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QUEEN & COUNTRY #4
Highly Recommended (9/10)
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Oni Press
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Steve Rolston
Letters: Sean Konot
Editor: Jamie S. Rich
Price: $2.95 US/$4.50 CAN |
As the first story arc of Queen & Country concludes, the book has suddenly become even more relevant to modern audiences. This is a story about retribution against terror and the arguments about what is justice and what is just plain revenge and which we should be seeking. It's also about the after-effects of terror and violence on Tara Chace, and the continuation of the politics that have defined the series since issue one. I have to give Rucka and Rolston credit, because this is not an easy story: The good guys don't always win, and there's not a sense of everything character-wise being neatly tied up and solved. Despite loose ends for the characters, though, the story is tied up very well, and I'm left with the same feeling I've had after every issue of Queen & Country: Give me more!
From the beginning, Rucka has promised
something more realistic than suave superspy James Bond, and he delivers that
here. The action sequence takes up all of two pages, enough to give us a sense
of the danger and violence that lurks beneath the surface of Chace's life but
not enough to take up any considerable amount of story space. That space,
instead, is relegated to the far more interesting political and personality
conflicts. Paul Crocker trying to take vengeance on the people who had struck at
his office, all the while hamstrung by regulations and laws, made for some very
interesting reading. I was particularly impressed that the villains of the piece
weren't only the Russians, who at least had a legitimate reason for their anger,
but Kinney, an unlikable man who put policies over people.
Even more interesting to me is that we're
never outright told that Crocker is right. His arguments about striking back and
making a noise so that they won't be threatened again make sense, but they might
ultimately speak to a kind of frontier justice that doesn't belong in modern
society. It's hard as a reader not to feel like Crocker was in the right and
Kinney was just tying his hands for no reason other than his own petty political
games, but it's entirely possible to read this as Crocker being saved from his
own bloody impulses as well.
In addition, we're seeing more into Tara
Chace's life and learning that the life of a spy certainly isn't all martinis
and casinos. Rolston does an amazing sequence where Tara comes home, looks
wistfully at a couple in love and then chooses a bottle over any kind of dinner.
All of these feelings and movements are conveyed without a word, and they speak
volumes about Chace. Combined with her talk about the psychologist and going to
see her, we get a strong sense of Chace's mental state and see that she's not
even remotely happy with her lot, even if she does realize she's doing this for
her country.
While I honestly still have some trouble with Rolston's style, such as Tara's somewhat simple expressions toward the end that fail to really capture what she's feeling, overall I can really see why he was chosen for this story. His use of body language and storytelling is incredible, and if the action doesn't feel as real sometimes because of the more iconic art style, Rucka's script brings us in and reminds us of how close the book is to reality anyway. I started off with the first issue unsure that Rolston was suited to the book, and I've closed realizing exactly why he was chosen and very much looking forward to Pounded, his collaboration
with Brian Wood.
Email Randy Lander comments about this review. |
