Today marks the release of Die #20, the finale of possibly the best comic ever about table top role playing games, the reasons we play them, and how full immersion can change our lives forever. This book — written by Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Stephanie Hans, and lettered by Clayton Cowles — has been gorgeous throughout its run. To tackle the finale issue, we’ve assembled a team of guests to discuss it in a roundtable format. Table top RPGs are, after all, a collaborative effort at every level…

The DIE #20 Round-Table Review: When a Dodecahedron is a circle

KEIGEN REA: I started reviewing comics here at Comics Bookcase because I suddenly had enough time to do that sort of thing due to the pandemic. Soon, I started writing non-review articles, and started writing for other outlets. 

Something I never intended to happen happened: I met people, and became friends with them. And they changed me. So, I’ve invited some collaborators to join me for this Die #20 review, which feels extra fitting to me given this is a book about a group…

LOGAN DALTON: I think I’ve mentioned this before, either on Twitter or in another article, but I didn’t latch onto Die immediately like I did with Kieron Gillen’s other collaborations. This is probably because I don’t know a lot about tabletop roleplaying games compared to pop music, young adult superheroes, or mythology and more pop music. However, the “historical” chapters featuring figures like J.R.R. Tolkien, the Brontes, H.G. Wells, the inventor of wargames (I played a ton of History of the World and Axis and Allies with my family growing up though), and H.P. Lovecraft added context and rich intertextuality to the world of Die were what kept me reading the series. This was in addition to Stephanie Hans’ career best art and colors plus the full arc that she and Gillen gave to and are rounded out to a very satisfying conclusion in Die #20.

REAGAN ANICK: I’ve loved Gillen’s writing since I first read Journey Into Mystery years ago. Something that I’ve always admired about his work is its ability to punch me in the gut at least once per series, the aforementioned Journey Into Mystery is a prime example of this ability and I’ve absolutely talked about it at length before.

The final arc of Die began on May 5 of this year, about a month before I came out as nonbinary. Like a lot of people, I had begun to fully question my gender over the course of the pandemic. Although, to be completely honest, the question had always been there, I just hadn’t been willing to ask it. 

LOGAN: One thing that I’ve learned throughout the run of Die as well as its back material is that a role playing game is just a series of conversations so, of course, Kieron Gillen wraps up the ultimate RPG with a question asked by Die itself “What am I for?” It’s initially misunderstood, but soon Ash (coming off the revelatory Die #19, which my nonbinary ass should write an essay about eventually...) realizes that it’s not about understanding the ultimate purpose of the game, universe, or story: it’s about your own connection to these fictional worlds. Because according to its own words in this issue, Die will keep feeding on the imaginations of the folks of our world like some kind of metafictional vampire. 

So, what matters isn’t one objective or perfect interpretation — it’s your own relationship with text, and how it impacted your life at the time: the ultimate triumph of reader-response theory. Gillen via Ash summarizes this in a pitch perfect monologue with harrowing close-up panels from Hans and lays out the relationship that Angela, Izzy, Matt, Chuck, and Sol have to Die as children and now as adults. Your relationship to the books, comics, films, songs, and games you love will change over the years, and that’s okay because it shows that you are changing and (hopefully) growing as a person as you gain life experience and encounter different kinds of media (aka the opposite of the guy who has only seen Boss Baby).

REAGAN: Like the steps I took to figuring out who (and what) I am, a TTRPG is just a conversation. The conversation I had been having with myself was a long one spoken at different volume levels throughout my life, sometimes it was quiet, like children told to be seen and not heard, others it was a siren, louder than anything else in my head, forcing itself to the forefront so that I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Like Ash and the giant, fiery version of themself from Die #19, I needed to confront myself in order to progress. I needed to look at who I had always presented myself as and accept who I really am in order to move forward.

I think what I’m trying to get at here is that, when you look at the human, character-focused element of Die, you realize that it’s a coming-of-age story, if not literally about the characters physically growing up, then about them maturing on an emotional level. And those conversations that we have with ourselves, those role-playing games we play in our heads? Those are critical to that growth.

KEIGEN REA: The slow return to “normalcy” has been an interesting shift. The pandemic and its effects have changed all of us in many ways, but for me, many of those changes are directly related to the friendships I’ve made with comic fans on Twitter and Discord. The odd part about this, to me, is realizing that it’s not just that I’ve changed, but that the person I am online — right here — is different from the one I was at work, or in my parents living room, or with my (irl?) friends. The return to “normalcy” hasn’t just been me acclimating to whatever normal is, it’s acclimating to whatever synthesis I can find between the me’s.

LOGAN: The sequence where the adventuring party returns to the “real world” smack dab in the middle of 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic is easily my favorite bit in Die #20 and a personal highlight for the series along with Ash grappling with being gender fluid in Die #19 and the Tolkien-centric issue in Die #3. The different reunions that each cast member has with their family or lack of family showcases one of Kieron Gillen’s strengths as a writer: nailing mundane, yet beautifully slice-of life interactions in the midst of total madness whether that’s being trapped in a role playing game or a global pandemic (there’s a reason Chynna Clugston-Flores tapped him to write the introduction to the Image Comics Blue Monday reprint).

This type of sequence showed up a lot in the Phonogram comics, but those books were set in the past while Die #20 grapples with our current apocalyptic reality of social distancing, masks, and, in some cases, lack of physical touch. And to make it resonate even more, Gillen drops out the dialogue and captions and lets Stephanie Hans’ work sing that works best in the silent reunion between Sol and his mom as they embrace while he looks into the middle distance. Without saying a word, you know that he wishes he was still in Die and isn’t ready to face an increasingly bleak reality just yet…

The final page of Die is super memorable, fourth wall shattering, and might be an ad for the upcoming RPG. It involves Sol handing his trademark shades to the reader offering them to experience Die for themselves. I see this scene as the “Our sentence is up” moment on the final page of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, but for the COVID-19 generation. We’re still going through a literal apocalypse, but with good art like Die (and the upcoming Die RPG), there can be some semblance of hope and especially light just like the radiant color palette Stephanie Hans uses on this page proverbially leaving it all on the court.

KEIGEN: At its end, Die perfectly illustrates the way that fiction affects reality, but not just the way “stories'' or “games” do so, but the way that we create fictions that distort ourselves and our version of reality. They can be lies we make ourselves believe, truths we bury deep, our ideal versions of ourselves, or our personal nightmare scenarios. These ideas bleed into and become a part of who we are, they become a part of the part we play each day. 

Die is a comic about going on an adventure with your friends, and Die #20 is about how that adventure ends with and because of everybody changing. It may be the perfect pandemic story.

OVERALL: Die #20 — and Die as a complete comic story — is a critical hit! 20/20

DIE #20

Die #20
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Stephanie Hans
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Image
Price: $3.99
"Bleed," Part Five
You can never go home, said Sol, way back in issue two. Let’s see if he was right.
More Info: Die #20

Reagan Anick (She/They) is an aspiring eldritch horror and life-long film lover. Currently, Reagan can mostly be found at GateCrashers, where she currently serves as editor for both Marvel and horror articles. Her writing can also be found on ComicsXF, Comic Book Herald, and Women Write About Comics.

Logan Dalton (They/Them) is an academic librarian at a college in Virginia. They have also written about popular culture, especially comics and television shows, since 2013 for different outlets, including Graphic Policy, BookList, Shmoop, and GateCrashers. They once interviewed a vampire and came out as bisexual in article about the X-Men.

Keigen Rea (He/Him) is slowly getting used to actually working full-time again. Talk soon.