Review by Frank Plowright
The cold-blooded first person narrative Matz provides for The Killer is instantly gripping as it lays out a hitman’s trade and agenda. The Killer is never named, but he’s prepared to reveal almost everything else about how he goes about his business, with the opening dozen pages having the Killer extrapolate as he waits for his latest target to appear. It’s powerful and shocking to have the consideration given to ending lives so calculatedly laid out without a shred of remorse or conscience. The lives of his targets are effectively ended the moment a contract is handed out, and it might as well be the Killer who’s paid for it.
This Omnibus combines what were previously released as The Killer Vol. 1 (and before that Long Fire) and Vol. 2 (previously The Debt), both out of print with used copies commanding high prices. The same fate befell this Omnibus and Vol. 2, with the most recent release combining four volumes as The Complete The Killer.
Killing may be central to the series, but the nature of the storytelling demands a disciplined artist able to make the tedious days of waiting and ordinary conversations look interesting, and Luc Jacamon achieves that gloriously. The Killer himself is deliberately nondescript, not a man an immigration officer would glance twice at, and Jacamon pulls off a clever trick by never showing him without his spectacles, making identification even trickier. As the Killer’s recollections continue, circumstances allow for more decorative art, and Jacamon delivers gloriously lush South American jungle and believable streets of New York, and his shadows and lighting are to die for. Over the second half of the book there’s the occasional experimentation of importing photographs and drawing around them, and considering those techniques were in their infancy in the early 21st century those pages retain an elegance. It’s also worth noting that while brutality is the Killer’s trade, the art is no voyeur’s paradise, and the violent deeds very often occur off panel. Once it’s been established, there’s no requirement to show what the Killer does again and again, but if needed Jacamon can certainly shock.
Because it’s relating the progression of a career, The Killer always has connecting threads leading from one two-chapter story to the next, but they can all be read individually with no recourse to the bigger picture. Carefully cultivated isolation is the norm as the series begins, with the indications being that it’s been that way for some while, but by the end much has changed. Matz (Alexis Nolent) seems to be following a path of the Killer ignoring his own advice, and the friendlier he becomes with others the more his safety is compromised. How far that’s followed plays out in Vol. 2.
The Killer can be dismissed as a stylish extrapolation of a sordid trade, noir tropes expanded intensely and imaginatively, but the amoral justification is rubbed in readers’ faces. If not quite charismatic, the Killer’s explanations present a rounded person at home with their unsavoury trade, and the immersion in an unpalatable world is unsettling. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed Man Bites Dog will love The Killer.
Amazon links to this collection feature the cover to Vol. 2.
