Artemis & The Assassin #1 - AfterShock Comics

ARTEMIS & THE ASSASSIN No. 1, March 2020

Overflowing with all manner of sense-shattering shenanigans through time, truly savage historical slayings, and plenty of gun-toting, jack-booted Nazi Germans, Stephanie Phillips’ narrative for Issue One of “Artemis And The Assassin” surely must have pleased its 7,192 readers in March 2020. In fact, it isn’t until this twenty-page periodical’s final quarter that the comic’s breath-taking pace finally comes to a natural, momentary pause as Virginia Hall finds the time for some brief bed rest, before facing this comic’s sensational cliff-hanger of a conclusion; “This… This is huge. It could change… everything. Hamlet..? Hamlet! Who the hell are you!?!”

Perhaps this publication’s principal highlight however, is the mysterious makeup of this mini-series' “top-secret assassination organisation” and the cold-blooded agency’s apparent ability to murder the likes of Grigori Rasputin in 1916, courtesy of a futuristic energy arrow straight through the eye, without adversely affecting the continuity of the planet’s established timeline. Just why people would willingly commission operatives to “interfere with watershed moments” intriguingly hangs over everything which takes place within this book, and arguably becomes even more enthralling once the well-dressed Isak insinuates that previous “cataclysmic” missions have unfortunately gone wrong.

Similarly as enjoyable as this comic’s writing though are Meghan Hetrick’s layouts, which really help both imbue Maya’s highly dislikeable character with all the haughty arrogance a bibliophile might expect from a successful hired killer, as well as add some palpable dynamism to Hall’s highly destructive detonation of a German-held bridge. Indeed, whether it be the illustrator’s depiction of “the agency’s top assassin” brutally dispatching the Russian mystic’s astonished bodyguards in a horrifically gory manner, or “the deadliest spy of World War Two” huffing and puffing her way ahead of a pack of ravenous Nazi guard-dogs, the artwork is top-notch.

Adding some extra bang for this audience’s buck is this book’s succinct secondary story “Zen And The Art Of Assassination”, which fascinatingly reveals Maya’s early days as an apprentice under the watchful eye of Isak. This ‘short’, prodigiously pencilled by Francesca Fantini, shows that even back then the two work colleagues did not apparently get on with one another, and starts to establish just who the then aspiring archer had to kill first so as to “get my own missions.”

Writer & Creator: Stephanie Phillips, and Artists: Meghan Hetrick & Francesca Fantini