By: Matt Fraction (story), Francesco Francavilla (art)
The Story: As if we need any more reasons to fear and hate clowns.
The Review: You can give them different degrees of sadism, various choices of weapon, and some distinctive physical features, but at the end of the day, a hired killer is just a hired killer, an obstacle to test the protagonist’s survival skills. The only time they start to take on importance of their own is when the writer makes an effort to give them a background and motivation beyond whatever contract killing they have going on at the moment.
In #8, the Bro Gang (for lack of a better name) took out a hit on our favorite archer, and last month, we got to see what the contractor looked like: wide and wild-eyed, with white face make-up and a painted teardrop an one cheek Fine: he’s merciless and appropriately creepy, thus serving the story’s purposes. But here, Fraction goes beyond the killer’s minimum qualifications, giving us a glimpse of the kind of man he is beneath the violent exterior.
Kazimierz Kazmierczak’s path towards villainy began, as the stories of his kind so often does, in his childhood. Given how often we’ve seen this in comic book criminals, it’s safe to say this kind of character history has become rather cliché: the tragically pointless and graphic deaths of one’s family, the bitterness and self-suffering which gradually turns one into a sociopath. Fraction tells the story well and with great credibility, but that doesn’t make it any more novel.
At least there’s nothing apologetic to the choices Kazi (as his American friends call him) has made. As much sympathy as you might be willing to give him for the horrors he’s experienced, you cannot lose sight of the horrors he himself inflicts—because Fraction won’t let you. Even if Kazi’s violence is a manifestation of some incurable trauma, he projects it on the wrong people, perpetuating his own angst over the “fleeting,” “transitory” nature of life and history. Never forget: this is a man who loves his work, and says as much.
Still, there is something magnetic about a man with a brooding air and an Oscar Wilde turn of phrase (“What are you doing here in this room filled with old sad men and their dead-eyed wives? Look at you. You look carved from porcelain.”), which explains why Kate is instantly drawn to him. There’s a cinematic tension in their interaction at her dad’s party, one that builds as their dialogue becomes more intimate and revelatory. It’s the conversational version of slow dancing, so even though they’re just talking, you hope that Kate doesn’t get too close.
By giving a connection to Kazi and Kate, Fraction adds a personal element to Kazi’s mission to kill her kind-of boss. It’s unclear what kind of feelings Kazi has for Kate. In a very prettily written scene, Kate gushes about her love of New York at night, saying, “I see the sodium lights burning against the darkness and I feel like I’m falling in love.”
“I feel nothing,” Kazi replies. It’s a shutdown sort of line if you’ve ever heard one, a pointed hint at his own soullessness. At the same time, he clearly has some kind of interest in her, one that only grows when she refuses to let him dictate the terms of their encounter. Once he realizes her connection to his latest target, you wonder if jealousy will color this particular contract.
No one does horror like Francavilla and no one does pulp like him either. Get both elements into a comic and you’re almost guaranteed hair-raising art, especially if he’s coloring his own work. He has a way of keeping characters comfortably in shadow and darkness; it is when the light shines in that things take a turn for the worse. It conditions you to be a little anxious around the light; you’re afraid of what kind of terror it might reveal.
Conclusion: It’s not often you get a whole issue to learn about the latest villain, and although it’s very familiar character work, Fraction and Francavilla execute it with a masterful touch.
Grade: A-
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: – Hm. It’s going to be so awkward when Noh-Varr finds out that Kate’s chatting up older men at parties when he’s not around.
– As unfortunate as Grills’ death is, the thought that keeps running through my head is: what happened to the puppy?
Grade
Conclusion