The first issue of this limited series dealt with character and emotion. This second chapter deals chiefly in action. While the first made for more powerful reading, this issue offers more in the way of excitement. This issue is concise and clear, as Rucka offers up a simple yet engaging espionage story that's about freedom... freedom that's compromised not by international politics, but office politics.
At the height of the Cold War, Paul Crocker -- boasting the title of British agent Minder Two at the time -- is tasked with retrieving a Communist defector from the heart of Prague. Everything is set up according to Crocker's specifications... even his weapon, but things do not go according to plan. And to make matters worse, the contingency plan is shot straight to hell when the man in charge of the local British intelligence office refuses to have his life complicated by the operation.
Hurtt's artwork on this series, as I stated in my review of the first issue, is his best work to date. The detail of the streets and storefronts of Prague is stunning. Hurtt whisks the reader away to this culturally fascinating but quietly dark and tense place. Crocker is depicted as a reflective everyman, and Donald Weldon looks like an average joe with a conscience, someone to whom it is remarkably easy to relate.
The highlight of this issue was getting to know Valery Karpin, the older man that Crocker is sent to spirit out of Prague. There's an amusing, pragmatic quality to the character, yet a sense of despair as well. His wisdom is peppered with a hint of cynicism, but there's an idealism in the character as well. Everyone and everything he loves is being left behind and perhaps destroyed, but he has given himself over to a higher purpose here. He is aware of a bigger picture, and it makes for a nice balance with Crocker's single-minded determination.
I like that Weldon doesn't do the right thing here, even though he's well aware of what it is. He wants to help Crocker, but in the end, he ends up looking out for his job, for himself. But he still comes off as a likeable and standup guy. The reader's ire is directed toward his superior. Weldon simply comes off as the voice of reason, but ultimately powerless. Even amid the action of this issue, Rucka still makes plenty of room for storytelling that examines not just what the characters are doing, but why they're doing it.
