Who By Fire

Zero #4

by Aleš Kot (Writer), Tom Muller (Letterer, Designer), Jeff Lemire (Artist)

This is how it ends: not with a whimper, not with a bang — but with mushrooms.

Collecting: Zero 15-18

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Science Fiction, Comic Book

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 29, 2015

About the author

Aleš Kot is a post-Chernobyl, pre-revolution, Czech-born, California-based writer/producer who started in graphic novels and now makes films, television, and an occasional novella.

A. believe in art and community.
A. doesn't believe in borders nor cops.
A. believes in love, which they know is a very Libra answer. And what about it?

Reviews

[Lono · Rating 4 out of 5]

NNNNNOOOOOO!!!!! What a dumb as shit way to wrap this one up. What the fuck just happened. Who the hell are Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Joan Vollmer for Christ’s sake? Where is all the ass-kicking?!?!?!? Why did I even waste my god-damn time with this? I KNEW this shit was gonna happen. Ales Kot musta been peakin’ on 12 hits of blotter acid when he puked this crap onto his keyboard. I didn’t expect Edward to ride off into the sunset with the girl, but really?!?!?!?



Several deep breathes later….Fuck it, I’m missing something. Come’on Google. We’ll start with who the hell Allen Ginsberg is...

For those of you that have not already read any of my reviews, I’m not a particularly smart guy (having spent much of my parent’s money and college loans on learning how to build a better water bong, desperately trying to contract VD, and pouring endless hours into becoming a world class hackey-sack player). I’m not into “literature”. Most times I’m a “what you see is what you get” mother-fucker, not a thoughtful philosopher. I usually, not always, but usually, like my comics to just be popcorn entertainment. Well written mind you, just a little easier to follow. Soooo, about an hour of internet research and 2 re-reads later, I found that I had developed a much different opinion of this book. Ales Kot REALLY challenged me with the final installment of Zero. He forced me to re-evaluate what my expectations were for this series and maybe the way I appraise other books in the future. Right, I know, pretty deep for a blue collar dip-shit, but it’s true.



I’m going out on a limb and guessing the average comic book reader (a category which I typically fit into) is gonna fuckin’ hate this book and the way Kot chooses to end this series. Not because their “dumb”, uneducated, or that it’s poorly written, it’s because Ales isn’t spoon feeding you shit and he requires you to consider just what he is hoping to communicate with Zero. I would imagine that the message is going to be different for anyone that reads it. On some level, I think it’s supposed to be like that. Believe me, if you thought that this series was a little confusing in the first 3 volumes, this book is really going to frustrate. Zero completely breaks from the already muddy reality that Ales created in the earlier books and spirals off into what initially presents itself as an even more distorted and trippy experience. Some of the more recognizable themes about violence and father-son relationships were a little easier to pick up on. Who all these people Ales introduces are, how their lives and work relate to the story, and why Ales chose this sometimes disjointed way of telling Edward’s tale took a little more work. For me, it was worth it only because I felt that I had actually learned something about what I expect from the stories I read, the way I perceive things (in books and otherwise), and had a connection with the author that I rarely have reading books. Now I’m sounding like a weirdo.



Anyway, the art also took a bit of effort to appreciate. Some, as in past issues, appealed to me a bit more than others. I really liked that Kot chose to allow all of these different artists to contribute to the story at the end and it wasn’t an idea I was initially sold on. Typically, I like consistency in a story in terms of the artist. I’ve left a few titles simply because there was a change in who was drawing them. I ultimately appreciated many the different styles all of these artists supplied and there was some really nice work in this book. That said, this book was still my least favorite in terms of the artwork when compared to all of the other volumes. Still some nice stuff though. And the coloring of Jordie Bellaire has been beautiful throughout the entire series. Bravo!



This is only a recommend to those that are looking to dig a little deeper than the average Marvel or DC monthly. Actually, a lot fuckin' deeper. While I found something totally new with this series and definitely enjoyed it, read it at your own risk. It’s certainly NOT for everybody.

Get this review and more at:

[The Lion's Share · Rating 2 out of 5]

****Spoilers!*****


Deserves Zero!

What a massive load of rubbish. What happened here!? Did Grant Morrison secretly feed Kot with mushrooms?

This series started out with promise. Strange, but with promise. So in volume one we are presented with a futuristic double agent. Feels no pain or emotion, strategically sound and a double hard bastard. So I'm thinking "this is gonna be different and cool." Vol. 2 got a bit crazy, but volume 3 was good and it held my interest. When they introduced giant fungus monsters I was even more intrigued, so I think we were all excited for vol. 4. However, I didn't think id be saying to myself I'm glad it ended here.

In this volume we find out that Zero (this was my understanding anyway) was part of a dream or written story by a writer who is on a mushroom binge with his mate after playing William tell with his ex girlfriend and blowing her head off. What the actual f**k!? I preferred the espionage and aliens, even if they were giant mushrooms from parallel universes.

Avoid this like the mushroom plague that it is.

I finish my review here because I don't have mushroom left! *grabs and holds cymbal*

I'll get my coat.

[Chumley Pawkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

While I appreciate that Ales Kot clearly loves his Burroughs and Ginsberg, stranglewanking what was an otherwise perfectly readable spy-fi story to death with them in its final volume was an absolutely ridiculous move.

Never has so much promise been so blithely squandered off of the back of the inchoate blatherings of a demented old smack-addict.

Some people may find the conclusion to "Zero" profound and innovative...but these are probably the same kind of people who think that dressing up like a steampunk cockerel and necking a shitload of drugs at "Burning Man" is "sticking it to the man". For the rest of us who have been round the block a few times, this is very much bargain-basement Grant Morrison. And to tell the truth, I was never that much of a fan of Morrison anyway.

[Craig · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sorry, but this is just crap. I'm sure it all means something if I just take the time to puzzle it out, but this series, which started strong, has just continually gotten weirder and weirder to the point where it's about as insular a comic as I've ever read (and I stuck with Alan Moore's Promethea to the end). I can't think this makes sense to anyone but Ales Kot, and even then, I wouldn't be so sure. How can an espionage/spy thriller series that started so strongly peter out like this? How do William S. Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg fit into the story? What is up with the talking mushrooms? WTF? Not recommended at all...

[Tone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was different.

[Poi Oip]

what a TRIPPY ASS CONCLUSION. so the first three volumes made sense okay. It took a while for me to understand the plot and it also took having a notebook handy but they made sense.

Short synopsis of the first three volumes: Edward Zero in 2038 recounts his life to a little boy about to shoot him. Zero was a spy hired by "The Agency", an organization that recruits children and trains them to become spies. The spies are effectively little machines of violence and strategy with no individuality whatsoever. Their sole purpose is to complete the various missions that The Agency assigns them.

Zero has a track record of executing his missions perfectly. However during one of his missions, where he is supposed to extract a biological weapon from a Palestinian soldier while keeping an Israeli soldier safe, he ends up killing both.

He covers this up, and has a series of other missions where he is less than perfect. Long story short, his friend from the spy academy turns out to be a mastermind terrorist with access to a multi verse portal, he loses his partner in crime who he suppresses his feelings for, and one of his bosses turns out to be his father who he unknowingly kills.

He runs away from the agency and lives undercover in Iceland until a woman from the agency (Cooke) tracks him down. He comes back and frees all the children from The Agency. There is an attack on The Agency by a ton of biologically enhanced Palestinian soldiers and Cooke blows up the building, killing herself, the soldiers, and destroys The Agency for good.

With me so far? Well, I'm about to lose you real quick.

The fourth volume looks at the story from a birds eye view: Two authors Ginsberg and Burroughs are penning the story of Zero. They have conversations about father-son relationships, the nature of violence in humans, and the concept of Art Imitates Life and Vice Versa.

This dialogue is paired with Zero's relationship with Zizek (boss later revealed to be his father) and his violent acts during the agency mission. They try to remind the reader that during these acts of violence, Zero had no individuality and that violence tends to do that to people, plaguing their soul. As soon as Zero frees the children, he ejects a black spider looking thing from his body and becomes himself. (Not Zero)

That was a piss poor synopsis of the fourth volume. There was so much stuff I did not even touch on.

Anyway I was expecting a Spy mystery thriller when I began this series. Did not sign up for the experimental avant garde mushroom trip festival at the end. Some of the stuff was a little bit pretentious and was a bit of a stretch. I kind of liked it though, because comics tend to get a bad reputation of glorifying superheroes, spies and cool guys without questioning whether their actions are morally right. This book took spy story and turned it into a trip through an art museum. Kind of left you with a feeling that you were more in touch with your fellow humans than when you first entered it.

[Alex Sarll]

I originally got into Kot because Wild Children felt like it was responding to the odd bits of Grant Morrison which other writers left aside, and that's very much the vibe I get here too. People who liked Zero qua near-future spy thriller hated this conclusion, and I can't blame them, but personally I enjoy trippy epiphanies about multiversal parasites, stories the universe is telling itself, and fungal consciousness. Granted, there's still clumsiness - "far" too "many" "speech" marks in "dialogue", for one thing - and he's still a bit prone to over-reliance on slightly obvious counterculture signifiers (this time, the Beats). But there's more than enough interesting sparks and spores to balance that out. And as ever, the artists are excellent choices - a grotty urban issue from Ian Bertram, Stathis Tsemberlidis on rot and filth, Robert Sammelin for the big resolution, and a luminous finale from Tula Lotay.

[Jason]

Hmmm. Well. Quite a departure from the first three volumes. At first I was kinda pissed off about it, but then as I got towards the end I think I started to get what Kot was getting at somewhat. Kind of interesting that such a violent book can end up being anti-violence...makes you wonder if Kot was luring in the audience he wanted to get the message to and then pulling the ol' bait and switch. Fortunately, the art is pretty amazing all the way through. Still a bit to abstract for my tastes.

[František Vondrák · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samozřejmě, že se to odehrává v tvojí hlavě, Harry, ale proč by to proboha mělo znamenat, že to není skutečné? (Albus Brumbál)

[Luis · Rating 3 out of 5]

necesitaría ser el doble de extensa para explorar y desarrollar todas sus (interesantísimas) ideas

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting series and thought provoking. Great artwork as well.

[Ming]

I don't think I'm ready to rate this book yet - there was a lot going on. I don't know if I'm convinced by the philosophical musings of this volume, but that's because I've yet to work out the details. A lot of images and thoughts are part of some coterie language (e.g. horses, father-son dynamic underscoring history, the ugly thing), yet by continually reintroducing them as familiar, these intimations grow in their suggestiveness and stand at the brink of comprehensibility, if not due to the fact that reintroductions usually reveal important details about something particular then at least due to the fact that reintroductions elucidate how these elements are (thematically) associated with each other within the story.

There's something consonant in every particular human experience, certainly the storytelling and images (cf. "Forgive Me") plus the fragments of philosophical musing (cf. discussion on synchronicity) reinforce this, but I don't know what to extract from this.

I don't know. There are some references to William Burrough and "the Ugly spirit", which I'm sure were introduced just to reinforce how everything is really the same in human history - but wonder if this wash of ideas and striking imagery conceals philosophical profundity or is just mush. I need to reread this in order to figure stuff out.

Note for next time: There seems to be a narrative of redemption going through this volume - in particular, the violent image of reaching into the throat gets played out two different ways. In one scene, it's the kill shot where Edward Zero kills an armed gunman who is attempting to destroy the agency; in another, Edward Zero appears to reach into his own throat to rip out the ugly thing. Do I buy this understanding of human beings? I'm not sure I do.

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Zero Volume 4: Who By Fire' by Ales Kot concludes the series in a sort of stream of consciousness way. Although it seems to have left behind it's earlier story, the themes are still evident here and I quite enjoyed it.

The reader is left to puzzle out events as this volume careens through time, and centers around mushroom experiments and a conversation by William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The theme of violence travelling from one generation to the next is continued, as is the attempt to extricate it as if it were a blackened part of our own flesh. Grotesque imagery abounds as characters seem to be blooming with growths.

This volume collects issues 15-18 and, as in previous volumes, each issue has a different artist with a unique style. I loved all the art, I liked the stream of consciousness style of the narrative. While I didn't completely know what was going on, I didn't feel completely lost, and perhaps a re-read would set me on the right path. The writing by Ales Kot was strange and illusory. The whole thing is grotesquely beautiful, and while it may not be to everyone's liking, I liked it just fine. It's books like this that show what an art form the graphic novel can really be, and how this sort of story just couldn't be told in print any other way.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Diamond Book Distributors, Image Comics, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

[Anatole · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Where did the horses go?"

[Daniel Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no idea what i just read!

[David Fells · Rating 1 out of 5]

What an agonizingly poor ending to an up-to-this-point fantastic series. Poorly written think piece as a means of avoiding proper story resolution. Good god, what a waste.

[Alex E · Rating 3 out of 5]

So.... this took a left turn eh?

Don't get me wrong. I liked it and thought the themes and ideas expressed were interesting. The non linear narrative, the multiverse theories, the general trippiness of it, its cool. Even the way the pace and panel placing mimicked the way Burroughs wrote, where things are out of place, continuity jumbled, themes alluded to, etc... was a really interesting move.

However, the first three volumes are a very interesting story about a secret agent and his attempt to escape the agency that raised him. What happened to that story? It was genuinely interesting and while this volume wraps up Edward Zero's story in a very broad sense, I would've liked something a lot more streamlined and focused.

From what I could discern, the volume is about Edward Zero who seems to be infected by a Fungal infection having the trip of a lifetime. He begins to speak to the mushroom fungus who tells him that the spores of the fungus have traveled through multiverses since the beginning of time. While this is happening, William Burroughs is eating mushrooms with Alan Ginsberg and writing the story of Zero's end. So we get a lot of parallels and loose associations between Zero and Burroughs. The Fungus tells Zero that there is a "black thing" infecting every human which thrives and incites the natural violence within us. This is the agency and all the violence done for the agency in Zero, and guns and specifically the accidental killing of his wife for Burroughs. And in an effort to stop the thought of "violence begets violence", which the "black thing" feeds on, the fungus tells us to change and stop. And that change will resonate throughout our universe. Which kills the "black thing" and lets us then be the best version of ourselves as a species.

Again interesting stuff, and i could be totally wrong but that was my interpretation.

I was really enjoying the series, and I enjoyed the finale, but it felt like two separate books. One that had no ending, and one that had no beginning.

[Interzonatron · Rating 5 out of 5]

so thankful to see the burroughsian universe finally taken up in the realm/medium of comics. i thoroughly enjoyed the series. it didn't simply just fixate on events in burroughs life (murder of his wife, being a deadbeat dad, morphine addiction etc) but rather it took the themes of the burroughsian magical worldview and ran with them, then looped it back on itself to address the events in burroughs life mentioned above. I find the genre of a spy comic to be rather fitting, especially considering for a time burroughs did work as a private investigator, and theories abound that he may have been a spy all his life.

[Brandon · Rating 1 out of 5]

This series started as a generic spy story and in the back half Kot decided to make it a drug-induced elaboration on the meaning of conflict and the presence of war in humanity. As we now introduce writers writing the book, and the endless possibility of the multiverse, and the whole plot disappearing. This volume could very well not exist, and the series would make about as much sense. But no the whole thing is about drug-induced mushrooms and possible cycles of hate between fathers and sons. Plot threads are left dangling, inter-connecting tissue doesn't exist, nothing matters.

[Morgan · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can't go off the philosophical deep end without warning readers throughout the story that that's what they're going to be getting into, so I can see why people wouldn't like it on that alone. For my part, I just don't know that it was done well enough. The introduction of the new....characters and narrative felt too sudden and then wasn't given enough room to expand and breathe in the previous setting. I can respect what the author wanted to do with the story and while it turned out to not be for me (or a lot of people), I can see why a very certain subset of readers would enjoy it.

[Chad Jordahl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Books 1-3 were the "bait", and this was the "switch". If I had paid for this book I'd be looking to get my money back. On its own terms this book isn't bad but it's not what I thought I was getting when I started on book 1, and it's not the kind of book I would want to read. Bah, very disappointing.

[Jeff Toth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rather than rising to the level of Grant Morrison, this feels like a philosophical treatise in place of a narrative ending. A metatextual cop out.

Thinking of all the great Image series unduly cancelled before their time, it's a shame that this series didn't get the axe after the third volume. It would've been better to have been left wondering, "what if" instead of this.

[Mark Sutherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I didn't see that coming. Come for the Bond deconstruction, stay for the mushroom fueled post modern examination of toxic masculinity and original sin. It's like watching Tarantino remake Bourne, only for Lynch to be swapped in at the finale. Bravo.

[Mee Too · Rating 2 out of 5]

So i have changed the title of vol 4 to 'trippin balls on shrooms'. The author seems burnt out on this series but has to write something anyway. mostly just ramblings with some shabby art and a few treasured phrases.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

it would be perfectly fine as some other trippy comic book, but here it serves as a dissatisfying conclusion to a cool spy series about Zero… phallic mushrooms aside, and some cool philosophy, its just not what i wanted/expected based on the first 3 volumes.

[Liana · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the eff is happening.

[Devon Munn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well this was a trippy finale to this series

[Davide Saladino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bella e interessante l'idea, ma troppa confusione nel realizzarla.

[Titas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perfect way to ruin a good series.

[Rob · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not sure I’m smart enough to understand what’s going on here.