The second entry into this year’s Top Cow Pilot Season hit shelves this week and it provides readers with a bit of a feminine influence in what looks to be an otherwise male dominated season. Does the book do enough to win your vote? 

Compared to last week’s 39 Minutes, I think it does. The book depicts, basically, the modern femme fatale. Author Filip Sablik introduces us to Madeline who can only be described as some sort of operative for some shadowy organization who literally uses love as a weapon while giving you cause to rethink the use of online dating sites. The issue follows the seduction of local cop Doug who after only a few dates is prepared to do anything for Madeline. The consequences of this seduction are quite shocking at the end of the book.  

It was interesting that the book threw you into the middle of a story. Madeline, at one stage, meets someone from her past and there’s obviously a history there but it’s not explained. In fact we know very little about Madeline and who she works for and what their ultimate goal is. It all comes together to make you really want more, which is perfect for the Pilot Season program.  

The dialogue for the issue was good but at times it felt like it was going right over my head when it talked about the biology of the human body and what not. It certainly helped to make sense of why Doug was acting the way he was but I felt he was written to be a little too concerned with the whole abuse thing. Sure he’s a cop, witnessed his mum get beat but it was pretty much all he wanted to talk about. Also without knowing more about the tricks Madeline uses Doug’s reaction is borderline unreasonable or unbelievable. The more you think about it the more you doubt it but that won’t come till later as you’ll breeze through this book on your first read.  

I liked the art for the most part in this book. It was that classic clean, defined lines natural looking sort of book. Madeline is drawn in a way that definitely sells the femme fatale angle; she’d be hard for any man to resist. I didn’t understand why, at the end, thought the blood was all black when earlier they’d made it red. I also couldn’t help but imagine the fight between Madeline and Erik as part of some bad kung fu movie with the colored backgrounds and KIA!! It kind of took some of the seriousness away from the fight. 

Asset was definitely a more interesting read than 39 Minutes. I am generally interested in seeing where Sablik will take the story next. This partly because I want to know what Madeline’s goal is but also I’d like to see how he’d tackled an ongoing series with the premise of the book. Would he be able to keep it fresh? Would Madeline have enough different tricks up her sleeve to keep readers interested? Who knows, only voting will solve those questions.