Fairly entertaining, gritty, and has pockets of dark humor. The art style isn't my personal favorite, yet it fits the story and themes very well! I think I would have like this better if not for the casual fatphobia and lack of character depth; I really just didn't care what happened to any of the characters except the various dogs. It felt like the author would just pop in a new face whenever they needed a body to fill the page and it made the story feel very distant. ( )

50's house wife meets contract killer! ( )

Well this was disappointing.

I picked this title because of the wonderful, fashionable, gory covers. I didn't care much about the story, I saw it had blood, female assassins and beautiful dresses. Plus, it was created by women, I just had to give it a shot. One of my favorite comics used to be [b: The Milkman Murders|1357170|The Milkman Murders|Joe Casey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403200750s/1357170.jpg|1346899], and this one gave me a very similar vibe so I was all the more eager to read it.

Unfortunately, Lady Killer let me down in many different ways, so I'm going to list what I liked and disliked in neat sections, because comics are serious business.

~the story~
Is pretty much what you'd expect. A scenario we’ve seen multiple times. A talented assassin that is so controversial their employers turn against them and they want an out from the profession. We've seen fewer narratives where said assassin is a woman, but still, they're overdone. What is a first is the era in which this take place. An era Mad Men and Masters of Sex made us culturally interested in again. Of dresses with petticoats, fast cars, high heels, perfect hair and nails and the absolute domesticity of women just starting to break down. So yes, I loved the premise even though it's overdone. Because, if you think about it, all tales have been already written, all stories been told. What makes new ones beautiful are the tiny little different notes each one has, mostly relying on the era, place and dominant culture something is written in, the era/place/culture it's set in, and the genre it chooses to inhabit. So in all, the outline of the story, simplistic as it may sound, was fine by me.

~the writing~
I can't say much other the fact that it's uninspired, with holes and loose edges, probably to facilitate the existence of a sequel. The characters are not written as people, just as vehicles to move the plot, based on archetypes of pop culture. The protagonist, Josie, is supposed to love her family, or like them, or not to want them dead? I think?

I'm not sure since the character never hinted at anything, no affection was ever shown, no closeness, no interest. Literally the only moment we clearly see Josie's feelings towards her family is when the bad dude tells her he's going to kill them, and she screams "No" while attacking him. At issue 5, of 5. There are no tender moments, or ones of reflection.

The only time we clearly see Josie’s feelings is when she chooses not to kill an underage person. And to be honest, I expected she would do so, because of pop culture clichés, because we've seen this story a thousand times, but still was surprised because nothing I'd seen from the character thus far would make me expect such a decision. Because there weren't hints of anything in her writing that would justify tender moments of reflection, doubt, unsureness. Only the fact that she's a woman and a mother herself would make one, old fashioned, person assume so. And relying on your audience having sexist prejudices doesn't say much about your writing now does it?
I liked the fact that the writers didn't feel the need to explain every single little detail, but they left so many things out that I couldn't connect with each character's motives.

For example. Josie's boss wants to get rid of her because, we're told, she's peculiar and may become a liability. Why is that? We don't learn why, it's not even hinted at, at least until the very end where another antagonist talks about her aversion of guns and how that's the thing that got her into this mess. Again, WHY. Why not tells us that fact about her? Is it because it will make her look like less of a bad-ass and the premise/beginning of the whole story is based on awing us with her murdering skills and heartlessness? Why not inform us of her ethical dilemmas, or even temperamental peculiarities that would give her more nuance and would make us think of her as more of a human being and less than a throwaway character.
-Because, later on, the plot does demand of us to view her as a person with affections and limitations, by which point I was unable to do so because I was desensitized and could not find a reason to care about Josie.

There are other things that are not mentioned, an old man, possibly another assassin-boss, who comes into the story to do nothing apart intimidate some other elder characters and we never learn anything more about him. And that's okay. We don't need to learn exactly who he is, his presence adds a flavor to the story, gives it depth -in time at least, that the narrative acknowledges there being a time before the story, and thus relationships and events and people- and richness. Not all omissions are created equal nor they all affect the story in similar ways.

~the art~
The art is the main reason I picked this one up. It's covers are everything and I just adore all of Joelle Jones' illustrations. She draws thin but muscular women, messy gore, neat hair and beautiful, flowing dresses. The colors were well-suited, the inks nice and dark, the lettering forgettable but non-intrusive.

I loved the depictions of domestic life. They were so detailed, but didn’t feel overworked, and each detail added something extra to the story. In a scene in the first issue, we see the family chilling in their living room, ladies all proper and the husband with his trousers off, sock suspenders showing, feet on the table. I really admired the subtlety of the scene, and what it said about family dynamics and gender dynamics of the era.

Another thing worth noting is the variety of characters, with different facial features, poses, expressions. There were thin women, pregnant women, fat women, chubby women, old women, girls, non-white women, young men, burly men, lanky men, fat men, old men, old fat men. And you could tell each of them apart. Trust me, this is not something to be taken for granted in the comic industry. If you look at some of the most popular artists, like Turner, Linsner, Sejic, Cho, you’ll find that the “sameface” plague is alive and strong. So I’ve come to really appreciate the diversity of the characters, much more so when I see two –and more- older women depicted, and I can tell them apart by looking at their facial features and not the color of their hair or clothes.

But.
There are some issues that leave me wondering wether this was this hastily put together. I haven't followed closely Joelle's art but from what I've seen it's usually well-made and structured. And yet here there were many panels where the human anatomy was way off, as if she was in a hurry when making this. Like, yeah look at this woman's sexy legs! Never mind her calves should be broken to be bent like that! Yeah this person opens the door and looks at our pretty Josie, sure her hand is in perspective so let's do away with anatomy, proportions and perspective because that is not the focus of this panel, who will notice, we're on a schedule here people!

Many times the people just stood in pretty, expected poses instead of feeling real -which to be truthful is a HUGE issue in comics and if we were to blame someone for popularizing it I'm not sure if it'd have to be Turner of Frazzetta or whoever the fuck originated this thing that's literally EVERYWHERE in mainstream comics- and had as modelesque, vacant expressions as their body language. Especially their expressions, or more accurately lack thereof, was what made it very hard to relate to any of the characters, or be able to tell what their motives and feelings were.

Another thing that I really disliked was the random splashes of dark ink in various places on each page. Like ok I get it, it's the gritty look, like the [b: Pigeons From Hell|5014984|Pigeons From Hell|Joe R. Lansdale|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1528537589s/5014984.jpg|5081565], the noir vibe, like cool yeah I'm into it. But please place them appropriately and not on random spots. Like on some of the kitchen cupboards, or on the edge of a page. These are accents that need to be placed artistically and strategically, not like a graphic designer but like a comic artist creating an atmosphere for their story.

~the pacing, or the sequential part of the art~
Isn't really all that good. There are many panels that favor the feeling, or want to showcase a pose, rather than clarify what is actually happening in the scene, who stands where, what kind of expression ones' face makes. It's not unreadable as I have seen in other graphic novels, but it's annoying enough to make me grunt at least once in every chapter.

There’s a scene that really suffered from this, one of many, and prompted me to keep noticing the transitions between panels. Josie enters the kitchen, opens the lights and is startled by something. The something is her mother in law, sitting there in the dark, staring at her. First we see Josie turning the light on, the next panel is a close-up of her startles face, and the next one is an ants’ eye-view of the kitchen, from afar, the older woman being a tiny figure in the background where on the foreground are Josie’s heels. What a missed opportunity. Placed like this you don’t even feel her surprise, or the tension between the women. The placement doesn’t highlight their differences by contrasting them, nor says anything about their dynamics. How different and impactful could it have been if after Josie’s close-up we saw the mother in law from her POV sitting in the shadows, her eyes glaring at out protagonist, sort of like Shinji Ikari’s father? Or if we saw a long-plan of the entire room, mother in law in one corner, the protagonist at the other, shadows playing on the intense dislike and distrust between the women. Or if we didn’t even see Josie being startled but first saw the dark outline of the mother in law sitting in the room in the foreground, and in the background the outline of the unsuspecting Josie. Or if as she was turning the lights on we could see the outline of the mother-in-law. The choices are endless, each one telling a different story, having a substantially different impact on the atmosphere of the page, giving us different clues of the characters’ feelings. Maybe not all my propositions are a good fit for the story and the point is not to provide all the best possible alternatives, but to prove that there are many alternatives that would benefit the story and make it more interesting. And that’s a thing that happens with many transitions in this GN. Many lost, misused, underused opportunities that subtract from what the story and art have to offer, making it a rather dull story.

~other thoughts~
And because I've complained enough about every aspect of the book, lemme showcase some of my favorite pages -covers excluded because they're all amazing.

a whole building and what goes on inside - this page alone should have been able to quench my suspicions of it being hastily put together, now that I think about it


scenic depictions of the domestic lives of middle-class women


beautiful, tense-building transitions, of the few in this GN unfortunately


some violence, because killing macho men is always a pleasure
( )

A copy of this graphic novel was given to me from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed this, was totally engaged and read it in one setting. The art was amazing and was what drew me to this story to begin with. I'm looking forward to reading more of Lady Killer! ( )

Volume 1 introduces us to Josie Schuler, a picture-perfect homemaker, wife and mother who also happens to be a ruthless contract killer. She works hard at balancing her domestic life with her assassinations but the people she works for are fearful that juggling her time is going to expose her or even worse, expose them. They assign her one last job and plan on executing her immediately after.

Of course things don’t always go smoothly and in this case, Josie fights back with a vengeance making Lady Killer a gory but fun read. The author Joelle Jones both wrote the story and did the artwork so while the story seems a little simple, the artwork is superb and reminded me of the old romance comic books that I was addicted to when I was about eleven.

This is just the first volume and I am looking forward to continuing with this female empowered, action-packed series. ( )