Dan Reviews: The Killer

When I choose to review the 10 issue english translation of the French comic series The Killer 2 scenarios came to mind with a comic of that name, and if your not a fan of Hong Kong action cinema let me fill you in. Simply put The Killer by John Woo starring Chow Yun-Fat is one of the greatest assassin movies ever made – period. It defined a genre and its double-fisted gunplay is something that has become a staple of action movies and been reproduced so many times it has been placed to rest next to witty one liners in the graveyard of overused action movie clichés. It was one of those movies that made the entire world pay attention to something other than Hollywood, which is a feat in and within itself. I still remember picking up my um-teenth generation copy from Quakerhead on South Street, way before the eventual Criterion release on DVD. With that in mind calling your comic book The Killer and having it be about a professional assassin sets the bar pretty darn high. Which brings me to my scenarios either this series was going to have to seriously bring it or it was going to fail miserably trying.

Upon reading this short 10 issue series you see that the challenge has been taken, and seriously. The Killer seems less like a comic and more like the kind of movie you wish some really edgy director like David Fincher would make. There is just a very theatrical quality to the art and the story you can just picture this happening on the big screen in your head. The story of The Killer is a simple one, it’s about a nameless assassin who has set a personal goal to make 5 million dollars so he can retire and live on a small tropical island and die in obscurity, sounds easy enough. But of course things don’t go according to plan. His handler or “Fixer” turns on him in a strange turn of events and unlike most plots where the assassin is out for revenge, this guy is just trying to make sure he can turn his back without having to worry about getting killed. So he will have to find out why his fixer wanted him dead by joining forces with a family of Columbian druglords, to kill some more guys and hopefully find out what happened so he can retire in peace.

One thing I liked about the book from the start was the lack of action and the focus on story, character development and dialog.  For example, the first few books in the series we follow The Killer on 2 jobs where we spend most of the time waiting for the marks to show up. While we wait we get a real good look into the main characters mind and how he works. This I think to me was what drew me into the book where most assassin stories are more glamorized this one is less so, familiarizing us more with the struggle of the character to not only stay sane while he waits for his marks to show up – but while being a professional assassin as well.

The dialog and character interaction is also really top notch in the series the book is very smart and self aware without at all being too pretentious with its subject matter. One conversation that comes to mind is when the main character is on a plane with the son of a drug lord, after a kill. The drug lord’s son begins to lament that drug lords are always the most unlikable characters and first to die in movies while assassins are simply portrayed as the ultimate bad-asses. This conversation sold me on not only the characters but the book in general because it seemed like a conversation a hitman and a druglord would have it they were on a plane.

The series in my humble opinion takes a very tired and worn out genre and manages to do something fresh and interesting with it. My only real complaint was we really don’t delve too much into the The Killer’s past, which I can understand and I think that might have been for the better.  We do get a few pieces but nothing to explain the darkness that appears every now and then. The art in the killer was excellent as well, you can tell when the art is good when they use panels for the covers of the books. It just had a very cinematic quality to it overall and some of the action sequences really blew me away with the “shatter” technique the artist employed to show the action in some sequences and the frantic mindset of the main character.  Paramount currently holds the American film rights to the series with David Fincher of Fight Club fame tentatively attached to direct which sounds very promising with the subject matter. The series was created by the French duo Matz doing the story and the art was done by Luc Jacamon they are planning on doing a hard cover release of the title soon, and for that I can not wait. Get more details at the Archaia website.