’50s Shades of Red
Lady Killer #1
It’s a fairly straightforward concept — a stereotypical 1950s housewife who lives a double life as an assassin for a secretive organization. She takes out a fellow housewife with her own secret past, cooks dinner for her family, tries to avoid her suspicious mother-in-law, and gets pressured into taking on another difficult hit by her superior in the organization.
Verdict: Thumbs up. The art by Joelle Jones is fantastic — rooted in the ’50s but wonderfully kinetic and fun. The seemingly docile but secretly murderous housewife is a trope that’s been used before, but this one looks like it’ll be pretty enjoyable.
Trees #8
It’s a major shakeup for this series, as various crises suddenly come to a head, and a lot of people we thought were main characters turn out to be a lot more expendable than anticipated. Yeah, not saying more — I don’t mind spoiling surprises sometimes, but these are so perfectly, breathtakingly unexpected that I don’t want to do much to reduce the shocks.
Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a gloriously shocking issue, and though I was genuinely sad to see some of these characters leave the stage, I’m eagerly anticipating what’s to come. Ellis raised the bar in very interesting ways in this issue.
Today’s Cool Links:
- Political cartoonists are a dying breed in America, and it may already be too late to save them.
- A nice analysis on why action/superhero/horror/comedy movies rarely win the big awards.
- Gotta love this libertarian crybaby who renounced his citizenship and is now whining that he can’t get back into the country.