7 Psychopaths

Written by Fabien Vehlmann
Art by Sean Phillips

I had a few reasons to pick this new trade paperback up this week:
1.  I like Sean Phillips's artwork a lot, and have gotten tired of waiting for the new Incognito series to start.
2.  I like French comics, although I wonder why so many of the ones that get translated and published in North America have a WWII theme (I like war comics, but there is so much more than that being made in France).
3.  I'm always willing to grab a $10 trade paperback or graphic novel.  That seems to be the magic price for me - anything more than that, and I'm likely to just sit and wait for it to show up at a used book store or on Ebay.

Anyway, 7 Psychopaths is pretty cool.  The high concept is a pastiche of movies like The Dirty Dozen and Inglourious Basterds.  As the Second World War gets progressively worse for the British, a Colonel is presented with a plan to gather together a group of mentally ill or criminally insane operatives to travel to Germany to assassinate Hitler.  Most of the book (which was published in three issues earlier this year) is taken up with the Colonel and Joshua Goldschmidt, the architect of the plan and one of the titular psychopaths, assembling their team.

The plan doesn't work as planned, of course, but the way that Vehlmann has the story play out is pretty unpredictable, especially considering what is revealed about Hitler late into the book.  The plotting is very tight, and Phillips's artwork is as perfect as it usually is.  This is a very cool comic.