Once upon a terrible time…
Creative Staff:
Story: Joëlle Jones
Art: Joëlle Jones
Colors: Michelle Madsen
Letterer: Crank!
What They Say:
Life in Florida gets a little twisted for Josie when she learns about the dark past of her mother-in-law and the connection to her new partner.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This issue opens with Josie doing what she does best: murder. And she is delighted in it, feeling like her old self again now that she has Irving to handle the cleanup and an ally again who knows this part of her world, knows what lays behind Josie’s perfectly made up smile. Thanks to this new partnership, she feels joining the “assassin union” that was offered to her last issue is unnecessary. While the clientele isn’t the best right now, Josie is confidant her business will grow. It’s worth noting that these first few pages are wonderfully drawn in a very obvious choice of red saturating the pages, with the panels being a montage of kills. It’s untidy and not as “pretty” as usual, but effective at capturing Josie’s tone at the open of the issue with unflinching accuracy.
By contrast, the next scene is bright and cheery. It’s Christmas time for the Schullers as the children decorate the tree, and Josie has invited “Uncle” Irving over for dinner. Mama Schuller does not take this kindly, attacking him with kitchen tools and yelling in German, which, while I don’t speak fluent German, the gist of it was that Irving is not welcome near her family. Josie tries to calm down the situation to little avail. Gene arrives home amidst the chaos, but only to find a regular domestic scene once he enters the kitchen. It’s one of these things that keeps tugging at the ongoing string of Gene being left in the dark that makes me wonder if Jones is planning on Gene ever discovering his wife’s secret and how he would react. Would he flee in disgust? Try to understand in some manner of denial?
When Irving joins Gene in the garage for a beer and an exasperated Josie demands the truth from her mother-in-law, and eventually gets it after sending Irving alone and leaving Gene asleep in the armchair in the living. It turns out Mama Schuller has secrets of her own from her past, horrible ones, including that she was a professional civil service officer in Nazi Germany often used to investigate special cases. It is in this past where the connection between her and Irving seems to lie and it’s a truth about Irving that, all things considered in a comic about a contracted killer,l somehow manages to be one of the most utterly despicable character reveals yet, while also adding some interesting new layers to Josie’s mother-in-law. Josie promises to keep her family her safe, even if it means making a deal with the devil.
Unfortunately, there is just one Irving-sized hitch in her plan.
In Summary:
Just when things seem to be looking up for Josie, she just can’t catch a break! Seems like she has really bad luck when it comes to partners who never seem 100% trustworthy. And just when she thought Irving was a reliable addition to the team, well, things go south real quick in Florida. Usually the thing I like most about this story is Josie, but this time she felt almost ancillary to Mama Schuller and Irving, and I am kind of okay with this. What’s interesting is that Josie barely beats an eyelash over learning her mother-in-law’s secret, which seems to say as much about the older woman as it does about Josie, or that Josie continues to have one hell of a poker face.
While I do love this story, the thing that has been a bit frustrating for me is wanting more background to the characters. There’s definitely things implied in dialogue and the narrative, but this was one of the few, rare deep dives into the past and it’s left me wanting to see this a little more. Like some of Josie’s past, or even how she met her husband and what made her choose to live a dual life of housewivery and homicide.
It could be that this another intentional choice on Jones’ part; that Josie is the character we will never actually see a background of, only her in the now and going forward. It does keep a veneer of mystery to her, coupled with the tip-of-the-knife tension of if she’s truly in it for now or not as the story escalates. She’s managed to keep afloat so far, but how long can she make it before and if she starts to drown in the red of her other life.
Only time and more issues will tell.
Grade: A
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 16th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
