I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer

Rennie Bethany is a serial killer.  Unfortunately that doesn’t pay the bills on its own.  So she applied to the New York Fashion and Design Institute to pursue her other calling.  Though her initial plan was to keep her head down, learn what she could, and get on with her life, fate has other plans for her.  Like becoming friends with chirpy busybody Sofie Cardoso who guilelessly and unwittingly shows Rennie that there’s more to life than murdering bad dudes to sate an indescribable urge.  One that’s never going to go away, so it’s probably for the best that there are plenty of people who have it coming in this fashion school.

This is the latest serial killer story from writer Doug Wagner and artist Daniel Hillyard who previously gave us both volumes of “Plastic,” along with “Vinyl” and “Plush.”  Looking back on these, it really does feel like diminishing returns set in after the first volume of “Plastic” and this volume doesn’t do anything to reverse that.  Even though Hillyard’s vibrant art hasn’t lost any of its luster or knack for stylishly depicting gory murders and dismemberments.

The main problem here is that all the killing feels really boring.  There’s nothing shocking about what Rennie is doing as it’s all played for laughs towards people who have it coming.  It should feel satisfying on some level to see violent chauvinist bros, bad boyfriends, human traffickers and more get what’s coming to them, but it feels so familiar here.  Wagner does try to frame Rennie’s experience at school as a means of personal serial killer growth, but even that comes off as dull as it is predictable.  It’s certainly for the best that their next title “Narco” is moving away from the serial killer business as it feels like they’ve really run it into the ground here.