Written by Michael Calero
Drawn by Piotr Kowalski
Published by Sumerian Comics/Massive Publishing
PREVIOUSLY: American Psycho #2
Once again, this issue revisits events from the film but tells them through the eyes of Donald Kimble. He shows up at Patrick’s office, claiming to be a private detective hired by Kimble’s girlfriend to investigate his disappearance. We see their first meeting when, afterward, Kimble reveals himself to have been so excited to finally be in Patrick’s presence that he actually drove to orgasm as he recalls it. So, clearly, he’s a disturbed individual.
Then, we get the follow-up meeting. Each time, through narration, we read how Kimble is studying Patrick’s every move, every word, and every little micro-expression. There’s the scene where he pulls out his copy of Huey Lewis and the News’ latest CD, which Patrick played in his apartment as he slaughtered Paul Allen. In the film, it’s portrayed as a likely coincidence, but here we see that Kimble brought it on purpose to rattle Patrick’s nerves and is pleased when it works. Kimble continues to stalk Patrick and is again watching through the window when Patrick has his secretary Jean at his apartment for a supposed date, but then prepares to kill her. But when Patrick changes her mind and doesn’t harm her, this shatters Kimble’s image of Patrick. He now considers him a fraud and a coward and can’t think of anything but disgust when he and Patrick have their final meeting at a restaurant for lunch.
The night, Kimble arrives, knife in hand, to Paul Allen’s apartment, where Patrick has been staying. This time, the goal is to kill Patrick, but he walks in right at the end of another one of Patrick’s brutal murders in the film, and it appears that his image of Patrick has been restored.
Speeding up to 2011, Charlene is hanging out with her friends, trying to resume her life, yet she keeps having images in her head of killing people. She gets really disturbed when she discovers that someone has created a Twitter profile using her picture under the name Psycho Killer NYC. She rushes to the townhouse of her parents, Luis and Courtney, and tells them what’s been happening to her, and how she’s worried that she’s losing her mind.
I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a big one. If you’re planning to read this miniseries yourself, do that before you read the rest of my reviews.
Michael Calera’s writing is intense, and I really love the narrative dialog he writes for Donald Kimble. It’s reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis’ narration from Patrick in the novel. And at the moment, that’s been the most interesting part of the series; I almost wish he’d just focused on that, keeping the whole story in 1987 during the film’s events. The 2011 storyline with Charlene has been a comparatively weak storyline and maybe should have been a separate miniseries itself, although based on this issue’s cliffhanger, my view of this may change with the rest of this miniseries.
I realized that I hadn’t mentioned the art in my previous reviews. There is a reason for that. The artist is competent, but his style feels too muted for me; there’s nothing dynamic about it. I don’t know if I can explain it, but I’m just not that impressed, and that is the weakest link of this series. I wish one of the artists who’ve done some of the alternative covers for this book was doing the interiors, instead.
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