Correcting Time With Blood: ‘Artemis And The Assassin #1’ Reviewed
by Josh Davison
Mild Spoilers Ahead
Russia, December 1916: a royal carriage is stopped by a mysterious assailant. She kills the driver and guard before the VIP passenger steps out: Grigori Rasputin. The assassin takes his life too before returning back to her home base. This assassin is from the future and she is tasked with killing important historical targets. Her superiors think she’s becoming sloppy, but she still gets another target. Her next destination is Vichy-Occupied France in 1944.
Artemis and the Assassin #1 brings the reader into the world of a time-hopping killer. She gets high-profile targets to eliminate, but the end goal is as-yet unclear. Comparisons to things like Timecop seem a bit easy, but it doesn’t seem to be that straightforward.
The first half of the comic introduces us to the assassin and her work, and we get to see how brutal and deadly she is. We get some hints at her position in her organization as well as her personality.
The second half introduces us to Artemis, who is a resistance fighter in occupied France. We see what she does, how effective she is, and how she’s perceived. We don’t get to see the assassin again until the very end, and she’s accompanied by the traditional twist ending.
Meghan Hetrick and Francesca Fantini deliver some brilliant artwork in this first issue. The action scenes are slick, the character designs are stellar, and the texturing is excellent. The violence is aptly gory and brutal and the assassin looks like a downright badass. Lauren Affe’s color work is strong too, giving this book the strong sense of atmosphere it needs.
Artemis and the Assassin #1 is a promising start for this new time-traveling assassin series. The first issue plays its cards close to its chest, leaving the reader to wonder what exactly is going on and if the assassin is even a good guy in all of this. Mix that solid story with some fantastic artwork and you have a series well worth recommending. Feel free to check this one out.
Artemis and the Assassin #1 comes to us from writer Stephanie Phillips, artists Meghan Hetrick and Francesca Fantini, color artist Lauren Affe, letterer Troy Peteri, cover artist Phil Hester with Mark Englert, and variant cover artist Dave Johnson.
Final Score: 8/10
