DIE: Loaded #4: Die: Laughing

While tabletop roleplaying games can be a way to escape and to process difficult emotions at arm’s length, they can also be really, deeply, profoundly… silly. Sometimes, you’re not processing grief or unpacking your gender identity. Sometimes, you’re playing Honey Heist, a one-page TTRPG about bears wearing hats. Or, perhaps, you’re me playing a D&D one-shot as Dora the Explorer in a map your GM hasn’t told you is a thinly-veiled Snakes and Ladders board. Generally speaking, DIE and its sequel DIE: Loaded (written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Stephanie Hans, and lettered by Clayton Cowles) are deadly serious about tabletop gaming. Humor has tended to be secondary to more difficult emotions like grief, anger, and fear. But when dealing with the Hard Stuff, it’s important to take a breather. That’s what DIE: Loaded #4 provides.

This issue sees Sophie, Molly, and Margaret trying their best to find their missing remaining party members in a place where everyone—and I do mean everyone —thinks they’re the Chosen One. The comic introduces us to a smorgasbord of potential Chosen Ones via a series of single panels that also offer Hans ample opportunity to flex her character design chops. Each Chosen One is edgier, sillier, and more absurd than the last. (My favorite Chosen One is probably the Frodo spoof who needs to destroy, not just one, but dozens of rings.)

At the heart of all this goofiness, of course, lies one of DIE: Loaded’s central theses: no one is an NPC (non-player character) and there’s danger in seeing oneself as the Protagonist of Reality. Nowhere is this idea expressed more clearly than by the Chosen One that eventually joins the party: Callum, the party’s fool—and son of dead DIE player Chuck. Callum is a teenager, gamer, and Joe Rogan enthusiast only capable of seeing women as means of sexual gratification. In other words, he’s a nightmare. Nonetheless, his general over-the-top-ness and some deeply silly facial expressions courtesy of Stephanie Hans keep Callum from absolute insufferability. As I’ve written before with regard to The Power Fantasy, the Massive Misogynistic A-hole Who Gets A Comeuppance is a kind of Kieron Gillen stock character at this point. Given Callum is a snotty teenager, I can only hope that DIE: Loaded sees him learn to deconstruct toxic masculinity and see women as people.