Murderland #1 – Review

By: Stephen Scott (writer), David Hahn (art), Guillem Mari (colors)

The Story: An assassin lady who dresses up in disguise to kill her targets.

What’s Good: Not much.  There are a million silly, funny quips I could make, but that would be rude with a creator-owned book title like this one.  So let’s focus on the art, which is the best part of this comic.

The art reminds me a little bit of Oeming’s art in Powers.  It isn’t as good as Oeming’s and it isn’t quite the same, but it has that similar “Did you draw this with a Sharpie?” look to it that I enjoy.  Given that I might scream if I see another gritty/assassin book that is all photo-realistic, it was nice to see pretty good art on a story like this even if it did fail a little during the action scenes.

What’s Not So Good: The story is big-time confusing.  I have a standing personal rule that I don’t read message board comments before I review a comic here at WCBR so that what the reader is getting is my unpolluted opinion and not some group-think review.  And the only time I break that rule is when I read a comic like Murderland that just confused the hell out of me and I think there’s a chance that I just didn’t get it or read it properly.  So, I can say with confidence that this is a confusing comic…there’s not trick to it.  It might get better in future issues, but it didn’t work for me here.