Review — ‘Kill Your Darlings’ #2 Is Full Of Emotional Weight

Welcome to the table,

We all deserve to be safe. Safe from fear, from hunger, from those who would do us harm. The hardest thing to safeguard ourselves from is our own mind.

Kill Your Darlings from Image Comics puts a spotlight on what feeling unsafe in your own mind could actually be like, and then filters it through the fingers of fantasy. It delivers something wholly unique and still very much grounded in the demons that haunt many of us in our day to day lives.

The talented team of Ethan S. Parker and Griffin Sheridan lend their writing chops to this endeavor, and are accompanied by the brilliant artistry of one of my best friends in the world, Robert “Bob” Quinn. John J. Hill lends his lettering and design skills to this book, and honestly the combination of this all star group of talent makes this book truly something special.

The story picks up after the events of issue one, jumping us back into the past where secretive works unfold. Young occult-minded kids in 1700 are being assaulted by what look like religiously-minded fur trappers. Then things go as one could only hope it would, as nature or something more than natural… supernatural if you will, steps in and lays some stick, thorn, and root about.

We then jump back to Rose in the moments after the fire from issue one, and then another jump to 2003. Normally these kind of time hopping exploits would irritate me, but between Bob’s flawless execution across these pages and Ethan and Griffin’s abilities to weave a emotionally charged story, the page turns seem almost cinematic in nature and really showcase what well executed comic storytelling can look like.

The story evolves in a way where old friends, imaginary or otherwise, appear and the looming threats from the world within Roses mind cast ominous shadows and beg the question what comes next?!

Kill Your Darlings is a brilliant exploration of trauma and tragedy in an evolving landscape where the unreliable narrator seems to be the only one we can really trust.

Until next time, Beat-Em Beasts is one of the most amusing in world products I’ve seen and I love that there is card art for them in this issue.