Graphic Novel Review – Die Vol 4: Bleed by Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy/Graphic Novel
Length: 160 pages
Publisher: Image Comics
Release Date: November 9, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-1534319264
Stand Alone or Series: 4th volume in the Die series
Source: Bought
Rating: 3/5 stars
“We’ve had dragons. The award-winning bleak deconstruction couldn’t end without turning its unblinking eye upon a dungeon. There’s no escape. There’s only down.”
Series Info/Source: This is the 4th and final volume in the Die graphic novel series. I bought this book.
Thoughts: This was yet another fairly disappointing ending to a graphic novel series. This had a very cliche’ open-ended of ending. This is the third graphic novel series I have finished this month where you have this ambiguous and very unsatisfying type of ending.
The ending here felt really rushed. I also felt like we picked up some time after Vol 3 and that some things that happened in that “in-between” time were missing from the story. As a result, the reader is left to kind of assume what happened between Vol 3 and 4.
This volume has Ash and crew back together as a party and heading into the heart of Die. There we find out what happened to Sol and how Die was created. There are again a lot of gaming references but the world is more Lovecraftian in nature this time around, so there is more discussion of Call of the Cthulhu and those types of RPGs. There are also a lot of rather corny LoTR references.
The whole explanation behind Die felt really forced and contrived to me and I found the whole thing fairly unsatisfying. However, it does tie up some loose ends and I continued to enjoy all the artwork. While I am happy to have finished the series, I think I could have just read the first volume of this series and been happy…it went downhill from there.
My Summary (3/5): Overall I would tentatively recommend this series if you are super into RPGs and want to read a mediocre graphic novel series that deals with that subject matter. This was creative and I liked the concept; however it oscillates between hard to follow and just plain silly and the ending was pretty lame. I liked the artwork though.
