"Clippity-clop, clippity-clop! Mommy, how will I get into his base …?"
"Oh well, grenades through the windows and then kick the door in shooting. Or just sneak up with a flamethrower if you want."
This book collects the first six issues of Jennifer Blood from Dynamite. It was written by the now veteran of the field Garth Ennis - writer of The Boys, Hellblazer, Preacher, Hitman, Just a Pilgrim and many more. The art duties were carried out by Adriano Batista, Marcos Marz and Kewber Baal.
On the surface, Jen Fellows is a typical American, suburban housewife. She has a loving, if slightly boring, husband with whom she has had two children - Mark and Alice - the perfect nuclear family. But Jen has a secret. At night she drugs her family and takes to the streets delivering justice to a notorious crime family the Blutes. But for Jen the attacks on the Blutes are more than just vigilantism for the target of each of her attacks is one of her uncles.
Ennis invites comparison to the Punisher with the very first page of this series:
And while she has had her life torn apart by the actions of criminals just like the Punisher, the focus of her attacks, at least in this book, is desire for revenge on the specific men who killed her father and destroyed her mother. But unlike the Punisher she has built a new life beyond the revenge she seeks and must take extraordinary steps to protect her new family.
According to an interview in the back of the book this series sees Ennis returning to the lighter side of life. Fortunately for his fans the usual elements are still in place - black humour, sexual deviancy and a high, gory body count. This is a great story and a good introduction to the character. I will be interested to see where he takes it now given that her initial revenge has been satisfied and her peeping tom neighbour has discovered her secret - though not the secret he initially thought it was. One slight annoyance was a change of artist midway through issue 3 which was slightly disorienting due to the main bad guys not looking the same as they did just the page before but despite this recommended for fans of Ennis.
First published on RevolutionSF on Sunday Mar 25, 2012
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