Welcome to the First Issue Bin, where I — Ethan Kaye — randomly grab one of this week's comics that’s just starting up and give you the details on whether it should get added to your collection … or remain on the comic shop shelf.
I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer #1
Writer: Doug Wagner
Artist: Daniel Hillyard
Color Artist: Michelle Madsen
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Editor: Kevin Gardner
Reviewing two Image comics back to back, week after week? What a world!
There were a few #1 issues dropping today, including a new Ironheart mini and a new Resurrection Man mini, but there was something about I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer that just spoke to me.
No, not as a serial killer.
It took me back to my freshman year of college, where I chose ended up at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, a school that maps onto the series's fictional "New York Fashion and Design Institute" pretty well. The admissions process was the same, where you trot out your portfolio, having zero idea what the admissions counselor was looking for. You get big assignments that are remarkably open-ended. And your work gets critiqued by your peers on the regular.
For me, my time at art school was a wash. Despite going there for film studies, I couldn't get into any film classes my freshman year, and bided my time making sculptures, drawings, drafts of grant proposals, and abysmal things involving acrylic paints. After the first drawing class on Day 1, I knew it was a mistake and began researching transfer opportunities on Day 2. I completed the full year, transferred to Alfred University, and that was that.
But I understand how Rennie Bethory, the serial killer main character of I Was A Fashion School Serial Killer, feels, as I took a little joy from UArts shutting down unexpectedly last year. I felt bad for all the students who were cut loose with a week's notice before the beginning of term, but there were enough bad memories about that place for me to feel at ease that it was going to bed for good.
Enough about me. Rennie Bethory is a serial killer! And she designs her own clothes using skin and bones and other things she takes off of her victims. It's not a spoiler either, something we find out at the end. No, it's in the first panel. She kills people, and as you can tell from the title, she's going to fashion school.
The conceit is set up right there on the cover. You know the score from a glance, the same as knowing that the film I Was A Teenage Werewolf is a movie about a teenage werewolf. So once this is established, the rest of the book depends on execution. How good is a story about a freshman serial killer going to be? What twists and turns do we take? Does this story rise above the title?
I'd say that I was entertained by issue #1, although I didn't think it really swung too hard for the fences. There's the familiar moodiness of the protagonist, the predictable bubbliness of her first friend (although Rennie would avoid calling Sophie that), the academic demands of a particular teacher, and the required coldness of the rival designer. The unknown element is Rennie. Since she kills people frequently, she could remove any of these ancillary characters from the picture. So far, in issue #1, she's good with getting away with it too, transforming bones into chopsticks and skin into leather with no fear of reprisals.
Doug Wagner is kind of a mystery to me. I haven't read his other work for Image, although I believe I read his story for Legends of the Dark Knight and Arkham: Origins. His background doesn't seem to be rooted in design school though, so I'm curious how much of this is based on experiences he's been relayed and how much he's borrowing from other media. The characters are pretty stock and standard, and even the school itself is fairly generic, maybe a little too large for a college in the middle of Manhattan. While the story is engaging enough for me to look forward to seeing the plot advance in issue #2, there are these nits to pick.
To that point about the generic school, I have to give it up for artist Daniel Hillyard, who (and I don't want this to come across as a backhanded compliment) creates a world full of dynamic characters without spending too much time on what's going on around them. This is 100% a character-driven piece so characters take up 90% of each panel. But you're never left wondering where a scene is taking place, because those little touches of environment have all the clues you need. It's a very practical way of presenting panels, and combined with Wagner's sense of rhythm, the book practically dances from panel to panel, page to page.
Despite it being a book about a serial killer, with a lot of blood, I feel like the story is familiar, almost comforting in a way. The "student with a secret" goes back all the way to, well, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, so the audience knows what it's getting in for. This is Buffy but evil, Dexter but in college, Mean Girls but Lindsay Lohan kills people. I enjoyed it, and I don't know if that's my old art school dropout senses tingling or just a well-put-together book. I can't remember another comic that digs into the world of fashion, maybe Alan Moore's Fashion Beast, and that's why I gave this one a shot; it's a world that's often left out of the graphic novel medium. Let's see where Wagner and Hillyard take it.
Novel uses of human body parts: 3/3
Accurate depiction of art and design school: 3/5
Sweaters over shirts: 5/5
Fashion designing depicted: 1/5
Bathing in blood a la Countess Bathory: 5/5 aha you didn't think we'd catch that the name "Bethory" is so close to "Bathory"
Verdict: While it doesn't break much new ground, it's got good energy and some twisted death stuff, so I'm going to keep it on my pull list.
