Kill or Be Killed: Volume Four

A better end to this series than I was expecting. Not because it wraps everything up and answers all my questions, because it doesn’t, but because it went places I didn’t think it would go. I like surprises, especially when I’m not sold in the first place on a story’s trajectory.

As things kick off here Dylan, the red-masked avenger, is cooling his heels in a mental hospital. He seems to have escaped his demon, whatever the hell it was, and as things progress he’s come to accept the fact that he’s just a violent vigilante. Now where all that came from is anyone’s guess, because it doesn’t appear to be part of any family history. He does have family mental health issues but they seem mostly to be associated with depression. My own expert analysis is that he’s just a young man who’s angry at all the exploitation and injustice in the world. That gives him enough of a reason to raise hell.

Anyway, his murderous proclivities don’t go into abeyance in the hospital and soon he’s plotting the murder of a staffer who is sexually assaulting the patients. Meanwhile, on the outside, a copycat killer is at work, Dylan’s girlfriend Kira is still pining over him, and both the detective who has been hunting him and the Russian mob who want revenge are closing in.

There’s a bloody climax and then a bit of a twist at the end that provides a whimsical and not very satisfying answer as to how Dylan has been functioning as a narrator the way he has throughout the series. But by this point I don’t think a satisfying answer on that count was possible. Still, I thought Brubaker did his best, and Phillips came through with some nice snowy effects that give the mental hospital scenes a suitably muffled and wintery feel, a correlative to Dylan’s confused mental state. Another plus was the fact that Kira doesn’t feature as much in this volume except at the end, where she’s made to carry too much weight with regard to the vigilante theme. This seems to arise naturally from a decayed urban environment that summons and I guess empowers what are personal demons.

An interesting series then, but one I didn’t love because of the unbelievable and unlikeable main character, the just as unbelievable love interest, and the strained plot machinery, which really creaks throughout. It’s quite readable though and the action is well handled in all regards. I’ve heard rumours it may be made into a cable series, which sounds about right. It might even work better that way.

Graphicalex