Artemis and the Assassin was a five-issue mini-series (so far), about a time-traveling assassin named Maya, that is tasked with hunting down one Virginia Hall (code name: Artemis). Artemis works in the French Resistance during WWII, and was just given information on where the Allies intend to land and when. It's her responsibility to inform the other resistance cells, so they can hamper any Nazi counterattack on D-Day.
The attempted assassination does not go as planned. Artemis proves a little more difficult to kill than Maya anticipates, plus the Nazis show up to try and kill everyone in the general vicinity. In the confusion, Artemis triggers Maya's time travel devices, and things go from there. The two gradually build a friendship, mostly around saving each other's lives as, even when the locals aren't trying to kill them, Maya's fellow time-traveling assassins are.
Stephanie Phillips clearly sets some things up so this doesn't have to be the last we see of them. The man who trained Maya (and also wiped out everything she'd known prior to that) isn't dead, and has a new sidekick. Nothing was really explained about who is hiring these assassins, or to what specific purpose (if any). The most likely answer is people who think they'll make more money if history plays out differently, but who knows. We know Maya has completed missions successfully before, and we see one of the others do likewise, but we never see how that changes things.
Probably the biggest mystery is the mysterious books. Maya lived during the time of Emperor Ashoka and her people protected books that were said to contain all the knowledge in the world. Knowledge Isak seems to have used to make himself sort of immortal, and which may have something to do with a strange energy Maya can harness. Again, details are thin on the ground.
Phillips does a nifty bit that I think plays off imperialist narratives, where Isak is responsible for destroying Maya's home and trying to turn her into a heartless weapon, but he presents it as some grand favor he did for her. He uplifted her to a better place. Megan Hetrick drew the first two issues, and Francesca Fantini the other three (don't know why the shift), and they both draw Isak as sort of a dapper Englishman type. Fancy walking stick, nice suit with a vest under it. He gets annoyed when it gets torn up by some Ancient Egyptians before he kills them. He makes a nice picture of the kind of guy who would insist conquering a place would improve it by bringing civilization there. The fattening of his wallet would just be a lucky coincidence.
The main thrust of the book is the friendship between Maya and Virginia. I guess it could be whether Maya is going to ultimately complete her mission or not, but I feel like once Virginia is pointing out that Maya could have just let some other guys kill her, you kind of know it's not happening.
So, the friendship. On my first readthrough, I felt like it wasn't built very well. They seem to go from yelling and insulting each other to suddenly they're pals. But it's a friendship in the mold of any number of buddy cop movies, where the two characters start out antagonistic, but gradually grow to care about each other. The moments in Lethal Weapon where Riggs saves Murtaugh's life near the pool, and Murtaugh invites Riggs to dinner. In that sense it works, though it's still hard to see why it happens.
Why does Artemis save Maya from a Nazi, when Maya's already killed several of her allies? Two pages later, she seems entirely ready to kill Maya. Why does Maya, in turn, save Artemis from the guys in the Old West? Is it simply to repay a debt, or did Virginia's act of compassion stir something in Maya? Or was it because they were both fighting for their lives? From that point on, they're basically in a situation where everyone is after both of them, so teaming up is kind of forced on them. That gives them time to build some sort of bond where Maya doesn't simply kill Artemis the moment Isak shows up and demands it. Prior to that, the story seems to require certain odd choices to keep things from concluding prematurely.
As mentioned above, I don't know why there was a shift in artists between issues 2 and 3. Hetrick's style is a bit more animated, a bit smoother. Reminds me a little of Ed McGuinness when he was drawing the Superman books, at least in the faces. Anatomy isn't anywhere near as exaggerated, and the linework isn't as defined, but it's very expressive. Fantini's lines are thinner, more of a realistic style. I feel like Artemis looks older in Fantini's art, but maybe that's because Maya is fleshed out and humanized, which makes her seem like less of a terminator. She's a wounded kid in a lot of ways, one who didn't realize how badly. Virginia's suffered, but she's had more time to come to grips with it. There are a few more panels during Fantini's fight scenes where the characters seem awkwardly posed rather than moving. Hetrick seems to have more of a knack for illustrating the flow of the action.
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