Take a look at that cover, and understand the one important
thing about this book: it is exactly
what it looks like, and nothing more.
Meet Alex, Laura, Ilena, Cara, and Eve (ALICE , get it?!). They are five extremely beautiful hitwomen,
and someone has just taken out a contract on all of them. One million dollars a head. They decide to strike back in an attempt to
save their own lives.
It’s all right for what it is. The problem is, that’s it. If you like watching beautiful women killing
people in fairly gory ways, then you should give this book a try. If you’re looking for something with a bit
more meat . . . well, you might want to cast your line elsewhere.
There is one thing writer Jeff Kaufman does well, and that’s
describe Alex’s relationship with her father.
She was raised to be a hitwoman by a hitman father and a KGB spy
mother. Very ALIAS of them, but the way
Alex interacts with her father is pretty interesting, especially when he tries
to teach her life lessons by letting her deal with being hunted on her
own. Well, kind of.
But the rest of his time, Kaufman is too busy squandering
precious pages on bad dialogue, and it’s really, really bad. At one point, one of the killer women
complains about getting her nails damaged in a battle, because she’d just had
them done. Really. That’s to say nothing of the rest of the crap
that gets spouted throughout this story.
Another problem is that so much of the beginning is padded
out, it kills the pacing. Even though
we’re introduced to the conflict early on, it takes maybe 30 pages to get the
action to progress. Not good. Even worse, Kaufman repeats himself when it
comes to introducing these characters.
Each woman has her quirk, and he relentlessly strikes upon it over and
over again in a sloppy attempt at characterization.
This is to say nothing about the incredibly bad twist in the
end. At first, it seems unexpected, and
one might mistake it for clever, but the more one thinks about it, the more one
realizes that it’s completely unnecessary, and it doesn’t make much sense.
This is a definite style-over-content kind of book. At least artist Marco Turini gives you
exactly what you would expect from such a book.
Well, except tits, because these guys think they’re too high class to go
all the way.
All in all, it’s not a bad book, but it’s not good
either. Unless this is your thing, you
should pass.
TERMINAL ALICE
Written by Jeff Kaufman
Illustrated by Marco Turini
Published by Zenescope
Too many pages to count (why can’t we just number pages
anymore?)
$10
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