Who do you go to when your current security isn’t up to par?
Say for instance they’re all killed by a sniper in public and you are
shot in the shoulder. That’s the initial set up to the second Volume of Executive Assistant Iris which begins
Aspen’s cross over event The Hit List
Agenda. The volume features Iris and several new
characters in her universe.
This story begins with introducing Diane Coverdale and her life. Diane is described as one of the most
powerful women in Los Angeles, California. She takes over her late husband's company. A business once led by his family, the company's Board of Directors assumed she’d simply
take the money and leave. They were very wrong.
In the story, drama quickly insues when she attends a public event. A sniper appears and without any warning, shoots Coverdale in her shoulder. He proceeds with killing every one of her security officers. Iris’ employer masterminds the attack. Their intent was to eliminate Coverdale's protection as well as put her at safety risk. Coverdale tracks down the school that trained the sniper, and and bids on a student until she is
hers; just like they wanted.
Executive Assistant Iris is an interesting
narrative from Iris, but it’s really here just to tease at what’s
to come next. There is no character development, and Coverdale
is the only character known to the reader. David Whol
succeeds in making a successful zero issue that attracts readers to continue
picking up the main series.
The art was very good. The opening page has a great
layout. It features a limosine with it's roof down on a street with the credits . Just
something about it is very catchy. The rest of the book is well set up as well,
especially when it bounces back and forth from Coverdale and the Assassin.
Eduardo Francisco struggles on the female form at times, particularly describing women with similar styles and hair lengths. For example, when Iris was fighting one of the
students, readers could be confused, as the victim and another character had very similar features.
The color expert, Sunny Gho, does an average job. He fills
in backgrounds with common color hues. It adds nothing to the
book. For example, a black background would have been more interesting to
look at rather than his choice of orange-brown smudges. The background coloring is
particularly bad when the assassin and Coverdale had common colors. Even though the assassin was in a different room with different
lighting, the color was too similar. The room returns to its original coloring, it’s
as if he was trying to show that the assassin and Coverdale were now on the
same timeline or trying to link the two scenes, but he failed to do so.
Again this is just a zero issue and the real meat of the
story is waiting to be told. I am interested to see Aspen tackle so many of
these tie-ins and how the story will play out. Right now I’m interested and
that’s exactly how it should be after an introductory issue. The best part is
that with this chunk of the story out of the way, we no longer have to worry
about some of the boring facts being drawn out in the first issue.
Overall Score – 7.5/10
Be sure to check out the preview for this issue as well.