Queen and Country vol. 1 – review
I’ve always thought working as a spy would suck. In my mind, it’s hours of boredom followed by five minutes of full blown terror. Turns out, at least according to Greg Rucka’s series Queen and Country, I’m right! Tara Chace is a British “minder”, a spy for SIS. Her job includes assassinations, intelligence gathering and visiting foreign countries. It sounds glamorous but Chace’s alcohol consumption suggests otherwise. Surrounding Chace are her friends and coworkers. Along with the two other minders, she watches as the powers that be play with their lives. On one hand, she’s angry at being used more like a machine than a human. On the other hand, she begs for every mission, often getting upset when she’s overlooked.
The missions are exciting and nerve racking. This isn’t a Lara Croft video game, there’s no guarantee that any of the minders (including Chace) will make it out alive. While the minders take care of the dirty work, politics are the game back home. It makes for a compelling look at espionage. Rucka manages to avoid melodrama or cheesy action cliches. His spies are real shells of people, hollowed out and hungry for a job that will eventually, inevitably kill them – even if they physically live to retirement.
Yes, it’s depressing. Yet, it’s hard to stop reading. Much of the “boring” parts, the sitting around waiting for the five minutes of terror, are actually the most interesting. It’s in these down times that the reader gets to see the relationships between Tara and the other characters.
The missions do get a bit redundant. That is probably the point but it makes it hard to read for long. I found myself getting annoyed at yet another mission with yet another round of worry, anger, acceptance and fallout. It’s nice to have the series collected in volumes but a break between missions is needed and probably worked great when they came out individually. The different artists offer different takes on the cast and each one reveals something new about the character, whether drawn as a sexual creature for her attempt at love or drawn in hard lines, with small eyes, when she’s taking on the job of a killer.
I’m onto volume 2 (well, after I finish my latest volume of Monster) with some trepidation. If volume 1 is any indication, things will only get tougher.
Incidentally, Rucka’s comic Whiteout is now a movie!
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