By Dan Clark — Typically, when movies and comics are linked the conversation is solely about how they treat the same material. Does this adaptation live up to the original, or is this version of the character truly comic accurate? That’s all fine, but I am going to do something a bit different with this piece today. 

I am going to look at a movie, Blue Ruin (2013), and a comic, Kill or Be Killed (2016) by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, which on the surface have nothing in common. Their source material is not linked at all, nor are the creators connected in any specific way. There are, however, some common story elements that are worth exploring.

The main uniting element is how they approach the very idea of the vigilante. Now, vigilantes have been a part of storytelling for as long as people have been telling stories. From Samson to Robin Hood, each took the law into their own hands for different reasons. So, of course comics and film have had their fair share as well. The western genre is also full of classic vigilantes as is the ‘70s street-level grit like Death Wish and Dirty Harry. Comics in turn have famous characters like The Punisher. These vigilantes tend to have one thing in common: they have a special set of skills that allows them to enact the justice or vengeance they seek.

Now, with Kill or Be Killed and Blue Ruin it is a bit different. With these stories, the central individuals do not have any special skills. Hell, regular life is proving to be too much of a challenge; so what happens when they play their part in the vigilante game? Well, they quickly find themselves in over their heads. Let’s take a look at that and how they approach this idea…

How Blue Ruin and Kill or Be Killed approach vigilante storytelling

Synopsis

Looking first at Kill or Be Killed, it tells the story of Dylan, who is your typical lost soul lacking any major purpose. His best friend/biggest crush is dating his roommate and his career prospects are limited as he is still trying to finish grad school. Feeling despondent one night, he decides to end it all by jumping off a building, in the process though he changes his mind. Unfortunately, his clumsiness gets the best of him and he falls anyways. By sheer luck, a few clotheslines help lessen his fall, and he somehow survives after he meets the ground. Battered and bruised, he collects himself and returns home a broken man.

Back home, his luck continues to falter (to say the least) as a demon appears before him to inform him that the reason he survived was due to the demon’s intervention. Now, in order to remain alive Dylan must take one life each month. It must be someone who deserves it, and if he doesn’t kill, he will be killed in their stead.  

Meanwhile with Blue Ruin, you have Dwight, who may even be worse at life than Dylan. He is living in his extremely beat-up car until one day a police officer brings him in to inform him the person who supposedly killed his parents is getting out of jail. This sets Dwight off on a path to do what the justice system could not. It’s a journey that is bloody and battered as he attempts to protect the family he still has left.

Introducing Characters

Now while Dylan and Dwight have similar characteristics, one thing that is vastly different about them is how we meet them within the story and how these stories open. 

We first meet Dwight in a rather relaxed state, soaking life in a literal bath. Quickly though we realize the fallacy of this moment as the actual homeowners arrive leaving him to escape out the window before he is found. We then get a very quiet and mundane sequence placing us within his life as he scrounges for food and cash to try to survive. There is no glory here in either the production or his life. This does not at all seem like a man about to embark on a mission of death. He seems much more so like a man struggling to survive. 

Now we meet Dylan in a very different way. Where Blue Ruin is methodical in how it introduces us to violence, Kill or Be Killed starts with it right away. We open on scenes of a masked gunman in this action-packed sequence, mowing down individuals with reckless abandon. You may be wondering how Dylan is a person in over his head, as he seems like right away he can hold his own. What we soon discover though is this sequence takes place well into the future as we take a sharp left to what Dylan is like now. 

How Format Impacts his 

Now, looking at this I do wonder if format helped inform this story choice. When you have a movie like Blue Ruin, once you get someone to watch you have done your job. You can be a bit more patient with your story compared to a monthly comic.

With Kill or Be Killed, it is important to think finances can inform the story. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been in this rodeo before (many times) and they know the importance of the first issue of a comic. You need to give readers something to latch onto to come back. Now when you call your book Kill or Be Killed with a man in a ski mask and a sawed-off shotgun you are setting some expectations. This opening leans into those expectations enough to allow us to know where we are going. Now it takes some time before we actually get back to this moment, but having it in the back of your mind is helpful to keep the progression moving. 

Subverting Expectations 

Even within this opening sequence, we see some hints that Dylan is not exactly The Punisher. For example, he gets caught early, and if it wasn’t for some dumb luck he probably would have been dead. The invincibility that appears in the opening moments is diminished pretty quickly. Outside of that when we first see Dylan’s actual face it tells the most important story. The expression is not of a person who is inspirited for enacting justice rather someone who is despondent as if he fulfilled some sort of obligation he could not avoid. He is a lifeless shell that is almost disappointed the end result did not go the other way.

Subverting expectations is a key piece of why both of these works are as effective as they are. Blue Ruin puts on a clinic in unexpected obstacles. When Dwight sets off on his mission, he knows he needs one thing — a gun. What he is realizing is that obtaining a gun for his upcoming crime is not easy. For one, he has no money to buy one, so he is left to try to steal. Using some profiling, he is able to locate a car that will most likely have a gun inside. After robbing an unexpected victim and lifting a gun, he finds that gun may not be as easy to access as he thought. 

There are many scenes like this with great cause and effect. What can go wrong will go wrong, from forgetting keys to unintentionally injuring himself. We’ve seen many people easily slash tires before in movies. A sharp knife should be enough to get the job done, but poking something highly pressured like a tire with a sharp object is a bit more dangerous than we realize here, and Dwight finds out the hard way. My favorite scene of the movie is best labeled as self-surgery gone wrong. We’ve seen countless action films wherein the hero tries to mend his own wound. Well, as they say, don't try that at home because the results may differ.

Now, Kill or Be Killed has a similar cause and effect style, where Dylan’s choices tend to leave to even more problems for him. A big difference though is that Dylan’s effects are a bit more delayed and indirect. Again, I believe this speaks to the format a bit. Here we have long form storytelling so you have room to allow things to play out across more time. So when things are spread out like this, how do we know as the reader what is the cause and what is the effect? Well, we are literally told. In these comics, Dylan will chime in from time to time to explain a failure on his part, like not noticing the accent of a taxi driver. That small detail will hurt him down the road, and he warns us about it.

Kill or Be Killed utilizes the classic noir trope of the first-person narrator where Dylan is speaking directly to us the reader. Now people tend to look down at this device with film as a lazy way to tell a story. The classic idea of show don’t tell. I personally think narration can be effective in the right context, see Goodfellas. 

That ‘show don’t tell’ motto I think is taken a bit too literal at times. Here the narration is showing us a lot. For example, the crumbling psyche of Dylan, who is almost an unreliable narrator at times as he tends to get lost in thought. He tells things out of order which clues us into the idea that his demon may not be real. 

It is also a way to tell this story that is not linear and can completely shift focus to side stories and other characters. Again this format requires time, so even side characters like the police officer, who ends up on Dylan’s tail, gets plenty of space to tell her story as well. Everyone here feels like a real complete person. 

What’s perhaps really interesting about Kill or Be Killed is that in a way it is a dressed-up romance drama with elements of noir fiction. We get time with Dylan and his girlfriends like Kira. Kira is one of the best characters in the series and her friendship/relationship with Dylan is often as much of a focus as the killing. You’d think it would detract from the story but it doesn’t. By taking the time to build each character, their interactions become much richer. 

Blue Ruin on the other hand is much more trimmed down. Information is eked out, and not only is there no narration, there is barely any dialog. You have long stretches where all there is is Macon Blair wondering, planning, trying to survive. Luckily with film, you can allow performance to carry those moments. As with everything in the film it is very understated. The normalcy in the way he plays certain scenes helps clue you into his descent. There is an inevitability to his actions and it is that knowledge that informs his choices. There is also a sense of lawlessness here similar to the wild west as if this place has devolved from civilized society to a more free-ranged type of world.

Story Setting

Setting plays a big part in informing both tales. Ruin is the keyword for Blue Ruin as locations are often decrepit, their best days in the past. That lawlessness I spoke of is in large part there because this is a part of society that simply has pulled itself away either by choice or consequence. 

Whereas Kill or Be Killed is a New York story through and through. Much of that is due to the art team. Due to the detail of the world, you are never left wondering where you are. Sean Phillips is a master craftsman who rides the line of rendering people who look like the real deal without being photorealistic. His backgrounds have those small elements that give life. Rooms are messy, crowds are full and at times disorganized. Credit should also go to colorist Elizabeth Breitweiser. Her coloring has a bit of empty space to it that at times gives Phillips lines extra room to breathe. She knows how to enhance the art not overtake it. Oddly, the best example of this is with people's clothing. Clothes fit in the way they do in real life. Superheroes wear tights in large part because it is easier to draw. Not as easy to put someone in a plain shirt and khakis. The way the coloring informs the folding of each crevice makes everything fit just right. 

Phillips does the lettering as well which may be as impressive as the art. As indicated, this is a story that is not shy with dialog, but it also never feels overbearing. His page designs and layouts have impeccable pacing, especially when you get comic prose-like pages as one image dominates. It is then paired with a cavalcade of detail, broken into easily digestible bits. 

So in conclusion, what we have here are two stories about people looking to take law into their own hands. One is due to a family dispute while the other may have some more supernatural reasons. 

Both characters suffer major consequences, seemingly finding things are not as easy as other stories make it seem. I do wonder if there is any additional message here about guns as they play a key part in both. With Blue Ruin there is no clear message. It is not shy to show the violence guns bring, but we see violence enacted in other ways as well without firearms. This also demonstrates how some already established terminators work, yet those loopholes are demonstrated. Is it pro or against gun control? I would say neither honestly. People will probably feel it is leaning one way or another based on their own view, but I think that would be more due to their bias than the film.

Kill or Be Killed doesn’t really focus on the political element of guns all that much either. Dylan does struggle to find the right piece, but only for a brief time. If anything it does call out how a gun show is a perfect place to buy a gun if you plan on going on a murder spree. So there is that. 

At the end of the day, these are two stories done by storytellers operating at the top of their games. Message or no message they both demonstrate how you can go well beyond established norms to tell stories that are engaging to audiences. Art — no matter the format — is about the ability to captivate, using the tools whether it be cinematography or lettering to tell a story. All of which requires craftmanship and know-how to do correctly. These creators clearly know-how.

Read Kill or Be Killed
Watch Blue Ruin

Dan Clark is a lifelong fan of all things comics and moves. You can find him sharing his thoughts on Twitter @ConciergeComic or Tiktok @Comicconcierge. Comics are for everyone, the key is finding the right one.