Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Writer: Mike Carroll
Artist: Kewber Baal
Release Date: 15th January 2014

Suburban mother and vigilante supreme Jennifer Blood has come a long way in her campaign of revenge. Having killed her way across America, Jen now finds herself in Europe trying to reclaim her children who’ve been taken in by a relative. Yet, as things go from bad to worse for Jen it’s no longer clear whether she should have her children back.

Mike Carroll’s take on Jennifer Blood is vastly different from the initial, darkly humorous version of the character offered by creator Garth Ennis. Rather than the suburban wife and mother with a dark secret and anger issues, Jen is now a vicious and ruthless killer, prone to fits of rage and despair. As this issue progresses the depths of Jennifer’s blood lust and madness is becoming more and more apparent.

At times the art is a letdown, with characters occasionally seem to have contorted themselves into strange poses and one bullet time style panel just coming off as forced. However, there are a couple of pages which lay out the panels quite nicely, giving a chase sequence a sense of pace and movement, and the art does capture the violence well. There’s a genuine sense of things happening with real force and impact, and with all the severed heads and bullet wounds it’s probably just as well.

All the violence would start to seem over the top if it was glorifying it in the way that a lot of vigilante comics and movies do, but the character of Jen is so clearly completely unhinged that it manages to work. As the scale of violence committed by Jennifer grows, it takes on a more profound level, alienating her from her own family and bringing her into some seriously bleak territory. It’s a strange read, the central character has become the villain of her own story.

Rating: 6/10.

The writer of this piece was: Joe Morrison
Joe is Freelance film journalist based in Glasgow.
You can also find Joe on Twitter.