Oni Press
Greg Rucka, writer
Steve Rolston, Brian Hurtt and Leandro Fernandez, artists
Neither this title or Greg Rucka were on my radar in 2001 when Queen & Country debuted. The title wasn't Rucka's first comics work; he'd already done Whiteout — which I also missed at the time but have since purchased a copy of; now if I could just get the time to read it — and penned a large portion of "No Man's Land" for the Batman family of books at DC. I read and enjoyed most of the "No Man's Land" stuff, but Rucka's name had not yet made an impact on me or my reading habits.
That was then. Since then, I've read his post-"No Man's Land" run in Detective Comics, a couple Black Widow miniseries, Gotham Central and great runs on both Wonder Woman and The Adventures of Superman. I just enjoy a lot of Rucka's writing. So I've been curious about this series starring British intelligence agent Tara Chace for quite some time. A recent find online netted me all of the comics to date for a nice price, and so far I have read these first 12 issues, representing three separate missions for Chace and her compatriots.
I have to admit, that first issue didn't leave me with much in the way of good first impressions. At least not the kind that would have brought me back for a second issue if I was buying the title when it first saw print.
That first issue opens in the middle of the Operations Room of the S.I.S. with several principal characters waiting as current operation "Broken Ground" unfolds. The operation involves agent Tara Chace being sent into Kosovo to carry out an assassination. Along the way, we learn that Tara is one of three field agents, called "Minders," who report directly to Paul Crocker, the director of operations. Crocker is shown to be a bit of a curmudgeon outwardly, but he genuinely cares about doing his job and the well-being of the Minders once a job is completed.
One of the things that took a little getting used to is all of the jargon and agency shorthand characters use in the series. The dialogue rings true for people who hold these positions and have for a long time; they would naturally use an economy of language to refer to each other, like referring to the director of operations as D-Ops. But for a new reader picking up a first issue and not knowing what to expect or able to recognize faces or places, it can be a bit confusing to follow.
Tara Chace wasn't quite what I expected either. We first see her on the fourth page of the story. She is covered almost completely in camouflage gear and in position for her impending kill shot. After successfully taking down her target, Chace is on the run, trying to make her exit out of the country. To evade pursuit, she sheds the outer camouflage and takes off on foot. The clothing she is wearing is still rather loose-fitting, which is fine, but the figure running for several pages looks like a man, not a woman to me. Without the dialogue and a key image near the end of the book, I truly think I would have assumed the figure was a man during the rest of the book.
Assassination is pretty a heavy topic to start off with, too. It's clear Tara isn't thrilled with her current assignment, but she's doing her job. It's made pretty clear that her main target and the others Tara kills while executing her mission are not nice men, but it's still shooting them from a distance while they are unaware of any danger. Not your usual heroic act.
The remainder of that first story arc deals with the repercussions of Chace's successful assassination mission, both for Chace personally and for the S.I.S. We are also introduced to more of the S.I.S. members, their relationships to each other, and some others they deal with on a regular basis from other agencies. By the end of the arc, I was starting to feel a little more comfortable following all of the jargon-heavy dialogue, but I still didn't feel much of a connection to any of the characters. Again, had I been buying this book off the shelves when it was new, I might not have stuck with it.
But since I'd just purchased all 32 issues of the main title and all nine Classified issues, too, I figured I'd give the series more of a try. Issue No. 5 kicked off the second mission, "Morningstar," which sends the other two Minders, Tom Wallace and Ed Kittering into Kabul, Afghanistan. This story arc held my interest a bit more because of current events from the past decade or so, and as I learned more about the characters and came to understand them better, I found I was beginning to like them.
Each story arc of the series, at least so far, has a different art team. I'm not familiar with any of the first three artists outside of this series, but Steve Rolston, the artist for the first four issues had a clean art style that had almost a cartoony look to it. The art wasn't so cartoony as to clash with the subject matter, but there was no mistaking it for hyper-realistic art, either. Brian Hurtt had a very similar style on the second arc. Some of the characters looked slightly different, but not unrecognizable from how Rolston had drawn them, so it wasn't a hard transition. In fact, Tara Chace was the most altered visually, as far as I'm concerned, and while she still looked quite tough and not so much like a stereotypical comic-book heroine, she did look like a woman now.
Tara's transformation continued with the switch to artist Leandro Fernandez on the third story arc, "Crystal Ball." Several readers commented on Fernandez's art style in the letters pages after his first issue, No. 8, commenting on how Tara's breasts had grown and how her style of clothing had become much more revealing suddenly. By issue No. 12, the end of "Crystal Ball," quite a debate was raging in the letters pages about the change in art style Fernandez brought with some liking the change and others hating it.
As for my opinion, I can see an in-story explanation for Tara's change of dress style in her behavior, if that is what Rucka is going for. Tara is still dealing with some of the baggage that cropped up on her assassination mission in the very first issue. I don't see her as a character who would normally date a co-worker, yet she and her fellow Minder, Ed Kittering, have begun a relationship frowned upon by several others. There's also story evidence that her current drinking habits are new. I could see her new wardrobe as another outward manifestation of her inner conflict, if that is how Rucka chooses to go with things, but time will tell on that point. Otherwise, I see Fernandez's art as the most cartoony — almost caricature-esque — of the three artists so far, but again, the characters are not unrecognizable from issue to issue or story arc to story arc, so I don't mind the changes so far.
Bottom line, this book progresses at a snail's pace. I find myself wondering how someone who read the series as it came out — with a less than monthly schedule — didn't give up in frustration at the slow pacing. I'm almost certain I would have. But having it to read one issue after another in a matter of days or weeks instead of years, I find myself very much warming up to the characters and wanting to know what is going to happen to them.
I still have some trepidation about later issues of the series. Rucka is a novelist as well as a comics writer. To date, he has written three Queen & Country prose novels with the same characters and continuity as the comic series. I haven't reached the place where any of the novels should have "occurred" yet, but I wonder if they will be missing pieces hurting my enjoyment of the series. That isn't to say that I will never read the prose novels; as much as I'm liking the comics so far, I expect I would like them as well. I just don't know if I will take the time as I am even further behind on my prose reading than I am on my comics reading at any given time.
Apparently, I am finally reading this series at a great time, too. I've recently heard rumors of both a possible movie deal based on the series as well as Rucka returning to writing more Queen & Country comics with a Volume II series possibly beginning later this year. Now is the time to get caught up on the older stuff before new content makes catching up even harder.
No comments:
Post a Comment