The story of SUICIDE 5 is as follows:
Glenn has just committed suicide on YouTube and his friends couldn’t be prouder.
With Glenn’s death a deadly game begins where five friends decide they are willing to do anything to become famous.
With this mission in mind, they draft Mason, a young sculptor with social anxiety disorder, as a reluctant judge. His mission is to record and rate every participant’s performance. Mason watches as his friends die one by one, each more horribly than the last. Accusations of UNORGINALITY, INFIDELITY, and PLAGIARISM make the already surreal competition even more horrifying!
THIS BOOK IS FOR MATURE READERS ONLY
This book arrived in my inbox one day. I read the synopsis you see above and I was intrigued. I was curious how this book was going to play out. Suicide is a touchy subject for many people. I myself have lost a friend to the act. What really got me is that it seemed to be showcased as an act to become famous. How and a better question of why? I decided to dive in and find out.
The whole book kind of plays out like a movie to me. There is a little bit of a prequel type piece before the title splash page. We see the first death play out. Then we start to time jump back and forth to see how the idea of performing elaborate suicides to get attention would work. The one guy named Darwin wants to rally the group of friends to try and out perform one another’s death while someone scores them because he felt that Glenn’s death was a little weak. Pretty weird, I know. Everyone buys into it, draws straws for who goes first and so it begins.
Mason is the guy that has to judge everyone even though he really doesn’t want to. As each character dies, there are odd reactions from the remaining characters. Little by little the suicides get more elaborate and unique until there is one ma left. This is where the story take a twist. Right when you see that play out, that twist turns into a pretzel.
Some may be thinking, “Did the ‘Suicide 5′ achieve their goal to become famous?” One can argue that. They were talked about after the fact but was it worth it? They will eventually be pushed aside for something new. The underlined message in the story is quite good. I think that is what made me read straight through the 100+ page comic straight through. It is always hard to get a book out there and especially get people to read it when it is a tough subject matter. Jason Pell did an excellent job telling such a hard story but everything flowed very well together and looked great too.
This project started as a Kickstarter and after achieving their goal, it was published and will soon be available on Amazon and in print. I encourage you to check out a story that isn’t like your typical comic that you might read. To quote Jason at the end of the book, “Everything is fiction, until it’s not.”
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