EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT ASSASSINS #13 Review – Riding in boats with Ninja
Full disclosure, I was never a big fan of Executive Assistant: Iris or the other titles in that universe. The books were decent but they never really grabbed my attention. That is until today. Executive Assistant Assassins 13 caught me by surprise with just how welcoming and bold this issue was.
Call me a racist but the idea of an issue-plagued Caucasian woman mixed up in a world full of martial arts and katana blades grabs me. Here a blonde all-American type woman named Daisy is looking for a hero to save her from her abusive crime lord of a father. Enter Shen, a martial arts master with a troubled past of their own. Writer Vince Hernandez does an excellent job of selling the magnetic chemistry between the two. The heat between them makes the audience care about these characters. Seeing Daisy try to escape one world of violence using violence makes me feel like I’m watching Kill Bill all over again and that’s the best compliment I can give a book with this premise.
As good as it is, there are a few faults in the book that may be a deal breaker for new readers. One bump in the story is the pace of the issue itself. We’re taken from a steamy love scene with the couple to them getting tattoos to winding up in an alley fight in what feels like a break neck pace. However, that issue doesn’t distract as that little bit missing in the art. Artist Lori Hanson’s layouts are solid and well balanced, but I’ve come to know Aspen books for their soulful expressions of illustrated character in books like Fathom. Here the expressions feel monotone both in line art and color.
Ultimately there is more than enough good in the issue to make me want to see just what Daisy will become. Executive Assistant: Assassins 13 feels like a proper continuation of a story arc while still being new reader friendly and it looks as though the Daisy story arc redeems a series I once believed only catered to a niche market.
7.5 out of 10 Great! The right amount of butt-kicking and romance with just a few noticeable missteps.