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Lady Killer (Trade Paperback)

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    Ian Jane
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  • Lady Killer (Trade Paperback)



    Lady Killer (Trade Paperback)
    Released by: Dark Horse Comics
    Released on: September 2nd, 2015.
    Written by: Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich
    Illustrated by: Joelle Jones
    Purchase From Amazon

    In 2014, writer Jamie S. Rich brought you Madame Frankenstein through Image Comics. If you didn't read that series, shame on you. It was really very good and it featured some seriously awesome covers by an artist named Joelle Jones. A new year sees the launch of their latest effort, this time through Dark Horse Comics, in the form of Lady Killer #1 - where Ms. Jones not only handles the cover art but handles the interior pages as well, co-writing with Rich, and that's a very good thing indeed.

    The first issue of this new five issue mini-series takes place in what we'll guess is the 1950's, and it introduces us to Ms. Anderson. She's selling Avon at the door of a cranky older lady named 'Ms. Roman' more interested in her yipping ensemble of fashion accessory toy breed dogs than anything else. Anderson basically lets herself into the house, in hopes of getting the woman to take some time out for beauty. One dog related coffee spill later and the truth comes out - someone has paid Anderson quite well to take 'Ms. Roman' out of the picture. The old bag isn't going to do down without a fight, or without making a big ol' mess…

    From there we cut to Josie Schuller's fairly happy home life - a woman that sure does look an awful lot like 'Ms. Anderson.' Sure her mother-in-law hangs out and speaks in German, a language that she doesn't understand, but her husband, Gene, seems like a decent guy and her two daughters give her plenty of happiness. Just as she's putting dinner out, she gets a call from a man named Peck who offers her another job but Gene is around, she can't just take this call like a normal call so she dodges it. Later, Peck shows up on her doorstep, and while he husband is ignorant to this, her mother-in-law is not. Peck needs a female operative this time around, and Josie's his only one…

    Issue two finds Josie Schuller is working 'undercover' at a certain club, all decked out like a sexy kitty cat serving cocktails to men and telling them her name is Crystal. One man makes a pass at her and she puts him down but later hands him a note telling him to 'meet me in the cloak room.' He excuses himself from the table and does just that, and is promptly attacked by Josie. He fights back and gives her a pretty serious beating, but she's not about to let her mark get away. She finishes the job.

    Peck shows up, dressed like a driver, and helps her get rid of the body. He tells her that Steinholm, their boss, wants a chat with her this coming Friday. She arrives at the meeting, he chats her up and then discusses what a detriment it can be in this business to let family life get in the way of one's professional life. He hands her the next assignment he has for her and sends her back out into the world, and she heads back home…

    This third issue starts off at a party - people are drinking, men are putting their hands on women when they shouldn't be, and women are making catty comments to one another. Amidst all of this merrymaking, Josie Schuller tries to play hostess while getting her kids off to bed. With the kids tucked away she heads to the kitchen where she's startled to find Mother Schuller awake, not because the party is too loud but because she's concerned as to why Josie disappears for long stretches of time leaving her with the kids. She's convinced Josie is having an affair and threatens to tell her son but Josie tells her straight up she's wrong. She grabs the maraschino cherries she was looking for and heads back to her wifely duties.

    Meanwhile, at the office, Peck is meeting with Stenholm about recent difficulties involving Josie. Peck stands up for her but is told in no uncertain terms that once Josie finishes her current assignment, she will need to be removed. She's too much of a potential threat to everyone involved in the business. Stenholm wants Peck to take care of this. Josie, however, is back to work - she lets herself into the home of her target and proceeds to take care of business… sort of. We won't spoil any of that in this review.

    This penultimate issue starts off with a tense scene in which Peck has his gun to Josie's head. Always the company man, he needs her to go back to the scene of the crime and take care of the kid she let live. A fight breaks out but it's broken up by an old man with a shotgun. This gives Josie an 'out' and she takes it (and Peck's new car), while Peck pays back the old man, who was only trying to help a lady he thought was being assaulted, in a nasty, nasty way.

    She makes it home and calls the neighborhood gossip queen, Edith Sampson, and tells her to keep an eye on the suspicious sports car parked nearby the school. Eager to have something going on, Edith agrees. And after that? It's back to normal life. A peck on the cheek from the husband, and a run with the girls to dance school but just as Josie's about to split the phone rings - Edith saw a man get in the car. What Josie really does though? She finds and then follows Peck to a Chinese restaurant. He's there to talk a woman named Ruby into paying her debt. He splits and Josie, using the girls as a distraction, forces Ruby to agree to a meeting later that night, presumably to give her some info.

    That meeting doesn't go as planned.

    It all comes down to this, the fifth and final issue of Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich's fantastic collaboration, Lady Killer. An advertisement for the Seattle World's Fair opens the issue up, a nifty little black and white vintage style promising all manner of futuristic attractions for those who attend. Josie and Ruby are there, posing as employees but interested not in the guests but in taking care of Peck and Stenholm. She really doesn't have a choice, it's them or it's her.

    While this is going on, President Kennedy is delivering a speech being broadcast to the fairgrounds from Florida. Josie heads into the crowd and is surprised to see Gene there, their two daughters and cranky old mother-in-law in tow. Surprise! She sends them off to see the sights and splits again, but is followed. The showdown that we all knew was inevitable last issue plays out, but not as you'd expect it. Ruby and Josie and Irving and Peck and of course, Mr. Stenholm himself. Mother Schuller too.

    No guns, it'll make too much noise.

    A finale that's as violent as it is satisfying, things get decidedly bloodier than they have in the four issues prior with this last chapter. The script ties things together nicely but leaves the door open for another go round, but it does so with plenty of grace and style. Josie Schuller was an interesting character from the start and she's proven a smart, sexy and very capable female antagonist throughout. She's a feminist statement to be sure, even a role model in some ways, but never to the point where the politics and setting in which all of this explodes feels heavy handed or forced. It'd be a shame to walk away from all of that, particularly when Josie is written as well as she was in this run. The pitch black comedy that's always been a part of this series is on full display here again while the ties that bind Josie to her domestic life (as opposed to her real life) are once again a big part of what makes this a compelling read. But the violence, wow… Jones and Rich really don't pull back.

    Artistically speaking, we're once again wowed by Jones illustrations. There are some pretty twisted moments in this issue that are rendered in perfect detail but so too are there are lot of neat little background bits and pieces that keep your eyes pouring through the panels. Setting things at the fair offers plenty of cool retro style art pieces to populate the backgrounds while Jones' ability to render the human element of the story as well as she does keeps the foregrounds alive with movement. Laura Allred's colors once again compliment the pencils and the inks in really impressive ways.

    Cool, twisted, funny and consistently engaging, this was a good run. Here's hoping the creative team bring Josie Schuller back for more sooner rather than later.

    This trade paperback collects all five issues of the mini-series and also includes a new introduction from Chelsea Cain and a few pages of Jones' sketchbook with annotation from Jones and Rich that offer some insight into the genesis of the project. We get a nice cover gallery here too, showcasing all of the standard and variants that were produced for the run.



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