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KILLER PRINCESSES #1
Mildly Recommended (6/10)
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Oni Press
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Lea Hernandez
Editor: James Lucas Jones
Price: $2.95 US/$4.50 CAN |
It's been about a year since this project was first announced, and it's one that members of the online comics community have been anticipating. Though it doesn't mark her first foray into comics (she's been writing stories for the Simpsons line for Bongo Comics for a while now), this does mark former Comic Book Resources columnist Gail Simone's first original script, free of the constraints of a corporate continuity and someone else's characters.
Simone's humor comes shining through, and Hernandez's manga-inspired, angular artistic style adds a lot of personality to the characters. But there's a problem with the flow of both the dialogue and the art, and it doesn't stem only from the missing page six (my review copy included that page... too bad it was accidentally left out; it's quite funny).
A trio of skilled but ditzy hired guns -- Faith, Hope and Charity -- is sent by the mysterious organization known as the Sorority to take out an ecoterrorist known as Kane. After the mission, they return to headquarters and their public lives as college students... a setting in which they do not flourish nearly as well as they do in the deadly arts.
It should come as no surprise that there's some great humor in this book. What is surprising is how raunchy it can get at times. The jokes range in tone from martial arts-movie parody to genitalia gags to slapstick physical pratfalls, and they keep the book fresh and fun. The light tone of Hernandez's art captures the goofiness of the script and the characters nicely.
Another surprising quality in the book was the mature and thoughtful tone of the opening page. It depicts one man's self-destruction in the wake of what he thought was the greatest triumph of his life. Though it doesn't connect all that strongly with the main plot at this early juncture, it was a powerful scene. It hints at a greater depth than one might have expected from this book.
At times, though, I found the action and the dialogue a bit hard to follow. I can't really put my finger on why, though. There are a couple of scenes in which those elements seem a bit disjointed. The elevator scene -- which begins on the unfortunately missing page six -- is rather hard to follow, for example. It requires a complicated choreography, and something is lost between the script and the art.
My qualms with this first issue stem mostly from the latter scenes in the book, depicting the Killer Princesses' time spent on campus and at the Sorority. I'm confused... are we meant to like these characters or not? I find it hard to cheer on a bunch of spoiled brats who are more into their looks than the world around them. Simone plays up Charity's ditziness far too much in a classroom scene, for example. It's hard to reconcile that quality with the heroines' deadly savvy in the earlier scenes.
Note: Oni Press has expressed its intent to make the missing sixth page available for viewing online. Visit the Oni Press website at www.onipress.com to find out how you can read the missing page.
Email Don MacPherson comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.
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