DIE: Loaded #1: Dad of Boy

When DIE, the comic series following a group people trapped Jumanji-style in a TTRPG fantasy world, came to an end in 2021, it seemed final. Both DIE’s players and its readers alike were returned to the real world. So when the 2022 hardcover omnibus loudly pronounced “Book One” on its spine, I approached those words with the trepidation of a spooked horse and the fevered hope of a conspiracy theorist. Now, two-and-a-half years later, I’m here to shout from my nearest available rooftop: “DIE BOOK TWO IS HERE! IT’S REAL! IT’S VERY, VERY GOOD!”

When creating a sequel, a great number of things can go sideways. A story might get too bogged down in summarizing past events or alienate its original audience in an effort to grow its audience. Alternately, it might alienate prospective readers and even old readers by expositing too little. The first issue of DIE: Loaded (a play on The Matrix: Reloaded and the concept of loaded dice) treads this tightrope in style.  Picking up a year after the previous series, DIE: Loaded #1 sees its characters reuniting at a memorial service for Chuck, the player who died inside the game world of Die. It is as much a reunion for the reader as it is for the characters, letting us know what some of DIE’s protagonists have been up to since we left them in 2020.  DIE’s main protagonist, Ash, returns to find their wife Sophie has given birth. Ash’s desire to explore their gender identity quickly takes a backseat as they find themself playing a new, strongly gendered role: “Daddy.” Meanwhile, Ash’s sister Angela is haunted by the future-knowledge that her nonbinary child Molly will enter the world of Die and die there.

DIE has always been about escapism, mortality, and the simple truth that sometimes escapism leads to missing out on the important parts of life worth being present for. DIE’s creators — writer Kieron Gillen, artist Stéphanie Hans, and letterer Clayton Cowles — are now setting out to explore how these themes relate to parenthood. The 2010s saw a surge of video games that put players in the role of dads protecting children against dangerous landscapes. In some cases, these dads were new to the scene, like The Last of Us’ Joel, who must protect a teenage girl named Ellie years after the loss of his own daughter. Other times, these characters were decades old,  like Kratos from the God of War series, given a son named Atreus in the eponymous 2022 game often jokingly referred to as Dad of Boy. While on the surface it may seem strange that suddenly all of gaming’s protagonists were becoming dads and adoptive dads, the reason for it was quite simple: game developers were growing up and having kids of their own. Frequent and perhaps infrequent readers of Gillen’s newsletter will likely be aware that this is a recent reality shift for DIE’s writer, too. 

And parenthood can be plenty terrifying even when Norse gods (God of War), fungal parasitic zombie plagues (The Last of Us), or deadly fantasy TTRPGs aren’t involved. “No one had warned me that with a child comes death,” writes Claudia Dey in her 2018 Paris Review essay “Mothers as Makers of Death”: “Death slinks into your mind. It circles your growing body, and once your child has left it, death circles him too.” Therein lies the horror of DIE: Loaded. 

One may argue that more broadly it’s a story about the horrors of creating something—a child, a game—and putting it into the world. In the interim between DIE and DIE: Loaded, Gillen and Hans published DIE: The TTRPG (or DIE: the very pretty art book if you’re unable to play it). In a plot beat so meta it’s headache-inducing, Sol — Ash’s friend who was trapped in Die for twenty years — has excitedly told Ash about his plans to publish DIE: The TTRPG. The comic’s mid-arc twist and escalation, meanwhile, are quite surprising — albeit more surprising if you didn’t read last week’s Polygon exclusive first. 

Hans continues to be a master of her craft as the book progresses from the sickening greens, sterile blues, and warm orange light of the real world and leaves them behind for the vivid and dizzying world of Die. Hans’ characters are always intimately expressive and character designs within the fantasy world are striking. Several years ago, director Guillermo Del Toro coined the term “eye protein” as a contrasting term to “eye candy”: where eye candy only offers something pretty to look at, eye protein also leaves you with something to chew on. Hans’ work is eye protein. Every time I go back through the pages of DIE: Loaded #1—or older issues of DIE, We Called Them Giants, Journey Into Mystery #645 for that matter—I find myself appreciating some detail of her work I’d previously missed. 

At this point, you may be thinking I’ve left you with absolutely nothing new to discover or ponder for yourself. In truth, I feel I’ve only scratched the surface. Reading DIE: Loaded #1, it’s hard not to be struck by the density of its storytelling when compared to comics of the same length—often at a higher price point. It’s like realising Casablanca, widely considered one of the best films of all time, is only two minutes longer than The Room, widely considered one of the worst. I can confidently say that DIE: Loaded #1 is firmly on the Casablanca end of the spectrum.