I'm a big fan of the regular Queen & Country series, and when this limited series was announced, I was pleased. I figured we'd be getting more of the same strong, character-oriented espionage drama, just with a different cast of characters. But I was wrong. There's something even more powerful about Rucka's storytelling here, and Brian Hurtt offers up his strongest effort to date. This stands out as the very best Queen & Country comic book I've read yet. And given the quality of the ongoing Q&C title, that's saying something.
It's 1986, when the world was a very different place. Paul Crocker isn't giving the British Minder agents their orders; he's one of them. And the world is more concerned with the Russian threat than some smaller Arab states. In the middle of the Cold War, the job of a Minder is incredibly busy and nasty, and it's beginning to weigh heavily on Crocker's mind... especially now that he has a beautiful new wife to worry about back home.
Hurtt has offered up strong work recently -- his pencils on Skinwalker were incredible -- but his artwork on this book strikes me as his best work to date. He brings a great deal of detail to bear here, reinforcing the dark reality that the story represents. There's a softer quality to the characters here than those in Skinwalker, and I would imagine that's due to the fact that Hurtt inks his own pencils here. Arthur Dela Cruz's sketchy inks suited the arid and gritty tone of that story, but the softer quality here works with the emotional tone of the script.
Rucka does an incredible job of conveying the tension and sense of menace that the Russians presented to the Western world in the 1980s. These days, it's hard to imagine a divided Berlin, or what an intimidating reputation the KGB had. But Rucka takes us right back to those scary scenarios, and it makes for some riveting, suspenseful reading.
What makes it easier for the reader to connect with this flashback version of Crocker is the fact that he's married. It injects an element of normalcy into a character who lives an abnormal life. And while familiarity with Crocker's role in Queen & Country adds to one's appreciation of this character-driven tale, it's not required reading. This is a tour de force performance for both the writer and artist, and it's not to be missed, even if you've never read any Q&C before.
