FUNNYBOOK FAN FARE: LADY KILLER
Co-written by Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich and drawn by Jones, Lady Killer is a shocking novelty: here’s a contract killer, Josie Schuller, who, when she’s not out killing someone, is a wife and mother of twin girls just beyond toddler age. And Josie’s beautiful to boot. In the first issue, she kills a nasty-tempered shrew of a woman, and we meet her handler, Peck, who flirts with her; she doesn’t return the favor. In the second issue, she becomes a “kitten” at the Kitty Cat Club (a stand-in for the old Playboy Club) where, wearing an abbreviated costume, she finds her target, a particularly obnoxious groper. She also finds out she’s getting a reputation with the hit agency’s Big Boss for being uncooperative, thanks to handler Peck’s reports. Further complicating her predicament is her mother-in-law, who no longer believes the excuses Josie offers to explain her absences from home and hearth, thinking, stead, that she’s having an affair.
Being a mother, Josie fails her next assignment — killing an 8-year-old boy who witnessed the killing of his parents. Meanwhile, the Big Boss has decided to “remove” her from the company’s roster of assassins and sends Peck off to do the job. Peck follows Josie as she drives away from the site of her failed assignment, pulling her over and pulling a gun on her. No.3 ends there.
Jones’ drawings are stunningly distinctive: crisp renderings with a flexing line and very little feathering, no shading, every detail clearly delineated. She varies perspective often, opting for extreme foreshortening and birds-eye views. And her staging and blow-by-blow rendering of Josie’s assassinations is meticulous, every movement carefully articulated. I haven’t seen anything like her work in any other comic book although she’s done other work (Helheim for Oni). Says she: “Working on Lady Killer has so far been the most satisfying project that I have been a part of. I think it helps that every panel is something I am excited to draw!”