The Killer (vol. 7): Affairs of the State II

The Killer is still working for the French Government at the start of this volume, alongside his handler Barbara to take out whoever’s needed.  For a man with a history and level of cynicism as him, this kind of work is just like punching the clock.  Then two things happen that change things.  The first is that his latest set of targets start to revolve around a human trafficking ring.  The second are the two kids who wind up finding their way into his remote cabin while he’s gone one day.  Two kids who are then taken after he offered them refuge.  While The Killer has always lived in a world that’s just many shades of gray, these things have suddenly thrown his perspective into stark black and white.  Which isn’t something that his employer really cares for.

Vol. 6 didn’t make a good case for continuing this series after what felt like its natural conclusion, with most of its protagonist’s internal narration feeling like writer Matz venting about his many issues with the world today.  There’s still a lot of that in this volume, but the good news is that it fades away as the story goes on and the states become more personal.  The final third of the volume even gets back to what I liked about the early parts of this series as it showed its main character building a life that became bigger and much less dark than what we were expecting.

While this means that while vol. 7 does get better as it goes along, it also means that it simply evolves into a pale shadow of what this series used to be.  It still has Luc Jacamon’s stylishly effective art to prop things up and deliver the occasional well-staged action sequence, yet it’s not enough to get me to think that continued investment in this series is warranted.  If you’ve never read “The Killer,”, then I recommend you start from the beginning and then stop at the end of vol. 5.  While the ending here isn’t advertised as a definitive one, I think we’d all be better off if it was.