Lady Killer 2 #1 Featured Image Reviews 

“Lady Killer 2” #1

By | August 5th, 2016
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

The housewife with the heart of a cold-blooded murderer returns as “Lady Killer” hits the shelves with a new #1. Joelle Jones returns to write and illustrate the bloody tale of catharsis along with colourist Michelle Madsen and letterer Crank!

Let’s dive into this spoiler free review of the bloody first issue of “Lady Killer 2”!

Written & Illustrated by Joelle Jones
Joelle Jones multi Eisner award nominated series continues! The killer housewife is back! The Schuller family has moved to Cocoa Beach, Florida, where life carries on as usual. Josie continues to juggle Tupperware parties, her kids, and a few human heads. However, when someone from her past tails her on a hit, she may be in for more than she bargained for.

“Lady Killer” is perhaps one of the most interesting concepts in comic books these days. It is built on pure juxtaposition, taking the character of a wholesome 50s American housewife and revealing that she is a hitman in her off time. It is a series that takes the same idea as Mad Men in terms of setting a story in a less politically progressive time and building up a series of small, but powerful victories for those oppressed characters over the course of the story. However, instead of having to deal with the crushing reality that these victories never changed anything in the bigger picture and that it took decades to gain even a marginal amount of progression, “Lady Killer” takes things a step further. Placing the central character of Josie Schuller against the rampant misogyny of 1950s America and then playing out a series of brutal murders at her hands is pure, brutal catharsis.

It’s a strange notion, but one that was executed perfectly in the previous series and if this first issue is anything to go by, is only going to get better. The first series was co-written by Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich and illustrated by Jones and here Jones returns without Rich to both write and illustrate this new five-issue series. This seems to have given Jones the room to write more specifically for her art as this first issue seems less interesting in rigidly setting up a plot for the series as a whole than it is exploring the basic concept. With Josie working on her own this time around, she has no one else to rely on after taking out a target meaning that the messy job of cleanup falls to her this time around and that’s something Joelle Jones dedicates a large portion of this issue to.

If the previous series of “Lady Killer” was all about the pure catharsis of the concept, this series seems to be about the down and dirty reality of it. There’s no organisation or clean-up crew or contacts for Josie to fall back on this time. Nothing to magically make the mess disappear off-panel. When Josie takes out her first target early in the issue, Jones doesn’t whisk us away to a new plot beat like the previous series might have and instead keeps the focus on Josie as she has to deal with disposing the body. This is also a perfect opportunity for Jones to show off the storytelling in her art. When the issue opens, the first few pages keep to four or five panels, allowing the pages to escalate into shocking acts of violence that might take an unprepared reader unawares. However, the pages following that crank up the panel count significantly, one page even going into the double digits, in order to show the length of the process that a cleanup of that level requires.

It’s something that immediately brings a new twist to the concept. Upon bringing back “Lady Killer”, it was clear Jones couldn’t just rest on the laurels of a great concept and had to bring something new to the table. The two sections in this issue that focus on the cleanup of one of Josie’s murders is exactly what the concept needed to feel like a fresh take while sandwiching the actual plot scenes between the two. This middle section is where Jones both continues plot threads from the previous instalment like Josie’s increasingly tense relationship with her mother-in-law while setting up new threads like the unbelievably terrible person that is Josie’s husband’s boss. This series might be worth buying in full just to see this man die, I’m serious.

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Joelle Jones’ art is on excellent form as ever here. I already mentioned her storytelling, but it is simply top notch throughout the issue. Her renditions of characters, especially in their expressions, feels incredibly organic and dynamic while keeping that inked pin-up style aesthetic to her art all the way through. Josie never seems to lose her picture perfect housewife composure – even when scrubbing blood and guts out of a bathtub – and yet Jones is still able to infuse her with a great deal of life on the page. Her artwork is brought to life by the vibrant colours of Michelle Madsen that capture a larger-than-life rendition of suburban Florida in the 50s.

There’s a focus on cool pastel shades in this issue’s palette, especially for the first half of the issue, with sharp warm tones like the red of Josie’s dress or the yellow of rubber washing up gloves providing a nice contrast. This shifts in the final pages of the issue which takes place at night in the Florida swamplands. The colours are dark, earthy and muted and compliment the rising tension of the story until the cliffhanger ending. A nice touch is the effect of the car’s headlights creating sharp hightlights to certain elements of the page and making silhouettes of the characters.

What’s perhaps most interesting about the issue colour-wise is how blood is portrayed. In a comic as violent as this, you might expect Madsen to have shades of reds handy for every page, but instead the blood is shown as pure black ink. It’s a stylistic choice that not only cuts down on how stomach-churning some of the more violent and gory scenes of the comic would be, but allows Joelle Jones to ink the blood onto the page. Blood splatters become more visceral and bring a real texture to the page while making sure the comic doesn’t feel like a Tarantino-level exploitation.

This isn’t your typical first issue. While most first issues tend to hold the readership by the hand and layout all the major characters and plot beats they’ll be following over the course of the series, Joelle Jones sandwiches the main bulk of the plot between two scenes that explore of high concept of the series in different ways. They both show the audience who Josie is and what she does for a living while establishing for older readers a new side to her by showing her handling the cleanup. It’s a first issue that opts to explore the concept of the series with the reader as the hook to interest them in reading the next issues that, after that cliffhanger, are sure to kick off the plot in high gear. It’s a showcase of artwork and storytelling from Joelle Jones and the colours from Michelle Madsen and the lettering by Crank! serve to elevate that to new levels.

Final Verdict: 8.2 – A very unique first issue that is well worth picking up and pouring over, even if you’ve never read the pervious series.


Alice W. Castle

Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears her, Alice W. Castle is a trans femme writing about comics. All things considered, it’s going surprisingly well. Ask her about the unproduced Superman films of 1990 - 2006. She can be found on various corners of the internet, but most frequently on Twitter: @alicewcastle

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