Not-Quite Epic Kill: Epic Kill #1 Review

A couple months ago I read a preview blurb for a new Image book about a young female assassin, called Song, who had come down with a case of amnesia. The book was Epic Kill – created, written, & drawn by Raffaele Ienco.  It sounded fun, very Jason Bourne, so I threw it on my pull list & then proceeded to forget about it until the clerk handed it over this morning.  Though neither Trebuchet nor I could remember adding it, when the clerk asked if we still wanted it, we said “Sure!”

The storyline is alright, though I had to read through it a second time to realize this because on the first pass the art pulled me in multiple directions, one of which was straight out of the story. When it comes to the art, Ienco has a great, sketchy style and nice coloring. Present day panels have a warm toned color palette, and flashbacks a cool tone which provides an immediate reference as to which you are viewing.  However, there were several problems which made me immediately want to set this book aside without finishing it.  For everything that Ienco did right, he did something else very wrong or very strange.

The panels have a lot of depth and movement – until you get to any that involve blood spatter. For some reason the spatter all has a flat, static look, as though a paint-splatter technique was used to fling red over an otherwise finished panel.  I’m also confused about whether or not nanobots are involved in the plot as all of this blood vanishes from her skin and clothes in the next few moments with no explanation.

Trebuchet only made it a few pages before throwing it on the table in disgust. “Someone should explain to him how bullets work! He’s showing bullets, complete with case and primer, shooting out of the machine guns! It’s a damn embarrassment!!!!”

On the positive side – Raffaele does know how to draw the female form correctly. Song doesn’t have a case of collar boobs, she’s not shown in any boobs n’ butt poses; she even has room for internal organs.  In her flashbacks, she is fully clothed in martial arts or military gear – yay practicality!  Yet this plus is also countered. The mental institutions in Song’s world apparently issue their girls inappropriately skimpy dresses; pajamas consisting of skin tight camisoles with bikini underwear; and flip-flops. Hello, male 18-25 demographic!  At one point Song is fleeing in this outfit – fleeing in flip-flops. In a forest. FLIP-FLOPS people. Talk about impractical; she may as well be wearing a pair of ever-present comic book stilettos. Yet she somehow manages to escape and kill several thugs without losing one or twisting an ankle. I suppose that is indicative of her super-assassin training.

At the end of the day, her hallucinations early in the book may be pointing towards some kind of “Sucker Punch” twist where her perception of events is vastly different from reality. Unfortunately there’s not much evidence given for or against this scenario, so we’re forced to take things at face value for now.

While I can’t completely recommend this, I am going to give the second issue a shot. Overall, the actual story is not bad and does not call for any more suspension of disbelief than a typical superhero story. If Ienco can work out the inconsistency in his art (and maybe catch an episode of Dexter), he might have a fun series here.