“Lady Killer” #1 is everything and nothing like it’s billed. It’s billed as “Betty Draper meets Hannibal.” With a very superficial glance, this is the only description anyone will see, but with a little more prodding, you’ll see that this comic is something entirely different, entirely more. It’s got the aesthetics of Betty Draper with the brutal violence of Hannibal but underneath all the blood and pearls, it’s honestly much deadlier and a lot sexier.
WRITTEN BY: Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich
ART BY: Joëlle Jones
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse
PRICE: $3.50
RELEASE: January 7, 2015
We open up on this first issue just as Josie (posed as an Avon Lady) swings her hips right into her target’s home just before bleeding the victim out on the kitchen floor. It’s a great opener with lots of personality and a zero-sixty tone. For the rest of the comic we see her juggle the tasks of managing her little family home, keeping up with her two kids, cooking, preparing for her husband, keeping her grouchy mother-in-law at bay and answering to her boss at all hours with his fatal requests. And although her interactions with her boss aren’t voluntary or desired, she seems to take on each new hit with style and ease.
Jones and Rich create a dark and gritty, glamorously unglamorous life in which hit-woman housewife, Josie Schuller, accomplishes her motherly duties with one hand while cleaning the blood out of her skirt with the other. This first issue offers us a lot in terms of style and wit. The substance in this issue is a subtle shift between decadence and nuance. It wants to reveal nothing but the bare facts and I think that was a brilliant choice. Josie is a beautiful, seemingly typical (if not a bit of an overachiever), 1960s housewife with a secret side job as a killer-for-hire. She’s got a doofy husband and a crazy overbearing mother-in-law. She’s a bit prudish unless she is knifing someone in the chest. These are the bare minimum facts and this is all we are told in the first issue, but the art more than makes up for it. More specifically, the murder that takes up more than two full pages of silent panels totally makes up for it.
Even if I wanted to, it would be hard to give this comic a negative review simply because of the art. The gorgeous 60s aesthetic, the Silver-Age comics’ style and brightly dimmed colors mixed with sexy, curvy hips, and fatal grins. All of this tossed in with inkblots and ink spatters, terrifyingly high-arching eyebrows, and horrified screams accompanied by sprays of blood, this comic could be wordless and I’d be profoundly engaged in each issue.