Here’s a comic chosen at random from my collection.
Queen and Country v1 by Rucka, Rolstan, Luth, Sakai, and Konot.
I love spy stories, whether it’s James Bond, Atomic Blonde, Red Sparrow, or Velvet. And if one of my favorite writers is involved, even better. I’ve had this digital trade for a while now and the randomizer got me to read this finally.
The story itself is simple: British SIS spy Tara Chace assassinates a retired Russian general, Odessa wants revenge and attacks the SIS HQ, killing a couple agents, SIS Director of Ops wants revenge and works against MI5’s operation to apprehend those responsible, and Chace is used as bait by MI5 to draw out the Odessa assassins.
I don’t know why, but I expected a grander story (I blame James Bonditis), but there’s certainly nothing wrong with what we got in this first trade, though I would have liked a bit more personality/characterization. Most of what we see is only in relation to the characters’ jobs, but maybe that was the point: their jobs are all-consuming.
Rolstan’s art also is fine, but the simple, almost cartoony quality of it, for me, detracts from the tone the story is trying to evoke. It doesn’t help when you see the Tim Sale covers–I would have loved to see this comic drawn by Sale.
The question for me now is do I buy the next collection?
What did you think of this comic book?
Longbox Review 