When it comes to stories about assassins, there’s more than a handful of them when it comes to movies, television shows, and comics. As with most genres, they can literally be hit or miss, pun intended. Take, for example, the John Wick series, which is steeped in mythology and dense with story.

Then there’s the adequate if not less than spectacular Proud Mary, which could have been better and didn’t serve Taraji P. Henson’s stellar talents. There’s the comic book based Deadly Class television series, which, though short-lived, gave that series the proper due it required. It gave the audience insight into exactly what it takes to be an assassin. In the first volume of Sweet Lullaby, we meet an assassin whose life is filled with pretending to be someone else, until that old betrayer of self enters her life, love.

We’re taken to Sante Fe, New Mexico, where an overly aggressive neighbor hits on a young woman, but this encounter doesn’t go the way he wants, leaving him with fatal consequences. We find out more about the young lady he was hitting on, Michelle, or as she is known by her adopted name, Lullaby, where we are taken to her mother’s funeral, as she becomes part of the family business, being an assassin, as her father made his mind, from that point on, he will train her in the trade. As the reader finds out that the neighbor Lullaby killed was a target, anyway, making the kill itself more than righteous.  As she keeps a secret from her father and the agency, that she has fallen in love with her father’s rival’s son, something that so far only her father suspects. When she finally reveals who she has been seeing, her father reminds him who was it that killed her mother. By book’s end, just when we thought Lullaby was ready to settle down, we find out that she has a completely separate agenda from everyone else involved.

Overall, a story that gives readers, shades of Columbiana and The Professional, while blazing a path of its own. The story by A.J. Scherkenbach is layered, clever and well characterized. The art by J. Briscoe Allison is beautiful and enchanting. Altogether, a story that deserves more than its time in the sun, it should be celebrated for its bold strides in storytelling.

Story: A.J. Scherkenbach Art: J. Briscoe Allison
Story: 10 Art: 10 Overall: 10 Recommendation: Buy