Lady Killer 2 #1

Lady Killer 2 #1
Released by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: August 3rd, 2016.
Written And Illustrated by: Joelle Jones
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Josie Schuller is demonstrating how to “lock in flavor and block out air” at a the home of a woman named Jan. The ladies in attendance are far more interesting in tea, snacks and gossip than in buying what Josie has to sell. When Jan heads upstairs to use the facilities, she instructs her sister Mona to make sure they get the free gift they were promised before Josie splits. A few blows of a hammer later and Jan's bleeding out on the floor, Mona's dead in the living room, Josie is covered in their blood and giving their nephew his regards.

Josie's internal narration lets us know that she doesn't typically clean up the bodies, usually someone else handles that, but as she's trying to build her own business this time around, she knows she has to go the extra mile. She struggles to deal with the mess, but she's smart and she's strong and she's more than a little tenacious. With that dealt with, she heads out to find an odd 'sorry we missed you' note under the wiper on her car's windshield and then drives on back to her new home in Cocoa Beach to be a wife and a mother to her husband and children. Domestic bliss? Not when her husband, Gene, is irked that she forgot to pick up his golf club and her mother-in-law is skulking about the kitchen, grouchy as can be.

At her husband's request, Josie tries to talk to mother Schuller, to find out what's eating away at her. The elder woman wants nothing to do with Josie, she knows what she saw back in Seattle (read the first mini-series if you haven't already and if you haven't already you need to correct that). Josie tells her she needs to put it behind her, not for her sake but for that of Gene and their two daughters. Before the conversation can go much further, George and Ruth Robidoux (Gene's boss and his wife) show up for dinner. Once that's out of the way, Josie's rules of going into business for yourself come into play…

Picking up where the first mini-series left off, this new storyline starts off with a bang and really hits the ground running. We don't have all the details of what exactly Josie is up to yet - but we get enough of them to know what's going on, the rest can come later. Josie is very clearly as cunning and as dangerous as she was the first go-round, if not more so now that she's more personally invested in her secret occupation. This first chapter sets up some interesting potential - there will likely be repercussions for what happens in the last few pages and maybe for what happens in the first few as well and it would seem obvious that George and Ruth are introduced not just for comic relief, but for another purpose all together. Lots of potential here! Jones' script is clever and the dialogue witty and occasionally appropriately acerbic. Much of the humor that plays such a big part in the Lady Killer stories stems from the way that the male characters react to Josie. She's constantly dealt with as 'just a woman' and while that's very obviously accurate to the time in which the story is set, it still works as both an effective way of getting some laughs (usually at the expense of the male characters) and making a very fair point.

The artwork is just as good, if not maybe even better, than what we've seen from Jones before. The line work is very fine, very detailed and the scenes of sporadic violence are effective in how blunt they are - that first hammer blow hurts! There's also an interesting aspect to the art here where you can really get a grasp for how certain characters feel by the way that their eyes are drawn. There's more depth and expression here than in most comic books, it's something worth paying close attention to as you flip through the pages. Through in some great period style in the fashions, cars and décor along with some excellent coloring work from Michelle Madsen and the first issue of this second Lady Killer storyline delivers.