Comic Review: Queen and Country Vols. 3 & 4

Queen & Country Vol. 3: Hot on the heels of my earlier experience with Greg Rucka's Queen & Country books, I decided I'd dive in again for the rest of the story.

Again, I was treated to much of the same highs and lows that were associated with the earlier volumes of this material.  This third volume, which wraps up Tara Chace's story has all the hallmarks of the Queen & Country series. First and foremost among those hallmarks: Greg Rucka's writing is quality. His spy stories are not only incredibly engrossing, but they also pack a very realistic feel, and strike a fine balance between political agendas and personal loyalties.  Also, just like my earlier experiences, the art was hit or miss for me.

In the third volume, things were more hit than miss for me on the art front, as Steve Rolston, probably my favorite artist from the series, was back dealing out some high quality art, and Chris Samnee, who I enjoyed on the Rocketeer Cargo of Doom story, handled some of the art as well.  Both those guys delivered some fantastic art, and helped raise the quality of this volume.

However, I was surprised to find myself frustrated with Rucka's writing.  At the start of the second story arc, Operation: Red Panda the narrative drops the reader down into the middle of events, and it soon becomes very clear that there's been a very major plot development that has gone down.  However, that major plot development is never explored, nor fully explained. Not only did I find this extremely confusing and frustrating, but I was pretty upset with this development, as I felt like I'd been cheated out of a huge piece of the story.

This whole ordeal seemed very out of character for Rucka's writing; He's typically a writer that is very good at tying everything together and buttoning up loose ends.  So much out of character that I blamed myself for missing something.

Well it turns out I did miss something.  An entire prose novel.

Between Operation: Saddlebag and Operation: Red Panda, there was apparently an entire prose novel titled A Gentleman's Game.  I can only assume that the major plot events I missed out on occurred in the pages of that book.  As a comics reader, I'm not so sure how I feel about that.  It's frustrating that the whole story isn't told within the medium in which it was started, and it's also frustrating that even if I wanted to read A Gentleman's Game, by reading this comic, much of that book is already spoiled, thus taking away form that experience, so there's no really good way to get closure.

This also brings up a discussion; that of comics being the destination, not a vehicle to other more well respected mediums, that I don't want to get into.  Suffice it to say that the switching of mediums, and subsequent major plot gap did a lot to take away from my Queen & Country experience.

Queen & Country Vol. 4: This fourth and final volume of the Queen & Country series collects the Declassified story arcs.  Each story reveals the past of one of the characters from the Queen & Country series.

Hardcore fans of the series will likely find this material quite interesting, as it gives backgrounds for Paul Crocker and Tom Wallace, two of the key characters from the series. For me, after the empty feeling I was left with from the previous volume, found that I didn't care about this material as much as I could have.

The stories here are pretty good, the first two in particular were pretty solid, and it was nice to have Brian Hurtt, one of my favorite comic artists, back at work on some Queen & Country material.  That being said, I wasn't a fan of the final story, which also happened to the first Queen & Country story written by someone other than Greg Rucka.  For this one Anthony Johnston did the writing and Christopher Mitten was on art, and the shift in quality was noticeable.

Overall, I found that I didn't enjoy this final volume as much as I did the previous Queen & Country material.  That being said, I'd say this is a strong comic series, but would recommend that any perspective reader gets the novel, A Gentleman's Game, and reads it at the appropriate time so as to get the full story effect.  Regardless, Queen & Country is a very good spy story, and if that's your thing, then you can't go too far wrong here.  Be prepared for strong writing, great characters, and inconsistent art.

Overall Series Grade: B

Comic Review: Queen and Country Vol. 1 & 2

I've had a lot of success in the past when reading comics written by Greg Rucka.  Rucka is one of the few writers, both inside and outside of the comics medium, who can write fantastic female lead characters.  This quality makes Rucka stand out from the crowd given the fact that well-depicted female leads can be hard to find in the comics medium.  However, Rucka has proven his skills in this area in the past with Kate Kane in Batwoman, Carrie Stetko in Whiteout, and Dex Parios in Stumptown.

With Queen and Country, Rucka has penned another engaging comic series where a female character takes center stage.  Queen and Country is an international espionage story that focuses on a British Intelligence team called the S.I.S., and much of the story centers around Tara Chace, one of the field operatives.  In this opening volume of the series, which collects three story arcs, an awesome twelve issues worth of material, the reader is introduced to the world of international espionage, and all the crazy politics, games - and the players that play them, and all the ins and outs that go into making a mission successful.

As a field operative, Chace's life is one of alternating dull boredom and inactivity, mixed with intense bouts of incredibly vital and stressful missions in the field.  While Chace is doing her thing in the field, her director of operations, the perpetually chain smoking Paul Crocker, is often walking a fine line between watching out for the safety of his team and dealing with all the political complications that are part of the international spy game.

Queen and Country impressed me as it felt like a very realistic take on what the international espionage game is really like.  You won't get tons of action, shooting, explosions, or cheesy villains, but instead the story focuses on the people, modern spy politics, and how the S.I.S. folks respond to situations that pop up.  As much as I've enjoyed Bond and Bourne films,  I found the stories in Queen and Country much more engaging and in the end, equally rewarding.

The first Definitive Edition contains three story arcs, and in each arc a different artist provides the visuals.  Steve Rolston, who impressed me before with his work on Ghost Projekt is first up on the art front, and he set the bar incredibly high with some fantastically detailed art.  Rolston's lines are incredibly clean, and his art is a joy to look at.  From there, on the second arc, the series rolled out another of my favorite comic artists, Brian Hurtt, of The Sixth Gun fame.  Sadly, I didn't get the trifecta of great art I was hoping for, as I wasn't a fan of Leandro Fernandez, who handled the art for the third arc.

Fans of the first Queen and Country volume will find plenty to like in the second volume as it delivers much of the same good as the first.  Rucka's writing is great, the stories are entertaining and engaging, and the art is again a mixed bag of artists which were sometimes good, sometimes not so good.  To be honest, I wasn't such a fan of the artists in this one, but the story was definitely good enough to carry me through despite the fact that this volume wasn't as easy on the eyes as the previous one.

Rucka's writing in this series is top notch.  Not only is each story arc interesting and engaging.  In many ways each story arc could be read as a stand-alone, which is a big reason why the alternating artist trick works pretty well for this series.  However, the arcs all connect as part of a larger tapestry.

That being said, I've found that the individual character arcs are what makes Queen and Country stand out as a fantastic series.  I've enjoyed following Tara Chace on missions, through her interactions with her colleagues, and her incredibly dreary personal life. She's one of those characters that I found myself thinking about during the interludes when I wasn't reading the book, and still find myself reflecting on even after turning the final page.  Additionally, the character arcs for the other primary S.I.S. team members are equally interesting and amazing.

Queen and Country stands out as one of the better comics I've read this year. The only real drawback being that because of the shifting artists, the art is inconsistent. So far, I'm 50-50 on whether I enjoyed the art  or not, which isn't exactly the best track record. However, when the art is good, it is really good.  In the end, I was still treated to a fantastic story where the focus is on well written, interesting, memorable characters.  More comics gold courtesy of Greg Rucka.

Grade: B+

Review: Ghost Projekt

I'm gonna let you in on a little secret:  I love me some espionage.  Shit, I've even seen the first two Mission Impossible's with that d-bag Tom Cruise, that's how much I like it.  If you can't tell from the blog, I also like me some supernatural stuff, so when I discovered a comic that had both of those elements, minus Tom Cruise, I was plenty excited.

Ghost Projekt is an action-packed supernatural spy thriller, that takes place in the Russian Siberia.  If you are like me, you know in your heart of hearts that Russia has a shit ton of sketchy ass super secret chemical/biological prototype weapons just kicking around abandoned research facilities, left over from the cold war era.  So when thieves get their hands on a mysterious weapon, it is up to UN weapons inspector Will Haley to figure out what kinds of dangers the weapon might pose.  To complicate matters, Will is forced to work side by side with the attractive Anya Romanova, a russian agent who's priorities don't fully match up with Will's.  Soon, the old scientists who once worked at the site where the weapon was stolen from start turning up dead and Will is visited by the scientist who led the project.  With the help of some clues and some detective work, Will starts to understand the nature of the weapon, but will he be able to stop it before it is unleashed?

Like many good spy stories, the plot of Ghost Projekt is a bit convoluted, and I had to go back and reference earlier events a few times to make sure I was understanding everything...which I may not have been totally successful at.  Maybe my espionage IQ has gotten dumbed down by too much Mission Impossible.  Still, the plot is quite interesting and the mystery elements were spread out nicely through the five issues.   One of the nice things about Ghost Projekt is that there is no unstoppable Bond-like hero.  Instead Will Haley is a pretty normal guy who is just doing his job as best he can.  His interactions with Anya the Russian agent were pretty interesting, and well written.  I felt like there was a bit of a spark between them, but they were both too professional to let that interfere with the job at hand.

The writer, Joe Harris did a great job of creating interesting characters that didn't fall into any of the spy-thriller stereotypes.  He also had a great skill for writing believable dialog that fit with the character's personalities.  Even though I thought the plot was a bit complex, I enjoyed that challenging aspect, and was glad that it wasn't just a recycling of old ideas. 

The art by Steve Rolston was great.  He made me feel like I was freezing my buns off in Siberia, and he definitely set the stage for the series by drawing a perfectly creepy and mysterious Russian research facility in the opening scene.  Not only did he handle the "real world" artwork well, but the supernatural elements of the series looked incredible.  Some really cool stuff by an artist I hope to see more of soon.  Though the story is completely self contained, I think the door is open for some more Ghost Projekt stories in the future...fingers crossed.

All in all, I thought Ghost Projekt was a great comic, filled with just enough espionage and supernatural elements to make it something cool and unique.  I think this is a bit of a sleeper, but worth a read.  Cool story and great art.  The nice thing is this five issue mini-series just came out in graphic novel format with a sweet glow in the dark hardcover, so if you can get your hands on it, this is one to check out.

Grade: B+