In early 2011, the Loop & Hoodie gang roadtripped to Chicago for the second C2E2 (Comic Convention & Entertainment Expo). While the Wizard World Chicago Con has become entertainment and b-lister celebrity-centric, the new C2E2 event holds most of it’s focus around comics. However, Wizard has a proven track record with retailers and, after disappointing sales at the inaugural event in 2010, C2E2 didn’t attract as strong an outing of hucksters. Which means the con smelled a little better, of course, but it also meant my convention habit of buying large quantities of super-cheap trade paperbacks was significantly hindered.
Instead, I discovered a last-day sale from relatively new publisher Archaia that allowed me to sample a number of their books for a reasonable expense – buy 2 hardcovers, get 3 free. Pretty enticing.
Archaia almost exclusively publishes hardcovers, of significant print quality and surprisingly modest price tags (owing to publishing overseas and keeping overheads way down). Their catalog is comprised of indie, international and relatively unknown creators telling stories across many genres, mostly far outside the offerings of the Big Two and other cape-and-tights pubs. I sat in on a couple of panels with the Arachaia folks, was impressed by their outlook and business model, and intrigued by the variety of product – particularly the fantastic old-school printing of the “Moon Lake” anthology. (Review on that one coming soon.)
Now it’s been a few months since C2E2 and I’m just catching up on my comic reading, so I wanted to touch on each of these Archaia books. First up: The Killer: Volume One by Jacamon & Matz. From the publisher:
“A brutal, bloody, and stylish noir story of a professional assassin lost in a world without a moral compass, this is a case study of a man alone, armed to the teeth and slowly losing his mind. This Eisner Award-nominated collection includes issues #1-4 of the series The Killer.”
A curious offering, The Killer is told almost entirely through narration, a first person reflection from the titular assassin. We get inside the head of a paid killer biding time while waiting for his quarry to appear in his target sights. I got the feeling that the telling of the story is meant to be the man’s own way of entertaining himself during a tedious-yet-stressful stakeout. As long, lonesome hours and days pass holed up in a hotel room, he reflects on the origin of his career and cold ethic of his profession. This is a man with no real friends; just marks, a fixer and the occasional woman to share his bed. He’s got a long-term retirement plan, a big-dollar goal and the desire to eventually live a quiet, anonymous but exceedingly-comfortable existence in South America. Yet his meticulous methods and impeccable track record are starting to suffer under the burden of the work. And while his grip on sanity is slipping, a surprising noose of betrayal and discovery tightens…
I enjoyed the isolated nature of The Killer, the examination of the cool-but-cracking lead, his lonely and paranoid world. The lack of substantial dialogue drags the pace at times, but his world does not revolve around conversation. Wait, wait more, kill and exit – this pattern defines his days, and the reader feels the weight of it. The long claustrophobic spells, so reminiscent of Euro-centric contract man film noir, are broken up by flashbacks of action and death, clean kills and brutal murders. When the main story finally takes flight, it’s with harsh and startling abruptness, as careful plans go awry (as any such story requires).
Luc Jacamon’s art plays to the cinematic, with deeply detailed environments that fall away in the right moments to un-encumber the action. The colors convey mood and setting with appropriate and subtle shifts, always a complement to the art. The style fits the “indie” look (read: non-superhero) though not at all characterized by the loose anatomy and bent perspectives that usually accompany that classification. This is an artist with complete command on the page, a full realization of the writer’s imagined world.
The women of The Killer are little more than damp-sheet dalliances, though gorgeously rendered in distinctly French fashion by Jacamon. One girl in particular, though, seems to hold the assassin’s attention more solidly, something the art communicates but he does not acknowledge to himself or the reader. Connections are not allowed in his creed, though he obviously craves them.
The Killer doesn’t deliver excitement as its primary product; rather, it is the immersive experience, that safe-but-delirious taste of paranoia that infects the reader’s mind. I read it in one-sitting some hours after midnight, and sleep didn’t come quickly afterward.
I would only recommend this book to readers with interest in noir or tolerance of slower, internal storytelling. I will, however, be picking up Volume Two.
Title: The Killer
Story: Matz
Art: Luc Jacamon
Publisher: Archaia
Rating: Mature Readers
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-932386-44-8