Of all of the Executive Assistant titles, Violet really never grabbed me. I liked the concept and it was again different from the other titles, but something about it made me hard to latch onto it. Maybe it was the whole “mother who used to be an executive assistant” angle that I didn’t care for. But with all of the crossovers from the “Hit List Agenda” wrapping up, I couldn’t resist giving this book another shot to impress me and I’m glad that I did. This book, the one I barely paid attention too ended up tying into the Iris series the most! The issue begins with Violet holding a gun on her employer, the spoiled movie star turned CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. We see our bad guy of the series Villone make another appearance as he’s tries to kill yet another business partner. Villone goes on a James Bond villain speech about how he tricked the spoiled brat into killing his own father just so that he could ruin the company. Then he would buy up all the stock and gain control of it for its factories… to save money on building his own of course! It’s the lamest part of the book and I kind of had to roll my eyes and just accept everything they were rambling on about.
The good stuff comes in the way of action as Violet manages to break free from the chip and go on a killing spree! She hasn’t quite evened the score, but it’s a start. She’s pegged for the murder of her employer and forced into hiding. As she makes it to her mother’s house she finds that Villone has sent goons there already. Little do they know that Violet’s mama is one bad mother… shut your mouth! At any rate, Violet and Mama suit up to save her old fiancé before going after Villone.
Was this book perfect? Nope, but it was actually pretty enjoyable; I really thing that a lot of the dialog and narration could have been cut out and wouldn’t have damaged the story in the least bit. My second time through the issue I found myself only needing to skim the dialog and really just enjoy the action and gun play. I would definitely say that too much dialog and narration hurt the issue and it’s something writer Marc Andreyko needs to work on.
The art by Pop Mahn is really good and consistent. He’s the first artist to get to draw some of the other EA’s and he makes them recognizable with his own style. The only thing Mahn seemed to struggle with was the faces of the characters. Especially during intense moments the faces seem to change constantly. This is particularly noticeable with Villone’s character as his forehead grew and shrank from the beginning of the issue.
I really didn’t expect to enjoy this book, sure I’ve liked all the other mini’s and have struggled with Iris. But this title really didn’t interest me and started seem like one too many tie-ins. This last issue though really saves the series and does a great job of leading back into issue four of Iris. I think this is one of the best handled crossovers in comics and because of that I’m really looking forward to the outcome.
Score: 3/5