The City Beneath Her Feet #3 Review: Love, Lies, Bombs, and Brooklyn-Level Assassin Chaos

The City Beneath Her Feet #3 from DSTLRY is the kind of comic that walks into the room wearing heartbreak like designer perfume, pulls a knife from behind its back, and still somehow asks you if you want to talk about feelings. WEPA, now that’s my kind of emotional damage! James Tynion IV and Elsa Charretier are not just building an assassin underworld here; they are peeling back the bruised wallpaper of obsession, grief, memory, and identity inside a New York City that feels both familiar and completely possessed by danger.

This issue picks up the emotional shrapnel left behind by the first two chapters and pushes the story into a sharper, nastier, more intimate space. A heartbroken woman is already neck-deep in a violent world she never fully understood, and now the truth about Jasper Jayne feels less like a mystery and more like a live wire wrapped around her throat. The brilliance of this third issue is that it doesn’t just ask, “Who was Jasper?” It asks the much messier question: “What do we do with the version of someone we loved when the real person was hiding entire rooms of themselves from us?” That is where this book shines. Under the assassins, explosions, knives, rats, bridges, secret clients, and gorgeously bizarre violence, this is a story about being left with someone else’s ghost and realizing the ghost has better security than a billionaire panic room.

Tynion’s writing here is slick, wounded, and wonderfully theatrical. He knows exactly when to let the characters talk themselves into emotional corners and when to let chaos kick the door off the hinges. The dialogue has this terrific rhythm where pain and dark humor wrestle each other in real time. One moment, the book is unpacking guilt, inheritance, and the burden of being someone’s unfinished business. The next moment, boom, the assassin world reminds everybody that feelings are great, but bombs are louder. Tynion understands that grief is not clean. It is repetitive, embarrassing, irrational, and sometimes dressed up as a mystery because solving a mystery feels easier than admitting you miss someone who hurt you.

Elsa Charretier’s artwork is, straight up, a visual feast with a mean streak. Her pages move with unbelievable confidence. The characters feel elastic without ever becoming silly, expressive without ever losing danger, stylish without becoming empty fashion plates. There is so much personality in the body language here. A slumped posture says more than a confession. A glare cuts harder than a blade. A quiet room can feel more threatening than a shootout. Then, when the action erupts, Charretier lets the panels dance, slash, scatter, and explode with wild momentum. This issue has some deliciously unhinged visual storytelling, especially when the book leans into the absurd brutality of assassin logic. It’s stylish in the way a great music video is stylish, but it’s also readable, emotionally loaded, and constantly pulling your eye exactly where it needs to go.

Jordie Bellaire’s colors are a major weapon in this issue. The palette swings from icy blues and sickly yellows to burning oranges, bruised purples, and soft interior pinks that make the emotional scenes feel like they are happening inside a memory that refuses to behave. The action sequences pop like danger signs dipped in neon, while the quieter scenes carry a haunted elegance. Bellaire gives the book its temperature. You can feel the cold subway tile, the smoky regret, the heat of an explosion, and the strange comfort of expensive rooms filled with terrible secrets. The color work doesn’t just decorate the story; it translates the emotional weather.

Aditya Bidikar’s lettering keeps this beautifully chaotic machine moving with control and personality. In a book with this much verbal texture, visual noise, action, and emotional overlap, bad lettering would sink the ship faster than a bad disguise at an assassin convention. But Bidikar keeps the rhythm clean, sharp, and expressive. The sound effects snap, the dialogue breathes, and the page never feels clogged. That is craft, folks. Respect the letterer, always.

What really impressed me about The City Beneath Her Feet #3 is how it balances pulp madness with genuine emotional sophistication. This could easily have been just another “cool assassin world” comic, and honestly, it would still look amazing. But this creative team is aiming higher. The book understands that style is more powerful when it has sorrow underneath it. The assassin mythology is fun, dangerous, and strange, but the emotional core is what gives it bite. Jasper is not simply a dead lover, a plot device, or a glamorous mystery. She is a contradiction. She is loved, resented, mourned, judged, misunderstood, and still somehow in control of rooms she is not alive to enter. That’s powerful storytelling.

This issue also does a fantastic job of making New York feel like a living pressure cooker. This is not postcard New York. This is the New York of back rooms, platforms, overheard confessions, stylish criminals, emotional breakdowns, and people running from problems that are absolutely faster than the MTA when you actually need it. The city becomes part of the conspiracy, part of the romance, part of the wound. Every location feels like it has seen something and is minding its business because rent is too high to get involved.

If there is anything that may challenge some readers, it is that this book likes to keep you slightly off balance. It is not spoon-feeding every detail, and it expects you to ride the vibe, follow the emotional logic, and let the visual storytelling fill in the gaps. Personally, I love that. Comics should trust readers more often. This issue rewards attention, especially if you’ve been following the emotional crumbs from the earlier chapters. The mystery is important, but the feeling is the real map.

The City Beneath Her Feet #3 is stylish, sharp, strange, sexy, sad, violent, and absolutely confident in its own skin. James Tynion IV delivers a script full of emotional venom and narrative hooks, Elsa Charretier turns every page into a kinetic designer crime scene, Jordie Bellaire makes the entire thing glow like heartbreak under neon, and Aditya Bidikar keeps the madness readable and alive. DSTLRY has a slick, dangerous gem on its hands with this one. If you like assassin stories with heartache in the chamber, mystery in the bloodstream, and artwork that struts across the page like it owns the city, this issue is a must-read.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Elsa Charretier
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Editor: Eric Harburn
Designer: Dylan Todd
Packaged by: Tiny Onion, Inc.
Publisher: DSTLRY

FOC:
5/11/2026
In Shops:
06/01/2026

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Author Profile

Al Mega: I'm Al Mega the CEO of Comic Crusaders, CEO of the Undercover Capes Podcast Network, CEO of Geekery Magazine & Owner of Splintered Press (coming soon). I'm a fan of comics, cartoons and old school video games. Make sure to check out our podcasts/vidcasts and more!