Volume 2 of Welcome Back collects issues #5 through #8 and continues the story of Mali and Tessa, but it opens with Lorena. Lorena is a cute ten year old little girl and an assassin. She has been charged to take out Mali, who is another assassin who was suppose to kill Tessa. As an assassin in a ten year old’s body, they have to create a cover for her to hunt Mali down and kill her. As the story goes along, you get the sense that Lorena doesn’t want to, but she does as she is told. Lorena kills along the way, finds a dog, and steals a car to get where she needs to go. She makes sure to stay inconspicuous to get to her target. The assassins are called “sequels”, because they wake up in other bodies of existing people. Mali was meant to kill Tessa, but they fall in love and have been on the run. When they wake up in another person’s body, at some point, they are aware of missions they have to fulfill, to kill. They don’t want that anymore, they want to live and be left alone.
This is a very complicated volume; there are flashbacks from the past lives of these assassins. The wars they fought, the different people they have been, rules they have to follow. The dialog is heavy, between the characters and their inner thoughts. But it is very captivating. The story by Christopher Sebela is long and every panel is never missing words, but it does keep your attention. The writing is thoughtful, there was some research done, this can be seen in each century that is visited in flashbacks.
The illustrations from Claire Roe is amazing. I do recognize her style from some Batgirl issues. The tones and colors she uses almost act as emotions the character may be feeling in a scene. In one panel, when Lorena is angry, the colors take on red/warm tones. In other calmer scenes, they take on cooler colors. She does make the eyes large and heavy, very expressive. You can tell Roe is used to illustrating action scenes as well, lines are drawn to give the sense of movement.