Katie Skelly

I thought this graphic novel was FANTASTIC! This gives a fictional slant on a true event, the murders of Leonie and Genevieve Lancelin by their maids Christine and Pea Papin. The artwork was gorgeous and the story was told with empathy.

A thin story about a young vampire escaping her family home and going on a blood-soaked killing spree while pursued by her brother, a private detective, and a secret society.

I suppose you could get some extra mileage out of this by calling it an allegory for womanhood or somesuch, but not much. I think it wants to be sexy, but the stylized art just isn't.

Bad parents make bad children who become bad maids to bad employers and then bad murderers of bad people. Katie Skelly sets a bizarre tone for a tale that I did not realize until the end was a dramatization based on a true story.

The graphic novel didn't actually do much for me, and I felt I learned more about the crime and its repercussions on the Wikipedia page. There's a list of other works there inspired by the events that seem like they might be more interesting.

I really love the artwork and I’m really interested in this true crime story now. I wish that there was more content in this iteration, I felt like it could’ve been a little longer and elaborated more on the girls’ pasts (which it seems from other tellings of this story it has been told many different ways and with varying details). While there’s a lot in this story about social class, I feel like this kind of skimmed the surface but didn’t go much deeper.