Review: Terminal Alice OGN
You might say that good friends and terrific contacts can get you places. I mean, just look at this package right here. You have an oversized comic counting over 100 pages, published by Zenescope Entertainment and with amazing covers by some of the industry’s greatest, Joe Benitez and Mark Texeira. And still Kaufman can get away with an interior story which clearly needed an art director and/or editor to make all the little yet important elements come together as one.
Then why do I still feel enthusiastic in reading and rereading this comic? Why do I keep browsing through its pages, time after time? Why do I treat this comic like it is a David Mack book where I can discover layer upon layer upon layer?
There must be something here, right?
And there is!
I read Jeffrey Kaufman’s second Zenescope OGN Whore first and to go back in time a few years and read Terminal Alice might seem counter-productive. Yet what I noticed after reading both titles thoroughly, and not even in one single read, was that the premise of both stories is fascinating. Where Whore tried to discover the depths an assassin could sink to in a over-the-top yet honest fashion, Terminal Alice shows how five women can come together and through the strangest of circumstances build a team, yet remain individuals as well. Both titles show you honest emotions and will make you care for the characters, since they are well-developed and, due to the page count, you have time to really get into their individual stories and backgrounds. Yet there is also plenty of room for just lovely story twists, plot twists, and character development creating a complete and intricate story that keeps you coming back for a second or third read.
The story then.
We have five female assassins for hire, who somehow end up with a million-dollar contract riding on recovering their heads, without the bodies attached. One is a schizophrenic who likes to pretend her other self will do the killing, one is a Wiccan spreading pagan cheer, another a former nun, one a Buddhist dishing out Confucius-style wisdom while wielding her katana, and to close the line-up, a daughter of an arms-dealer. Their sheer enthusiasm for their profession, bundled with the most remarkable solutions to help them survive as a team is just truly captivating.
The art by Turini is rich and captivating as well. You can see that he learned a lot in the years leading up to Whore but still has some ways to go.
It would have benefitted the book to have panels match each other better and sequentials that tell the story more succinctly, using specific word balloons that would better the flow of reading and have the writing better match the art at times. All in all, the story of this book hits home but a bit of art guidance and editorial help would have made for a better home-run.
Credits
- Words: Jeffrey Kaufman
- Art: Marco Turini
- Colors: James Brown
- Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
- Price: $9.99
- Release Date: Sep 1, 2011
About the Author
Richard Boom Richard is the driving force behind Comics for Sinners. His love and admiration for female comic book characters is virtually unparalleled, which immediately explains his biggest 'sin': his Hot Mummy fetish. This sketchbook theme is philogynistic in nature and even the source of his WIP comic book series "The Sisterhood".
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