Comic Review: Die!Die!Die! #2

Die!Die!Die! #2

Image Comics

Writer: Robert Kirkman & Scott M. Gimple

Artist: Chris Burnham

Last month I was honest about the premier issue of Die!Die!Die!, and this month I’m still going to be honest. The series started with a chew ’em up and spit ’em out attitude, and I was lukewarm about it. However, I did say the last issue was like a prelude before the story started and I was right.

This is what I wanted from the series. It was strutting around the first issue like a shoot’em action flick in print and in this issue it delivers on it all and shows us what this new series is all about. It almost feels like the Kirkman could have made this the first issue and done away with the previous one. Our heroic duo that paired up at the end of #1 is finally in action. John and Nate are looking for Paul, John’s brother. As witnessed in the last issue Paul gets his nose cut off (it was exceptionally brutal), that plays a big part in this issue as well. We get to meet Baroness Solkovia who is extremely pretty, evil and semi-badass. It’s exactly how I wanted it to be with John and Paul shooting their way through a castle to rescue Paul while filling the bubbles with Lethal Weapon banter. We get a throwaway scene with Senator Lipshitz, and it is truly the only wasted panels here.

Kirkman and Gimple have created something unique. A full-throttle action book that gives us our fill of bullets, explosions and bad guys. The dialogue works, and the story moves along. I have no complaints about their work here. Like the last issue, not all of the lines feel like Kirkman, so I’m not sure if Scott Gimple is writing or just working on the story. Either way, it isn’t overly wordy, and the set pieces are fun so keep it coming!

I enjoyed the artwork last month, and it’s still great here. Chris Burnham seems to have a feel for the bloody violence and Thank God! If the art were not on par with this story the whole series would suffer greatly. We need the guy who grew up watching Die Hard and John Woo movies to draw this. Burnham nails it all: the guns, the fire, and the blood.

I was elated that Die!Die!Die! #2 gave me everything I wanted after the first issue. I wanted the action turned up to eleven and the quips dripping with cheese. I’ve heard some people dismissing this series without reading it and Kirkman and Gimple haters shooting off at the mouth about how they knew this book would fail. Hey…shut up!