I'm a very easy gall to have attention snapped. You tell me you have a story about a assassin executive? you have my very attention, especially if it's in GN style. You start with her being so loyal to her boss, much like Sebastian is one hell of a butler on Kuroshitsuji? Oh I'm very focused now!

So you better believe you had my attention to #0 to #6. Neither the graphics or the blood and violence turned me away, all actually kept me very much focused to see what our main would decide. What had her thinking about her loyalty after it all starts coming around.

Besides the plot, the art is very nice as well.

A recommend!

Combining volumes #0-#6 of the popular and violent comic series, Executive Assistant: Iris Volume 1 tells the story of the uniquely beautiful and efficient secretary/personal assistant Iris, loyal to the end to her employer Mr. Ching, a notorious global businessman and criminal. Also doubling as Ching's bodyguard and assassin-for-hire, Iris has been groomed since childhood to kill - but when her boss sends her out to take care of some extracurricular "business" to swing negotiations on a big business deal his way, Iris inadvertently starts a chain of events that for the first time, will have her questioning both loyalties and lifestyle. Violent and bloody, the dark, moody artwork of this graphic novel fits the subject matter perfectly, as Iris cuts a bloody swath through her boss's enemies - artwork good enough that the superfluous, almost offensively silly objectification of nearly all the female characters (and what little clothing they wear) is intrusive and unnecessary; even annoying, marring an otherwise seriously juicy revenge tale with a seriously kick-ass heroine. 3/5 stars

Note: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

The story of “Executive Assistant Iris Vol. 1″ [David Wohl/Aspen MLT/176pgs], though thrilling in many ways, is enigmatic of a 90s action movie mixed with James Bond. It is slick and thrilling in many ways. The art is beautiful. the locations great. But the journey Iris takes as an assassin under the thumb of an Asian gangster trained from birth hits some of the problem snags that dogged”Red Sparrow” in terms of a film with Jennifer Lawrence last year. The aspect of the story revels in the balance of brainwashing versus personal choice, what Iris is tasked to do and what she is expected to do at many points. She doesn’t question it but it reflects in the aspect that perhaps there is no way out for her. Some of her kills are reminiscent of O-Ren in “Kill Bill”, but in that focal point, Lucy Liu’s characters takes revenge for the death of her father rather than be subjugated and then takes the power from those who supposedly gave it to her. Here it is the reverse balanced by the patriarchal power structure jockeying her against her fellow assistants/assassins. Again the action is stunning, the perspectives great and the read is swift but the context and relevance in a modern take is decidedly off. Iris does find her focal point but it resides in the fact that she makes a choice and it doesn’t vibe with her boss’ goals. While the volume ends with a ode to a larger threat, her world is no longer open to her.

B-

By Tim Wassberg

Executive Assistant Iris is one of those series that has an absolutely fantastic core concept. Think about it; an assistant that was trained to do basically everything. Iris can be anything from secretary to bodyguard, all the way to assassin (which sounds a bit more proactive than usual, but no complaints here). Unfortunately the series so far hasn’t had the best follow through on that core concept. It’s been interesting and fun to read in that there has been lots of exciting fight scenes. But those scenes don’t really have any impact because I haven’t been given a reason to care too much about Iris or those around her.
I do think that this series is still worth watching, because the concept is sound and there’s always a chance that things could turn from okay to absolutely amazing. Personally, I’m rooting for this one.

This is easily one of the better drawn and written indie books to be found. It is ridiculous how little attention this series gets. It reminds me of the Shi series years ago. Great art and intelligent stories. Crazy action as well. If you love Japanese sword fights, this is the book not to be missed!

Thanks to netgalley.com, author David Wohl and Diamond Book Distributors for the advance ARC PDF file for my honest review.

Really liked 'Executive Assistant Iris Vol. 1' a lot, the writing's decent, the graphic's are amazing, really vivid and definitely will keep reading the rest of the Iris volumes.

I don't read many graphic novels but when I do it's for the change of pace from reading words and need to do read them more often than I do. Find it especially helpful, when I'm in a rut of reading several books that are flat, lose interest and guess I just need set them a side.

Iris is pretty cool, she's likable even if she's just following orders and by the end you, realize she's got a good side to her and be fun to see what happens in volume 2 with her character.

It gets one star because the art is actually quite beautiful, if filled with fan service and T&A on every single page. The issue is there is no real story aside from some white guy's wet dream of an Asian woman. Yes, Iris is a powerful fighter, but she only fights for the man who literally owns her and has control of every aspect of her life, including her sexuality. It's just so gross. Then again, it is by the guy who brought us Witchblade, which is all tits and ass all the time, so it's pretty expected of male fantasy comics trying to pass themselves off as empowering for women.

This comic has a lot of potential!

It really is a pity that this comic was so lackluster. It promises a dark, intense comic, filled with action, violence and suspense. At least that was what I thought I was getting myself into when I picked up this.

I actually quite liked the concept of this graphic novel. When I first started it, I was not in the right headspace to finish it, but after taking a break and going back just over a week later, I saw it from a different perspective. The upbringing of these executive assistants are the cause of their less than stellar personalities. They are walking robots, killer machines because that is what they were brainwashed to be. They were punished harshly if they were anything but perfect. They were not even able to form bonds with one another, as they had to compete with each other in order to stay in the good graces of their teachers and had to be as ruthless as possible to achieve this. Friendship had no opportunity to blossom in this environment.

I like Iris. She is a little bit bland as a character, but I am hoping that as the comic progresses, she will develop more as a character and display a little more emotion and personality.

Her employer is extremely boring and annoying. I was hoping that the first issue was just establishing the and the background for how the rest of the story was going to progress. Which was in part correct, but that did not save this comic.

What I got out of it was a lot of characters with so much promise that ended up being wasted, as they were introduced and never really seen again after one issue. The encounters Iris has are just as pointless. She doesn't seem to do much except do her employers bidding, which I admit is her job, but she doesn't show a lot of agency or personality. Not until the end. But even then it seems to come out of nowhere. Maybe she just does not know how to be "normal" because of how she was raised and then how she spent the rest of her days under the rule of her employer.

Full Review: https://tinkerpad.wordpress.com/?p=257

I will not be reviewing this title. I was unable to finish it. Thank you for the opportunity to review it.

Fan service and exoticism. Drawn well, but reifies the trope of the beautiful and deadly exotic woman who works for a man.

Unfortunately, the NetGalley preview disappeared before I had the opportunity to read it - it had been sat on my iPad in Kindle app for three weeks, and *poof* it was gone. Never mind.3 starts as an average, because I never saw it.

Iris is the executive assistant to Mr. Ching, a busy man who launders money from criminal organizations into legitimate businesses. Iris serves tea and acts as assassin as requested by Mr. Ching. Flashbacks reveal her training and what set her on her current course of becoming aware and independent. A very interesting cliff-hanger of an ending leads the reader to look for volume 2 of Executive Assistant: Iris.

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this volume.

The least interesting version of the "strong female character" is "she's sexy and she can kill you!", and that's all Executive Assistant: Iris has to offer. She's a character without any kind of agency of her own, entirely at the command of others and without an agenda of her own. She's just here to wear short skirts and justify action scenes and it's all very very dull. And then, when there finally appears to be a glimmer of protagonist about her, the book yoinks even that away and it turns out even when she makes a decision for herself she is still just a pawn for someone else. Blah.

Pretty good, but not above average. I actually didn’t realize that this was written by David Wohl when I first opened it up. I like his work, especially on Aphrodite IX. Realizing it was him, I definitely drew some parallels. That said, this trade is a good introduction to the world of Iris (and all the other flower names). The story is nothing incredibly original. In fact, it is quite predictable at points, but it is entertaining nonetheless. There is a good mixture of current events and flashbacks for world-building. The multitude of flower names (Iris, Lily, Violet, etc.) for the Executive Assistants are clearly in juxtaposition of their lethality, which is a classic noir technique. The ladies of this world are very femme fatale.
Speaking of which, the art is excellent, of course. In going along with the noir element, there are frequent times where the female lead is shown to be using her body as a weapon of sorts (in the risqué sense, not the assassin sense), which doesn’t sit well with a lot of modern audiences, but it makes sense in this context. That said, there are many renderings of the female body in a provocative way that is strictly for eye-candy purposes (beautiful art by Eduardo Francisco!). It doesn’t bother me because I understand that a master assassin would be in peak physical shape and sexiness (especially used as bait) is definitely a quality of the femme fatale archetype, but I can see why other readers might be “offended”. I do find it ironic though, because there are elements in the story of human trafficking in terms of servitude and prostitution, yet the art depicts the female body as strictly visual stimulation at various times. So, do we have respect for the female form or not? It is an interesting paradox and not sure it was intended.
Moving on, this trade is a complete story arc that feels pretty well wrapped up until the last panel. I have a good guess as to who was speaking to Iris and if I am correct, it speaks again to the predictability of the writing. Still, this series is worth a read if you like strong, well-drawn, female leads accented with a splash of blood, coupled with subservience-turned-vengeance, and topped with a penchant for justice.

***I received a free copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review***

This had such an interesting premise but this was not for me. The art style had moments where it looked really good but a majority of the book did not look very nice as the art style was a bit too messy for me.

Cheesecake, Violence, Redemption?

So, we take a bunch of orphan girls, train them up to be soulless assassins, give them all push-up bras and throwing stars, and then sell them to international bad guys to be "personal assistants". One of them, our heroine Iris, is happy to kill her boss's enemies, (although if the victim is a devoted family man she tries to make it look like he died of natural causes, because that's easier on the surviving family). SPOILER. Iris does have a change of heart eventually, (somebody has the nerve to kill someone she likes a lot), so I guess that's, you know, a good lesson learned.

I'm all for cheesecake kick-butt heroines, but it's just more fun if they are actually heroic. Red Sonja for example. Switching tropes from the hooker with a heart of gold to the damaged psychopath with a heart of something like gold is a bit of a stretch. This might all work better if Iris killed people ironically or with a suave James Bond psycho-twinkle or bon mot, but most of the story is played straight and all of the assassins are a humorless lot, which made it all much harder to swallow. Iris generally has the same demeanor whether she's slitting a throat or clearing a jammed paper copier, which leaves the reader at something of a loss.

That said, the creators try to establish a legit backstory of mind control and behavior modification to explain these executive assistant killers, and if you keep that in mind the story works a little bit better.

The art is interesting. Good lines and inking and color, with nice detail. Action is a little hard to follow because it's very much of the Pow! Wham! Ninja skilz variety, but that's generally O.K.. The characters never project much in the way of expressions, which works during the cold-blooded killer segments, but not so much when any other emoting is called for. (Many variant covers are included, and they are especially interesting - some in a cheesecake way and some just as examples of how differently characters like these can be interpreted.)

Volume 1 collects issues 0 through 6 of the comics series. Volume 1 was first issued in 2011. It has been reissued "now at a lower price point" in 2019, I guess with the intention of rebooting the franchise for a new wave of readers. I could see how if they can reboot this with a more modern and complex set of heroine executive assistants, and with a bit more knowing humor, this franchise could have potential.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Unfortunately I am unable to download this to my Kindle.
This is a real pity as I would have really liked to have read this.