Equality: Ladies Kill Too

The general understanding of a Lady Killer is a charming man who is very attractive to women. However, the subject of the graphic novel Lady Killer is a woman who kills; and it is a clear effort to unsettle the reader as well as the status quo. Popular culture bombards us with a specific image of a killer, particularly a killer for hire.  Let’s face it; the image one conjures up is usually male.  Joelle Jones subverts this thinking by casting her killer as a woman.  Not just any woman, a 1960s homemaker.  This incongruity serves as the first stage of feminist contestation.  The cover depicts an attractive woman, the perfect homemaker who could have her choice of men.  Joelle Jones distorts this imagery by befouling the home space with overwhelming blood spatter. This sets the stage for a narrative that contests the different ideas of femininity, masculinity, and the perceptions of women’s work and a woman’s place.  Lady Killer is feminist praxis.  It is necessary to identify feminism in practice in order to analyze male dominance in society, and to emphasize the connections of women to each other and their shared past.  This action provides an opening for women creators and stories to the genre.

Joelle Jones’ artistic rendering of the main character, Josie Shuller, and the world she inhabits harkens back to the femininity of 1950s and 60s Americana. The foregrounding of femininity during this period of American history serves to merge the feminine into a male sphere.  Jones uses this same ideal as a point of departure for her female character. Post WW II was an era shaped by familial conformity.  One’s home life was defined in a very specific way: husband, breadwinner; wife, homemaker and children.  The Shullers of Lady Killer superficially fit this narrow understanding of the ideal family.  However, Jones and Rich portray a villainous female character in order to display the changes that occurred in women’s roles in society.  In Midcentury America, women’s efforts to change their social, economic and political status were perceived as villainous for upsetting the status quo.  Therefore, making Josie a literal murderer figuratively kills the image of the happy homemaker, and all of the limits this stereotype placed on women.

Joelle Jones’s art style in this graphic novel is indicative of the aesthetics of that period. The art style evokes the works of illustrators such as Earl Olliver Hurst, who were prolific in this period. She uses the 60s home as a backdrop for Josie’s life.  However, contemporary feminists saw this space as a contested sphere.  The home, and a woman’s supposed natural place in it, symbolized the gendered inequality. The Birmingham Feminist History Group (BFGH) stated that women could only gain entry into the workforce only if it is second to her primary role of wife and mother.  This means that the work she performs must be accomplished part-time while children are at school and husbands at work.  Josie appears to fit these parameters superficially.

As asserted in Neyer and Bernardi’s article “Feminist Perspectives on Motherhood and Production, “reproduction and motherhood have been highly contested issues…within feminist movements”, and the insertion of a killer into this disputed sphere is Jones and Rich’s representation of this clash. However, they amplify this friction by making it a life or death battle. During the 80s feminist debate centered on the repudiation of maternity (Neyer, Bernardi 164). Feminists during this time believed it was imperative to reject motherhood to have true equality, and to move from subordination to parity with men.  By portraying Josie Shuller as a professional killer, Jones and Rich dispute the notion that maternity is equal to inferiority.

Josie’s first kill in the book takes place in a kitchen.  The viewer sees the visceral struggle of women playing out.  The linkage of motherhood to women’s nature, ergo women’s work, is countered in Lady Killer.  What we see is that killing is what is natural to her.  The reader realizes that the façade is motherhood.  Just like Josie’s cover identity, motherhood is socially constructed to maintain equilibrium and force people, especially women, to remain in their roles.  Second wave feminist thought discussed the role that “sexual perspectives” played in theories of male bias, and questioning this bias. The understanding and acceptance of maternity as a female domain becomes a place to challenge this thinking.  Lady Killer situates itself as a place to have this discourse and thus works as a critique of misogyny by amplifying gender representations in the text. This portrait of Josie’s surface-level gender conformity subverts defined masculine and feminine roles. Josie hits every gender ideal about women but using this to perform her very masculine perceived job.  Jones’s Lady Killer Volume 2 decenters men.  Josie has agency, she moves into business for herself.  Just as her husband suggests.  Jones moves her protagonist out of the homemaker role.

Jones challenges the public/private division as she “dirties up” the private sphere with murder and blood.  She reasserts the private/female into the public arena. Josie’s husband is now at home with the kids and she comes home to him.  She is in control of her life.  She states, “for the first time in quite a while I feel like my old self” (Jones 55).  It is important to note, this is in the middle of a meat cleaver bludgeoning, not with her husband and kids.  Josie is experiencing the freedom to advance her career, with the support of Irving who is in the background. With support, she can maximize her potential.  This is one of the political goals of feminism.  Motherhood is not natural to Josie, murder is.  This disproves the notion that women are, by biology, more suited to domestic work. 

A North American feminist point of view suggests that women and men are the same.  Women have the capacity to do male things.  Moreover, societal influence encourages difference. The organization of society gives Josie’s husband power; this reinforces sexual difference.  Jones uses Josie Shuller to call this in to question.  This text serves as a lens to view feminist theory but also a lens in which to view the praxis of second and third wave feminism. The link between feminist theory and application lies in individual work.  Lady Killer evolved from feminist discussions and activism about strong non-stereotyped female representation.  Characters and artists in comics lean heavily towards male figures and female characters playing supporting roles.  Lady Killer is an activist expression of third wave feminism whether on purpose or accident.  The comic challenges the masculine experience that prioritizes men and reduces women’s roles to stereotypes. 

It is necessary to begin actively examining female driven comics and comics written by women in order to challenge the current state of women in the field. Therefore, analyzing Lady Killer through a modern feminist lens can open up spaces for research into the issues that women encounter on a micro level in the comics industry and on a macro level, the male dominated society.  Jones places a woman as the central focus of her book, which is contrary to conventional comic tradition.  The second volume takes a more radical position by relocating the conventional man character out of the picture, further shifting focus to the lead woman character. 

The question of womanhood is still a contested identity/space.  This contradiction is evident because of the lack of female diversity and the fact that Josie cannot have her career and children and this has less to do with her career as a killer and more to do with the social constructs of the times.