KILL OR BE KILLED VOL. 1 by Ed Brubaker

Dylan is a depressed grad student and kind of a pussy, pining over his best friend Kira. He decides to end it all by jumping off a building and  then miraculously survives, with a whole new love for life. But then he realizes that in exchange for his life, he's sold his soul to a demon who demands that he kill one deserving person every month, as rent for living his own life.

The whole idea of the Faustian deal with the demon felt a little lazy and contrived, but what it leads to, a young man forced into reluctant vigilantism, is really engaging. How do you decide who is deserving of death? How do you handle dealing with a gun for the first time? How do you keep your secret life hidden from your friends? How do you handle it when your victims fight back? These are a few of the questions I found asking myself while taking this ride with Dylan.

This is the latest on my adventures delving into Brubaker's work with artists Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser, and this, his most recent series, has lots of potential to grow in different ways as the series goes on, and I'm excited to be there to see it.

GRADE: B