Kill More #1 Review

Kill More #1 Review

“Who are these animals that walk among us in the guise of men?”

If you’re a fan of Pulp Fiction, then you’re going to love this grim and gritty bouquet of twisted, bloody roses fresh from Murder Street. Kill More is a cinematic-like comic co-created by Scott Bryan Wilson and Max Alan Fuchs. It’s grim and sinister and highlights the issues of poverty, the economy, depravity, and mental health. To be more specific, it’s raw human nature at its worst, but it’s a fair stance to have in a world like ours.

While it’s not a hardcore political hit piece, I can’t promise that you won’t relate to it in a way that pulls on your heartstrings. We need voices to go to the gravestones and turn over the dirt on the other side. Life is a balance of light and dark, the sum of their parts. Trust me when I say this will be the most meaningful and upsetting comic you’ll read this year, in both the best and the worst ways.

They call him the Giraffe from Happy Apple Road, and Detectives Aaron and Gavin are playing bad cop and brutally honest cop to get the details of a murder. The murder takes place in Colonia City, a city that has fallen into financial ruin and economic disaster. The city is decomposing with homeless people and an abundance of abandoned buildings and properties.

If you’d like a real idea of the setting Scott and Max are painting, then go look up pictures of New Orleans four weeks after Hurricane Katrina. I was there working demo as a teenager, and it was the most surreal scene of human conditions I’d ever witnessed. It’s returned mostly to its former glory, but its leaders let it get pretty bad before the communities finally started to bring it back to life.

Colonia feels like a character in this pulp murder mystery. Shades of Sin City come to mind, transporting me back to the late-night gaming sessions of my childhood living room couch, where I spent hours playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and True Crime: Streets of LA. In movies like The Boondock Saints, the city has a life of its own because it is the modern-day forest in which people thrive and forge their futures, making choices on both ends of the fine line that is measured by justice as moral and ethical.

What is moral? What constitutes a positive or negative ethical action? Does a city make its people? Or do the people define a city? If everyone in a city just gave up would it die? All of these questions jump out at me and question the foundation of what people could and are truly capable of. Scary? Absolutely! But the reality of it is just as daunting when the Giraffe tells them his story, revealing that a careless guy in an apartment wasn’t his only victim.

The real issue being discussed, I think, underneath the pendulum is whether or not justice can prevail when chaos bounces the checks and balances of the law. To make matters worse, there are over eight or so dozen cases, and Detective Aaron’s partner is transferring.

With crime on the rise and visitors like the Giraffe making Colonia City a destination to fulfill their dark intentions, how do the protectors of virtue and justice not become tempted by choosing to leave ruin to ruin? What really got me thinking was the motivation behind the Giraffe’s journey to Colonia. He described watching a documentary and mocked the criminals for not thinking about cameras and witnesses, leaving evidence behind.

This really struck a nerve because I’ve always been of the mind that while it is interesting from a normal person’s perspective (whatever you consider normal), it’s entertaining to watch documentaries that dissect the understanding behind the motivations of murders and narcissists, but what if these documentaries and reenacted television shows ignite more evil than they do inform?

I believe that everyone is capable of both good and evil; it really depends on the situation. If you look at the 2002 movie John Q, it proves that a man pushed to extremes, a good man, can do unthinkable things for the right reasons. So when your mayor tells you that everything is going to be fine while everyone knows the truth, should we be concerned when new faces like Lady Facesmasher or The Sufferer roll into town?

I guess you’ll have to follow the series to find out how Detective Aaron is going to solve that problem because this is a dark roller coaster you’re going to want to ride over and over until you understand why it is you got on in the first place. Don’t forget to support your local comic shops. Stay geeky, share the network, and don’t forget to catch the latest on Fueled By Weird.