Kill or Be Killed Review: Brubaker & Phillips’s Vigilante Noir
Brubaker and Phillips's gripping vigilante noir with a twist.
By Web Admin
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are the finest crime-comics team working today, and Kill or Be Killed might be their most unsettling collaboration. Published by Image Comics beginning in 2016 and collected across 4 volumes, it’s a vigilante thriller that keeps yanking the floor out from under you. Is the demon that orders our narrator to kill actually real, or is he simply, dangerously insane? The book refuses to make it easy. This is our full review of Kill or Be Killed.
If you’ve enjoyed the duo’s other work — Criminal, Fatale, The Fade Out — you know the drill: airtight plotting, lived-in characters, and Phillips’s masterful noir art. But Kill or Be Killed adds a genuinely fresh hook that makes it one of the best entry points into their catalogue.
What is Kill or Be Killed?
Kill or Be Killed follows Dylan, a depressed grad student in New York who survives a suicide attempt — and is then visited by a demon who tells him the price of his survival: he must kill one bad person every month, or die himself. Whether the demon is real or a symptom of Dylan’s spiraling mental illness is the question the entire series dangles. The story is his confession, narrated in retrospect, as he becomes an increasingly competent and increasingly damned vigilante.
Brubaker uses the vigilante-thriller frame — a mode he clearly loves and knows inside out — to dig into something darker: depression, guilt, self-justification, and the seductive fantasy of being the one who gets to decide who deserves to die. It’s a smart, character-first spin on a very old genre.
The story: is the demon real?
The genius of the book is its ambiguity. Dylan is an unreliable narrator, and Brubaker plays it perfectly straight — you’re never quite sure whether you’re reading a supernatural horror story or the case study of a young man rationalizing murder. That tension powers the whole series, and the way it resolves (or refuses to fully resolve) is bound to spark arguments. It’s the kind of book you want to press on a friend just to debate the ending.
Around that central question, Brubaker builds a proper crime thriller. Dylan’s targets escalate from small-time creeps to organized crime, the police close in, and his personal life — including a fraught relationship with his roommate Kira — tangles with his secret. The plot mechanics are as tight as anything the pair has done.
Brubaker also grounds the fantasy in unglamorous procedure. Dylan is a terrible vigilante at first — he vomits, he panics, he nearly gets caught constantly — and the book takes real pleasure in showing how much sheer, ugly work killing actually is. That texture is what makes the escalation believable: by the time he’s competent, you’ve watched every clumsy step, and his transformation from paralyzed depressive to calculating killer is all the more chilling for how mundane the details feel.
The characters
- Dylan — the depressed, self-loathing narrator whose slide into vigilantism is horrifying and weirdly relatable.
- Kira — his roommate and the object of his affection, whose life gets pulled into his secret.
- The demon — the grotesque figure that may or may not exist, and the engine of the whole premise.
The art: Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser
Sean Phillips is a noir master, and Kill or Be Killed is some of his best work — grimy, expressive, and brutally clear in its storytelling. The real standout, though, is colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser, whose palette drenches the book in cold blues and sickly reds that make New York feel like a fever dream. Together they create a mood of dread and melancholy that’s inseparable from the writing. This is a book where the art is doing half the emotional work.
Content warning: this one is dark
Be prepared. Kill or Be Killed opens with a suicide attempt and deals frankly with depression, suicidal ideation, and mental illness throughout, alongside graphic violence and murder. It handles these themes seriously rather than exploitatively, but it is emphatically an adults-only book and a heavy one at that. If you’re in a fragile place, know what you’re picking up. Readers who want the crime craft without the supernatural weight might prefer our Criminal review.
Pros and cons
Pros
- A fresh, genuinely ambiguous take on the vigilante genre
- Brubaker’s tightest plotting and best narration
- Career-highlight coloring from Elizabeth Breitweiser
- Complete and self-contained in four volumes
Cons
- Extremely dark — suicide, depression, and graphic violence
- The ambiguous ending will frustrate some readers
- Not the place to start if you want pure escapism
How it compares to other Brubaker & Phillips books
If you’re new to the duo, here’s how Kill or Be Killed fits among their essential collaborations.
| Book | Genre | Length | Supernatural? | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kill or Be Killed | Vigilante noir | 4 volumes | Ambiguous | A twist on the genre |
| Criminal | Crime anthology | Multiple volumes | No | Pure crime fiction |
| Fatale | Lovecraftian noir | 5 volumes | Yes | Horror-crime blend |
| The Fade Out | Hollywood noir | 1–3 volumes | No | Period mystery |
For the wider genre, see our guides to the best crime and noir comics and the best standalone graphic novels you can finish in a sitting.
Which edition should you buy?
The series is complete, so you can collect it a few ways depending on budget and shelf preference.
| Edition | Collects | Approx. price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volume 1 paperback | Issues #1–4 | ~US$9 | Trying it out |
| Volumes 1–4 paperbacks | The full series | ~US$65 total | Piecing it together |
| Deluxe Edition (HC) | The complete story | ~US$50 | Best value and shelf copy |
The single hardcover Deluxe Edition is the best way to read it — it collects the whole story in one handsome book, usually for less than buying all four paperbacks separately.
AmazonCheck price on AmazonThe verdict
Kill or Be Killed is Brubaker and Phillips at the height of their powers — a smart, bleak, endlessly discussable vigilante noir that uses a supernatural hook to say something real about depression and moral rationalization. It’s not an easy read, but it’s a rewarding one, and it’s one of the best modern crime comics you can buy. It’s a standout in our crime and noir guide and a highlight of the Indie & Image hub. Just go in knowing what it’s about.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kill or Be Killed finished?
Yes. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips concluded the series across four collected volumes, telling a complete, self-contained story with a definitive ending.
Is the demon in Kill or Be Killed real?
That’s the central ambiguity of the book, and it’s designed to be debated. Without spoiling it, the story deliberately leaves room for both the supernatural and psychological readings.
Do I need to read other Brubaker and Phillips books first?
No. Kill or Be Killed is completely standalone and is a great entry point to their work. If you love it, our Criminal review points to where to go next.
How mature is Kill or Be Killed?
Very. It opens with a suicide attempt and deals with depression, suicidal ideation, and graphic violence throughout. It’s strictly for adult readers.
Next, explore more of the genre in our crime and noir comics guide, or browse the full Indie & Image hub.
