Tag Archives: lady killer

Review: Lady Killer #2

lk02covThe first issue of this series introduced a story which was a compelling if slightly bizarre crossover of a Betty Crocker commercial with a gangster movie, and the second issue continues to impress with its unconventional approach to the storytelling.  At the end of the previous issue, Josie was given a mission to infiltrate the Kitty Kat Club and she is shown here in action.  As was shown in the previous issue, Josie is a capable killer, but the manner of her actions here is cleverly put in context.  Whereas previously she was in a somewhat standard brawl in a kitchen, here she is given cat like movements, appropriate considering that she is playing a “Kitten” here.  While the action is fun, soo too are other parts of the story, namely the juxtaposition of her two lives.

As the first issue expertly conveyed, the heroine here is a complex person, equal parts assassin and housewife, struggling to maintain the responsibilities of both.  As both writer and artist, Joelle Jones has an added advantage, as she can both conceive of the character from the written word but also by the images, and the latter often says as much about the character’s depth as do her words.  In so doing it adds a layer of depth to the character who is otherwise only one issue old, and also makes her more approachable, even when her actions are brutal.  Equally this issue deserves a bit of credit for not going a little overboard in its depiction of violence as the first issue did.

This series does gain some attention through the shock value of taking the icon of calm mediation that is the post-war housewife and turning her into a ruthless killing machine, but the series succeeds in other ways that just by throwing away tradition.  The characters were immediately likable in the first issue, and they continue to be here as well and the action sequences are well paced and fun.  More so the writer is careful to balance exactly how much information is let out about Josie’s missions, enough so that the reader is left guessing what is going to be happening in the coming issue.  This is one of the unexpected highlights of the new year and people should be keen to check this series out.

Story: Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich  Art: Joëlle Jones
Story: 8.7 Art: 8.7 Overall: 8.7 Recommendation: Buy

Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review.  

 

Sell-Outs and New Printing Roundup

Check out some of the announced sell-outs and new printings from this past week.

Dark Horse Comics

Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich, and Laura Allred’s Lady Killer #1 has sold out at the distributor level and will receive a second printing!

lady killer 1 2nd printing

Valiant

Jeff Lemire, Matt Kindt, and Paolo Rivera‘s series has been popular. It sees two new printings. The Valiant #1 is getting a third printing and The Valiant #2 is getting a second printing. Both will be on the shelf on March 4th!

THE-VALIANT_001_COVER_THIRD-PRINTING THE-VALIANT_002_COVER_SECOND-PRINTING

Around the Tubes

Star Wars #1 hit stores yesterday. How many of you picked it up? What’d you think?

Around the Tubes Reviews

Comic Vine – Amazing X-Men #15

Comic Vine – Avengers #40

CBR – Batgirl #38

The Beat – Conan/Red Sonja #1

Comic Vine – Daredevil #12

Comic Vine – Deep State #3

Comic Vine – Ghosted #16

Comic Vine – Green Lantern Corps #38

Talking Comics – Lady Killer #1

The Beat – Mortal Kombat X #1

Comic Vine – S.H.I.E.L.D. #2

Comic Vine – Spider-Verse #2

The Examiner – The Superior Iron Man #1

Graphic Policy’s Top Comic Picks this Week!

Feathers #1 Cover A by Jorge CoronaWednesdays are new comic book day! Each week hundreds of comics are released, and that can be pretty daunting to go over and choose what to buy. That’s where we come in! Below are ten suggestions of comics, graphic novels, or trade paperbacks you should spend some extra time checking out and think about picking up.

Pick of the Week – Feathers #1 (Archaia/BOOM! Studios) – A recluse boy born covered in feathers must help his first-ever friend, a young girl named Bianca, as she tries to return to her home beyond the slums of the Maze. They must dodge street gangs and child-snatchers along the way, and perhaps together will learn the secrets to his mysterious past. The first issue is beautiful, magical, just fantastic. A great start to the new year.

Ant-Man #1 (Marvel) – Scott Lang gets the spotlight as Marvel launches a new series that puts the tiny hero forward before his movie hits later this year.

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. #2 1952 (Dark Horse) – Hellboy is off on his first adventure! The first issue was solid, the second issue really begins to kick things up as the adventure really begins. Watching the B.P.R.D. stumble a bit in their early years, especially Hellboy, is fantastic.

IXth Generation #1 (Top Cow Productions) – Top Cow launches a series originating from their Aphrodite IX and Cyber Force series’. Add in Top Cow’s Artifacts side of things, and the series sounds really exciting!

Lady Killer #1 (Dark Horse) – Josie Schuller is a picture-perfect homemaker, wife, and mother—but she’s also a ruthless, efficient killer for hire! A brand-new original comedy series that combines the wholesome imagery of early 1960s domestic bliss with a tightening web of murder, paranoia, and cold-blooded survival. A fantastic debut issue!

Nailbiter #9 (Image) – Do you like horror? Do you like noir/crime stories? Yeah, you should be reading this.

Operation S.I.N. #1 (Marvel) – The early years of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra featuring Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. The series seems to be a perfect companion to Marvel’s Agent Carter which debuts this week on tv.

Shaft #2 (Dynamite) – The first issue was set up, and now the action begins as Shaft takes up a job as security, and gets roped into an issue with a missing girl, the mob, and dead bodies.

Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1 (Marvel) – She beat Thanos and Doctor Doom! The series will either be awesome, or a one note joke. Hopefully it’s the former of the two.

Wolf Moon #2 (Vertigo/DC Comics) – How do you hunt a werewolf if a different person becomes the monster with every cycle of the moon? The Wolf continues to elude Dillon, and now the trail is going cold. Hoping to uncover some clues, Dillon turns to a reclusive expert on werewolf legends, and what he learns crushes any hope of ever destroying the creature. An interesting spin of the werewolf mythos from writer Cullen Bunn and artist Jeremy Haun.

Review: Lady Killer #1

ladykiller coverThis new series from Dark Horse utilizes a common enough premise, that of the assassin living a double life as someone else, with those in the other life blissfully unaware of the character’s violent actions.  However, while this premise is common enough, its implementation here is not, making this assassin’s double life that of a meticulous housewife in the 1960s, thus channeling a bit of Mad Men to go along with the assassin action.  The main character here is Josie Schuller, and is first introduced as an Avon Lady traveling door-to-door to make a sale.  Things quickly take a darker turn though as the character is interested in more than selling cosmetics to her first client.

There are a lot of different influences here to draw the reader into the 1960s, from the well-drawn linoleum floors to the Playboy style social club.  After the success of Mad Men on television, others have tried to capture the same charisma from the era, though to differing successes.  While this series might not be one that enters the wider consciousness of popular culture, it is nonetheless one which does indeed capture what is characteristic to the era, at least from a stereotypical standpoint.

It is sometimes the case when artists bridge the gap to writing that there is a bit of a disconnect, but it is not the case here as Joëlle Jones makes her first major entry into writing and hits the ground running with an interesting premise and a script that doesn’t let go from start to finish.  While there is a bit more gore than might be necessary for such a story, this is really the only complaint that one could have for this issue.  It is not a great comic, as its premise is not that groundbreaking to give it consideration in such a way, but it is still a fun attempt at a new story, and one worth checking out.

Story: Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich  Art: Joëlle Jones
Story: 8.6 Art: 8.6 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy

Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review.  

 

Preview: Lady Killer #1

Dark Horse has released a preview for Lady Killer #1 by Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich, and Laura Allred.

Betty Draper meets Hannibal!

Josie Schuller is a picture-perfect homemaker, wife, and mother—but she’s also a ruthless, efficient killer for hire! A brand-new original comedy series that combines the wholesome imagery of early 1960s domestic bliss with a tightening web of murder, paranoia, and cold-blooded survival.

On sale January 7th.

LADY KILLER #1

 

SDCC 2014: Dark Horse Kicks Off the Show Announcing 12 Creator-Owned Series

Dark Horse Comics is kicking this year’s San Diego Comic-Con off right, announcing twelve new creator-owned series from twelve creative teams that will take the world’s most popular art form to new levels through 2015!

Colder: The Bad Seed

Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
On sale October 22, 2014

Life goes on for Declan Thomas after his deadly encounter with the psychotic Nimble Jack, but Declan’s strange powers continue to develop, offering him a profound connection with the nature of insanity. Little does he know that the malevolent Swivel wishes to pick up where Nimble Jack left off!

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.

Writer: Mike Mignola with John Arcudi
Artist: Alexander Maleev
On sale December 3, 2014

A bizarre series of murders and rumors of something worse lead Professor Bruttenholm to send a young Hellboy to a Brazilian village on his first mission. Hellboy and a small group of agents uncover something terrible in the shadows of a sixteenth-century Portuguese fortress . . .

Lady Killer

Writers: Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich
Artist: Joëlle Jones
On sale January 7, 2015

The Schullers are every bit the American family: father, mother, and twin girls. Daddy has a good job, and though he works in the city, he can afford a nice house for his family in the suburbs. It’s a good place for the kids to grow up, away from the crime and questionable morals of city life. But what if the crime and the violence aren’t that far away? What if Mom isn’t just a housekeeper and a cook, but she’s also a highly paid professional assassin?

Dead Vengeance

Writer: Bill Morrison
Artist: Stéphane Roux
On sale January 21, 2015

It’s 1940, and a phony body on exhibit in a carnival sideshow suddenly springs to life and shambles away. Not so phony after all, he is John Doe, radio commentator and archenemy of Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang. But why did he disappear in 1930, and why did the mayor, the mob, and the cops all want him dead?

EI8HT

Creators: Rafael Albuquerque and Mike Johnson
Coming February 2015

Welcome to the Meld, an inhospitable dimension in time where Joshua, a chrononaut, finds himself trapped. With no memory or feedback from the team of scientists that sent him there, he can’t count on anything but his heart and a stranger’s voice to guide him to his destiny.

Neverboy

Writer: Shaun Simon
Artist: Tyler Jenkins
Colorist: Kelly Fitzpatrick
On sale March 4, 2015!

In what world do you belong?

Neverboy, an abandoned imaginary friend, wants the real world. Julian Drag, a struggling artist, wants the imaginary.
When Neverboy’s drugs wear off, the surreal hangover he’s been running from sets in. And a trip down the rabbit hole is just what Julian has been dying for. When these two meet, the real and the imaginary worlds collide in absolute chaos. Julian and Neverboy, the dreamer and the dream, will have to face who they are in order to put things right again.

The Black Hammer

Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Dean Ormston
On sale March 11, 2015

They were the greatest heroes of a lost era. But the age of heroes is over, and Abraham Slam, Col. Weird, Golden Gail, Barbalien, and Madame Dragonfly have been wiped out of continuity! Following a cosmic battle known only as the Event, the heroes awoke on a farm in a small town they are unable to leave, with the massive iron hammer of a fallen teammate the only reminder of the world they came from. As their tenth anniversary on Black Hammer Farm nears, they’ve largely given up on any chance of return, until the arrival of the Black Hammer’s daughter throws their new existence into chaos! The Black Hammer is part human drama, part multiverse-spanning adventure, and part journey into the DNA of the superhero genre!

PastAways

Writer: Matt Kindt
Artist: Scott Kolins
On sale March 18, 2015

When a deep-time research mission goes awry, four future explorers find themselves stranded in our present, where a side effect of their mission grants them unexpected immortality! As further time breaches cause dinosaurs to appear in Greece and buildings from the future to crash into Toronto, the unlikely heroes find themselves humanity’s best line of defense from the onslaught of time itself! The team achieves worldwide fame, and their adventures become more and more bizarre, even as their failure to get back to their own time leads to infighting and catastrophe!

Rebels

Writer: Brian Wood
Artist: Andrea Mutti
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Cover Artist: Tula Lotay
Coming April 2015

From Brian Wood, the creator of DMZ, Northlanders, and The Massive, comes Rebels, a gritty, ground-level look at the men and women who fought to win independence from tyranny and those who would stand in their way.
Cocreator Andrea Mutti (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) illustrates the opening story, introducing us to the Green Mountain Boys, America’s first militia, and one young couple’s journey across the battlefields of New England. Colorist Jordie Bellaire and cover artist Tula Lotay complete the team with gorgeous palettes and striking illustrations.

Harrow County

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Tyler Crook
On sale April 8, 2015

“Her earliest memories were of the taste of freshly turned earth and the bleating of goats.”
There’s them that say you ought not get lost in Harrow County. Because once you lose your way among the pines and briar thistles and those sweet-smelling scuppernong, you won’t never find your way back. Born on the very day a hateful witch was put to violent death, seventeen-year-old Emmy has always felt a bit lost . . . but never alone. The deep, dark woods surrounding her home crawl with ghosts, goblins, and the restless dead. These haints whisper to Emmy, promising her that she has great power, warning her that the people of Harrow County want her dead.

Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird

Writer: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Artist: Joëlle Jones
On sale May 20, 2015

A year after Dancy Flammarion’s death in a burning barn, her seraph comes to collect her from a hell of her own creation. A new evil haunts the sun-scorched back roads and ghost towns of the American South: murderous twins who command a legion of ghouls. Once again, Dancy must face down demons, both those who walk the world unchallenged and those in her own shattered mind.

Fight Club 2

Writer: Chuck Palahniuk
Artist: Cameron Stewart
Cover Artist: David Mack
Coming May 2015

The first rule is you don’t talk about it.

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