Artemis & The Assassin #2 - AfterShock Comics

ARTEMIS & THE ASSASSIN No. 2, June 2020

Beginning with a genuinely heart-wrenching flashback as to just how as a young girl Virginia Hall came to lose her leg in a childhood accident, Stephanie Phillips’ script for Issue Two of “Artemis And The Assassin” certainly establishes what a gutsy fighter the “infamous spy” from World War Two actually is. But such raw determination to defy the odds doesn’t debatably explain just how the soldier still manages to ‘get the drop’ on Maya when the time-travelling assassin is about to murder her in Nazi-occupied France.

Indeed, if the American author has previously established anything following this mini-series’ opening instalment it is how utterly ruthless and cold-hearted the killer from the future actually is, so simply standing idly by whilst waiting for Virginia to “put my [false] leg on first” before she executes her with an energy arrow through the forehead is arguably somewhat out of character for the no-nonsense exterminator; “It’s my job to kill you… And I always do my job.”

Happily however, such an implausible delay in Maya fulfilling her mysterious mission does allow Meghan Hetrick to pencil a seriously pulse-pounding, action-filled adventure for the rest of this twenty-one page periodical, as the pair repeatedly wrestle with one another whilst simultaneously trying to survive a German assault upon the French resistance movement. This flurry of activity not only provides Hall with an opportunity to demonstrate her humanity by actually saving her assailant from the Fuhrer’s goose-stepping goons, but also allows Maya to once again demonstrate just how deadly she is with her hand-weapon when she instinctively dispatches a pair of the disabled spy’s friends who foolishly pull pistols out in order to stop her.

Intriguingly though, it is this publication’s secondary tale “Zen And The Art Of Assassination” which truly shows just how disturbingly dark Phillip’s blood-splattered world of hired killers actually is, with a smirking Isak demanding that his bow-carrying protégé kill a child in the little girl’s nursery if Maya wishes “to prove that you are ready for your own missions.” Proficiently pencilled by Francesca Fantini, this backstory goes a long way to explain just why the now fully-grown assassin is both so pitiless towards her targets, and hates her employer with such barely-restrained gusto.

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