Page 45 Review by Stephen
A luxurious new hardcover edition with a satisfyingly tactile debossed flag, released in time for the launch of Jason's autobiographical perambulations ON THE CAMINO, this is far closer in tone and content to the likes of Jason's LOW MOON, IF YOU STEAL and ATHOS IN AMERICA etc, all of which come highly recommended.
Calmly coloured by Hubert and told in a clean and relaxed, four-tiered, eight-panel grid, this ingenious, comedic dance is the last story you'd expect from a title like that, except that it does feature quite a lot of sudden deaths!
Set in a world where earning a License To Kill is as legal as a license to practice medicine, Jason clearly demonstrates why conspiracy to murder - to hire someone to kill someone else for you - is against the law here in the UK, Ireland and most American States. It'd be highly lucrative and the waiting list longer than the average builder's. Everyone would be at it and for the most spurious reasons. But if you can hire someone to off your missus because you're bored of your relationship, you'd better look out for tell-tale signs of ennui in your next lover's eyes.
The star is one such hitman who - after a snappy succession of assignments, each with its own punchline - is paid to travel back in time and shoot Adolf Hitler.
He botches it.
Instead Adolf escapes in the same transtemporal globe and ends up back in the here and now. The delight of this, however, is that this isn't really about Adolf at all, and wherever and whenever the various time-travellers end up, the majority of the action occurs in the present.
But how does everyone get here if the machine takes fifty years to power up after each two-way journey?
It's actually a love story, told, deadpan, with the absurdist wit of Lewis Trondheim.
