Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator)

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Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator)

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Buy Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Category: Graphic Novels
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Reviewed by John Lloyd
Summary: If you can't wait for all three books to be in English, then sampling this first book alone will tease – and delight the eyes with some wonderful sci-fi imagery in amongst the slaughters.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 56 Date: December 2015
Publisher: Titan Comics
ISBN: 9781782761396

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A long way away, in terms of both time and space, the most perfect assassin is formed – genetically bred, adept at magical transformations, with the most athletic and deadly abilities, and with the complete lack of emotion needed. All he will ever seek is the highest price for the best job – a job that will, now and again, force him to meet with the most unusual people…

This first book of three is a little slender, and perhaps too guilty in solely setting up the rest of the trilogy, but is not to be dismissed out of hand. The opening does look completely risible, it's true – the naffest of sci-fi terms and most clumsy use of neologisms around. Give me the hammer! The meta-cathode polyform tube must penetrate the pineal gland is not what you want to wake up to hear your surgeon shout at work. It's all enough to make you reach for your policoffee

But beyond that, you know what? You warm to proceedings, however firmly they stick to the world of cheesy space opera. The assassin gets taken to his proving ground, people get their due comeuppance, and what might appear a straightforward job proves anything but. Things are certainly helped by the fabulous artwork, and Nicolas Fructus proves himself perfectly adept at painting anything – architecture, characters, fabulous beasts or spacecraft. The bijou size of the volume is a handicap once more when you think of all the splash pages that you would relish with wonderful craft and detail like this, instead of the many smaller frames we get here.

Speaking of splash, this gets rather bloody quite quickly. It's not for the squeamish, although however many images you get in comics of heads being sliced in twain you still feel a happy twinge of a smile at what was once an audacious move. The very subtitles of the remaining two books prove where the story is going to go, character and story wise, which like the derivative and trying-too-hard feel of the first book may also kill the series off for some. (What's more, the reviews on Amazon France also point to fans of the movie director author having seen it all before from him, but I'll not claim to any prior experience of his books.) But on this slight evidence I think I would be keen to see where it goes – I would always prefer something like this to be given us in one fell swoop, and I have to note there seems no sign of when volume two will have been translated and published, but for now it's a visually arresting foretaste of what (might?) follows…

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

For more adult gore, we can suggest 13 Coins by Michael B Jackson, Martin Brennan and Simon Bisley or The Quest for the Time Bird by Serge le Tendre, Regis Loisel and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator).

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Buy Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
Buy Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy Showman Killer: Heartless Hero by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Nicolas Fructus and Ivanka Hahnenberger (translator) at Amazon.com.

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