Which is absolute bullshit and made me think that getting rid of the demon was actually making the rest of the story even more unlikely. But we shall see how things wrap up before delivering a final judgment.

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