By Millar, Gibbons & Vaughn
Publisher: Titan Books
ISBN: 9781781167038
This one’s billed as three creative people at the top of their game reinventing the spy genre for the 21st century. To be fair, it’s not reinventing anything as it borrows heavily from the pre-Daniel Craig Bond movies with its gadgets, villain, and approach to the life of a secret agent, so in that respect it feels like a backward step towards something that now all feels a little bit silly. That said, tongue is planted firmly in cheek here, with adventure, humour and violence turned up to eleven, and it just wouldn’t work quite so well to parody the current incarnation of Bond.
So we’ve got a veteran Bond-like figure called Jack London who’s Britain’s top spy despite starting off at a disadvantage when he got into the spy game, compared to his peers,
because of his poor background on a London housing estate. His nephew, Gary, is running amok on the same estate now, but Jack sees much of himself in Gary and sets about preparing a path into the world he inhabits. Meanwhile somebody is kidnapping movie and TV stars, special effect gurus, sci-fi authors and host of other celebs and associated people from geekdom but with no ransom demands, while over in Hawaii there’s a mass killing at a group wedding where everyone appears to have turned on everyone else.
Jack gets Gary into a Gosport spy-training school and Gary begins, in the majority of cases, to excel. Inevitably he falls further under Jack’s wing until he’s accompanying him on a mission and they’re both facing down the foe.
Millar is writing with Hollywood in mind, and just to help swing the deal there are plenty of up-front cameo opportunities plastered throughout to please movie goers. It was great to see Dave Gibbons at work again too, lending an essential British flavour to the proceedings. It is all a bit lightweight, though, despite the shocks, gags, and gore, simply because it is at its heart a parody of those classic Bond movies but, as long as you’re happy to accept that, you’ll enjoy every page, and no doubt the movie when it gets here too.
And if you liked that: Lay your hands on The Originals by Dave Gibbons
No comments yet.