Marilith is currently illustrated by Fernando Heinz and written by "Krazy Krow".
According to a few E-mails and comments I’ve received recently, it seems I do not have the patience to sit through epic webcomics and wait for their vast and awesome stories to unfold. Clearly, I want something that appeals to my baser instincts. I guess I should love a comic with big bosoms and big guns and maybe a plot on the side. I probably want to see something like Solid Snake jumping off a missile fired by a Hind D helicopter, then blowing up the chopper with one hand and making out with a hot chick in the other before he lands on the ground just because he can.
With that in mind, I stumbled upon a long-forgotten comic that seems to fit this description, a comic that until recently had trouble finding an artist who would stick around. Apparently, that situation has now been remedied, and all who love gratuitous violence, cool guns and hot women can now bask in the renewed glory of the strangely-named Marilith Millions and her adventures that seem similar to anyone who anyone who has sat through a whole Quentin Tarantino movie.
The comic starts out with professional hit-woman Marilith and her young hostage-turned-sidekick Kimiko performing one last hit before pledging to quit the business and open a coffee shop in Argentina. They barely get through airport security before a rival assassin named Valentino tries to kill her. Apparently, someone forgot to teach her marksmanship skills, as she manages to kill everyone near the security terminal except for Marilith.
Finding their fake passports now have bullet holes, Marilith and Kimiko decide to ditch their plans to quit the business and start hunting only evil people instead. Of course, this decision also leads some more colorful cast members to track the duo down for their own reasons: An arms dealer with a cowboy hat decides to shelter the odd couple with an ex-KGB agent as his maid. A half-Vietnamese computer geek named Minh Johnson actually pulls out in the middle of a NSFW act to chase his dream of meeting Marilith again. A couple of cops and one quasi-legal bounty hunter with money (“anything’s legal off-cameraâ€) are still trying to rescue Kimiko, unware of her high-level Stockholm Syndrome.
Admittedly, the story may be a bit tricky to follow after the first 3+ chapters, considering that’s about when the original artist Jos Fouts left and the writer spent awhile looking for a new one. After a glut of filler and false starts, John H. Stanton took over artist duties for the middle of chapter 4 and then illustrated a huge flashback sequence that digs into a chance meeting that Marilith and Detective O’Reilly had years ago, laced with much more filler material. You can see why I stopped reading awhile ago.
When the current artist (Fernando Heinz) entered the picture, the comic took yet another schizophrenic turn and sidestepped the Mexican Standoff with Marilith and O’Reilly, going all the way back to the psychopathic Valentino from the beginning of the story and portraying her as the product of a cruel Soviet experiment to create the ultimate female assassin. Just as it seemed that the action epic that didn’t take itself too seriously had all the fun raped (almost literally) out of it, the comic eventually wandered back to the main plot. They also throw in something about a mythical warrior nun shooting down a Nazi plane with just a pair of pistols. If that wasn’t outlandish enough, the current arc features Minh fighting some supposedly well-trained mercenaries with the aid of an inhumanly-strong Engrish-speaking Japanese schoolgirl who’s able to punch through what I assume is Kevlar. I can safely say that the plot of Smokin’ Aces was more coherent than this.
The artwork of each artist seems to have their own little quirks. Jos Fouts drawings seemed a bit too much to me like they came from a “How to Draw Manga†book. John Stanton brought a more American style to it during his brief run, and Heinz appears to have a mixture of the two, though he’s leaning more towards a Japanese style, but the drawing is actually pretty good. Heck, if there’s one thing all artists for this comic have done well, it’s the ability to draw realistic-looking weaponry and big…uh, guns.
Well, that’s pretty much it. I’m too tired of sifting through the glut of filler that seems to take up most of the middle third of this comic. It’s a good comic if you’re looking for cheap thrills and not worried about the cohesiveness of the plot, and you might even learn a random fact or two about those guns you like to use when you play Counter-Strike. And hey, it’s even got a few scenes that might even make the character designers from recent Dead or Alive games decide to go outside and try to meet real women for the first time in their adult lives.
I guess the point is, I’m giving it a mild recommendation based on the action. You can come for the fanservice, stay for the dark humor, but then leave when it starts taking itself a bit too seriously.
Tune in next week when Dr. Haus wonders aloud why he is still single.
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