“Hey, Draculas! We’re over here!”
“Chuck, I’m going to murder you.”
After a six month hiatus, Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans are back! Keep reading for a review of Die #11.
I’m avoiding spoilers for this issue, but I do spoil the previous issues, so if you’re not caught up you may want to wait to read this review.
So, after all these months, I had to go back and read the last three issues to remind myself where everyone is and what they want.
Matt and Angela just want to go home; they want to see their families, and their lives in Die aren’t so attractive that they’d want to stay. But the Party can’t leave until everyone agrees to go.
(Mind you, I don’t know that Matt’s home life is all that attractive at the moment: there was a conversation with his sword a couple issues ago that led me to believe that there’s something else, something other than his kids leaving for college, that’s making him unhappy, but we don’t get confirmation on that this issue.)
Izzy can’t leave until she’s completely sure she’s saved the people who trusted her: the residents of the now-very-much-destroyed Glass Town. Ash officially wants to stay for the same reason, and to keep her son safe, and to keep Eternal Prussia from destroying everything. She’s taken control of Angria, ruthlessly lied and blackmailed and brainwashed her way to the throne for those reasons. But she’s afraid that the real reason she’s become an Evil Queen is because…she really likes it.
The vampire Zamorna is on their side partly to keep his son safe, partly to take control of Angria again, but mostly because Ash used her Dictator power on him and now he has no choice. That’s an extra wrinkle in the plan, because a Dictator can’t make more than one binding at a time; if she uses her powers on anyone else, Zamorna will cheerfully rip her throat out.
Side note: I like the design of Ash’s crown, a circle of flames around one eye, which is what appears when she uses her powers; possibly a way to compensate for not being able to use her powers at the moment? Or just thumbing her nose at anyone who doesn’t like the way she became Queen? Either way, it’s beautiful.
Chuck is…on his own side. His life in the “real” world is pretty sweet (shallow as hell, but as a big shot Hollywood type he has fun) but it’s hard to pass up a world of magic and sexy elves. Problem is, he’s dying in both worlds. He was on Izzy and Ash’s side because they wanted to stay, but after the takeover of Angria he doesn’t trust them, and he needs to go on a quest to figure out this whole “peeing blood” thing.
Parsing out Chuck’s attitude is fun: is he a smartass about dying because he’s never managed to grow up and that’s his default setting? Or is it because, as the Fool, his powers rely on him never taking any risk seriously: if he starts to behave, his luck stops. I mean, it’s both, obviously. Add to that the fact that the goddess Mistress Woe is ready to set bad luck on him when he least expects it, a consequence of pissing off the Godbinder, and…well I was going to say he isn’t feeling so lucky anymore, but see above re: “PEEING BLOOD.”
Technically, there’s a lot of ways for them all to get what they want. But it’s a world based on an RPG: the game itself looks like it’s got some opinions on what the Party should do next.
And Sol is dead, but he still has an opinion. Interestingly, most of his opinions are about Ash, who mentioned a couple issues ago that she was an “unreliable narrator” because she hadn’t told us, the readers, everything she knows. Despite the fact that he’s a half-mad, half-rotting corpse, she takes his opinions awfully seriously. What else do we not know about her and Sol’s relationship?
Another side note: I really liked Izzy and Ash’s discussion this issue about having sex with Zamorna. It’s a subtle reminder that someone can say “yes” but that doesn’t necessarily make it consent.
The Party’s biggest question used to be “How the hell did Sol build Die?” (Well, okay, that was the second-biggest question, the biggest being “How the hell do we get home?”) But they’ve got a much bigger, much creepier question now.
People from the real world who die in Die turn into the Fallen. But there were Fallen in Die before the Party arrived. So how did those people get here?
If I understand the cliffhanger at the end of this issue, answering that question just got a lot more important. (Unless it means something else, in which case one member of the Party had better give us a big slice of backstory next issue.)
As for Stephanie Hans’ art, there’s really too many beautiful panels to pick a favorite. I loved the image of Angela, Chuck, and Matt in the forest, looking at the projection from her wrist, while the dwarves fed the horses in the background. I loved Ash’s crown, and the panels of her reaching up to touch the glass of Sol’s cage. And I honestly can’t decide who looks cooler in this series, Angela or Ash. They both look badass and amazing.
