JENNIFER BLOOD #1-3
Writer: Garth Ennis
Art: Adriano Batista and Marcos Marz
Published by Dynamite Entertainment
Review by Stewart Loud
Do you lament the absence of Garth Ennis' unique writing talents from the pages of The Punisher? Do you like gritty, realistic, violent crime/vengeance stories? Do you maybe just have a strange urge to see what the Punisher might be like if he were a woman who was married with two kids and living in a nice house in a quiet suburban neighbourhood? If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions then start reading Jennifer Blood!
I heard ages ago that Garth was writing this story and I thought, why not just write more Punisher stories if you've got a hankering for more vigilante themed vengeance? Turns out though, that while this comic has a lot in common with Frank Castle's antics -she goes out dressed in black, heavily armed and does horrible things to mobsters because of something they did to her in the past- it's also a brilliantly original comic book in it's own right with plenty of new and interesting angles to the genre.
For starters the most glaring difference is that she's a woman with a family and a household to run. The story's narrated through passages from her diary, war journal style, and constantly flips between talking about things like being able to get a pedicure because her husband is looking after the kids that day to musing about articles in the latest edition of Guns and Ammo.
“Baretta, Glock, Sig-Saur, Heckler + Koch- it was 9mm this, 9mm that. There wasn't a single mention of .38 or .45. What on earth's the point of having twice as many bullets if you have to use three times as many to actually put someone down? Honestly.”
Then there's the part where she drugs her family each night by putting valium in their hot chocolate to make sure they don't wake up while she's off on a killing spree and she has a little but impressively well stocked hidden armoury she built before her and her husband had lived in their house long enough for him to notice that the basement had gotten five feet shorter.
I'm also gonna go out on a limb say this is a pretty good one for girls to get into (so long as they're not too squeamish) The way Garth writes from the perspective of a woman who's fully capable of killing most of the men she meets if she wanted to and carrying out complex black ops as well as doing all the work on her own SUV and any home improvements that might be required but has to keep all these abilities hidden from everyone she knows by playing to other peoples sexism as the vulnerable house wife is brilliant.
I'll admit, how women actually think is pretty much a mystery to me and this is something that makes me cry quite a lot but I'm fairly sure he must be pretty close to the mark with a lot of what's written here. The sex scene in the first issue had me in laughing out loud.....and then feeling a bit sad again after I'd thought about it a little more. There's some great bits where she deals with sexual harassment she sees in peoples work place and even potential sexual assault at a neighbours barbecue. As per usual with Garth's work his low opinion of the human race in general (which I completely share) is blindingly obvious. Sort the filthy bastards out, Jen!
Great art in all three of the issues I've read so far -I believe this first story's just gonna be six issue mini series- Tim Bradstreet even does a couple of variants for all the covers. All the action, violence, disembowelment and pleasant family dinners look great.
Violent, funny, and interesting. A must for fans of Garth Ennis and I'd say a really good one for anyone who's not read comics before but wants to get into them. A great adult comic book. Black Widow? Nikita? That woman off Alias? Jennifer Blood would kill 'em all twice and then prepare a lovely pasta bake for Andrew and the kids.
SCORE 9/10
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