Lady Killer

Art and story by Joelle Jones

Editing by Jamie S. Rich

Colors by Laura Allred and Michelle Madsen

Lettering by 'Crank'

288 pages

Buy it HERE.

A tour de force.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. The one thing about Lady Killer that struck me was its ironic juxtaposition of two states. Josie Schuller is a modern every-day housewife. The story's set in the early 1960s. She typifies the ease and simplicity of the modern fashion forward woman of the family in the flavor of Donna Reed (showing my age here) or Carol Brady. Josie is also a hired 'hit man, hit woman... maybe hit -person?' who offs people for money. There's a lot of retro, if mundane settings of tea socials and tupperware parties followed immediately by chopping, strangling, mashing with lots and lots of blood. Curiously, the aesthetic here is splattered black ink standing for blood.

'That was no lady..'

Lady Killer was one of the most easy to follow story lines I've read in a long time. Not to say this story lacks intricacy. Joelle Jones is an artist/designer first and writer second, meaning Lady Killer's look informs you of what's going on just as sure as the words. Joelle Jones has an almost instinctual knack for getting the flavor of an era right, in all the roles that era needs to populate its characters with: the blowhard overly flirtatious boss, the prim and proper stewardesses, and finally the sexy 'playboy bunny-ish' cocktail waitresses.

Lady Killer also had a great kind of set up, given we're watching the day-to-day of a housewife/assassin. You'll never know if the man Josie is talking to privately is her next victim. Or the old lady she's having tea with. Blood and gore suddenly blaze across the page, then is gone with a lady-like 'sigh' from Josie as she gets on with her day.

Her husband is completely unaware of her secret alter-career. But his mother, the frumpy Mrs. Schuller seems to know more than she lets on, and watches her with a suspicious eye.

Next Tuesday:

The Last Homicide
by Frank Martin