4 out of 5

Man, this is so Jodo.  It’s maybe a little too Jodo, which is why I’m forcefully curbing my acclaim to four whatevers out of 5.  Showman Killer is from the mind of a man who can seemingly create whole universes at the drop of a hat: worlds full of bizarre races and rules and logics that, yes, tend to fall into the “this whole planet is X and this whole planet is Y” category, but it’s still an immense imagination that paints some insanely inventive stories, even if sometimes those stories are fueled fully on that imagination and don’t always resolve into a point.  Jodoroswky is one of the few dudes where I don’t mind this, because of how fascinating his ideas are.  (It helps that, in the comic world, he’s often paired with amazing artists.)

Showman Killer is about the birth of the world’s best killer: specifically bred to make money and be crazy threatening and, due to his mastering of his morphing “show” technique, seemingly nigh-invulnerable.  Perfect killers are nothing new, but Jodo’s fun quirk is a simple little wrinkle: keep it consistent.  As soon as Showman is unleashed – his creator assuming he’ll have a pet who will kill for him and earn them some dough – he goes his own way.  Thereafter, opportunities for him to lay the smack down on people who don’t respect his ultimate killership are met with a shrug: Showman don’t care.  If you’re in his way, you’re dead.  Otherwise, pay him what he’s owed.  It’s an amusing simplicity where other writers would probably insert unnecessary “badass” scenes of Showman smirking and one-lining as he sets nay-sayers straight.  But yeah, logically, a dude raised to only want one thing really wouldn’t care what you have to say.  Following chapters are going to presumably push this, though, as the job Showman is hired for in volume 1 ends with him having some thoughts that are new to him…  Jodo does like to play with concepts of family, but I trust him to still take this in a unique, and not cloying, direction.

The art by Nicolas Fructus is, typically for Jodo’s art mates, up to the task of creating all of these worlds and characters.  The blood and guts have a sort of cartoonish feel to them and the action feels a little stiff; these elements wrankle against the widescreen sensibilities, but not in any overt way that halts the flow of the eye across the page.  And there’s a character named Seal Face who is a seal in a clown getup, so all is sort of forgiven.

Anyhow, as to my glossed over criticism, Jodo is a bit too quick to toss out terms and worlds in Showman.  Elsewhere, we arrive in Alejandro’s fully-formed worlds and seem to be observing events; the events might focus around a particular person, but it often feels like we’re there to witness, and not get “involved” with this person beyond seeing what they go through.  But Showman does feel like it’s about it’s title character, and so some of the world building feels a bit humorously rushed, i.e. not necessary but Jodo has the info, so he tosses it at us.  I love it, though I have to admit it seemed extraneous.

(But I still love it.)