Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
Jennifer Blood #3
Dynamite Comics
Ennis & Batista
In this issue of Jennifer Blood we get a little bit more of the domestic side of the character before she heads out for another nighttime killing. The issue doesn't do much to separate itself from the female Punisher-like story and continues to introduce very bland and forgettable characters, especially the villains. Jennifer's motives are much clearer than in the first issue and one thing is for sure about this issue: Ennis continues to surprise with the depths of his mind when it comes to killing. Overall, this issue doesn't help to get this series off the ground. It's an okay read but far from special.
The book opens with a neighborhood party. Jen gets hit on and since she can't show off her skills as a warrior she has to resort to housewife techniques of fending off advances. These opening pages help to cement how Jen acts around the normal rank and file characters. At this point it's clear that her daytime life is just an act and that none of it is real. There is one character that seems to intrigue her but since she can't break character to neighbors she can't clue this other woman in as to how much they are alike. These opening pages all serve to show the reader how Jen is able to hide her night life.
The rest of the issue has Jen hunting down another one of her uncles. Unfortunately, none of the characters she has killed has bubbled up as anything remotely interesting. Without a family tree or some sort of sense of family history the characters all feel interchangeable. It's not even a case of the reader not knowing what the source of the revenge is. It's more of a case that none of these characters act or have been seen doing anything that warrants them as being a viable threat to anyone. Going into each issue whatever villain is presented stands no chance of beating Jennifer. Uninteresting villains simply make for boring comic books.
The artwork ranges from excellent to uneven. The pencils appear to be split by two artists and it shows. The book's opening is heavily detailed and completely overruns the last few pages despite the fact that the most gruesome visuals occur on the final pages. While the back part of the book is very reminiscent of Dillon pencils the characters simply don't look like their counterparts from the opening of the book and this is a problem.
This series is still struggling to tell an interesting story about anything other than a house mom that kills crooked family members at night. There aren't too many characters in the book that are memorable and the plots are rather thin. The best part of the book so far is the manner in which the family members are killed off and this issue may be the best of the bunch in that department. This book is going to need to provide something more than that though to survive in the long run.
2 out of 5 Geek Goggles
