After what seemed like a really long delay (almost three months), Queen & Country is back, and I find myself quickly drawn back into the ongoing story. Rucka's tale incorporates any number of smaller stories, including the death of a major cast-member, a new recruit who may or may not be up to the task, Tara's reaction to both and a couple of missions, not to mention tying into the story in Queen & Country: Declassified. As always, Rucka's story looks at espionage from a more realistic school of thought, and while it may not be the adrenaline ride of a James Bond flick, it's actually much more intelligent and much more engaging. If I'm completely honest, I'm still not quite sure McNeil's artwork is fitting the style that is my preference on this book, nor does it reach the heights that can be seen in Finder, but it's solid enough, and matched with an exceptionally strong story.
While there's plenty of plot going on here, though, what keeps my attention is the characterization, the look into how people survive this kind of life. Catching your sleep when you can get it, whether it's on the plane or in an uncomfortable situation with a female colleague, playing a spy game that's more diplomacy and politics than shoot-'em-ups and having to swallow your instincts for revenge and justice because it's just not feasible to indulge them is just some of the rich ground covered in this issue. And yet, like Too Much Hopeless Savages, which features a similar amount of plot density and character development, there's never a feeling of being lost or that Rucka has bit off more than he can chew with all these storylines.
I love seeing Tara Chace in a mentor/supervisory role, because she's so completely unsuited to it. She's a professional with plenty to teach, but she doesn't strike me as someone with the temperament or ability to pass on that knowledge. Instead, she gets to play the cranky insider to Butler's fresh-faced young man, and this is both entertaining, realistic and done in such a way that neither character comes off badly. Butler doesn't come off as a naive stereotype, and Tara doesn't come off as a gruff cliche. Instead, they're both people, and Tara's cynicism gets the edge taken off with her sarcastic sense of humor ("Shall I wiggle it for you?") and Butler gets to come across as quite competent and talented despite his lack of experience. Which, of course, makes for a bit of a shocker later on... but this story has had more than a few sudden shocks to offer.
The field story is certainly well done, but what us long-time Queen & Country fans really want to know is what happened with Ed Kittering, which is what makes the story back at the home office so interesting. The frustration of Tom is palpable, and I love that Rucka is teasing the readers with what actually happened to Ed. Is the story we're getting a line of political BS, or is it the truth? It's very easy to empathize with Tom, who wants to get out and find out what happened, because we want it to, but the course of action that's being taken is also so reasonable and believable. I especially like that, as in the field ops, there's a sense of humor and human interaction amidst all the spy and political stuff, that these are real people and not just dramatic objects to be moved around the stage.
Carla Speed McNeil has a beautiful style that is ideally suited to her science-fiction/fantasy comic Finder, but which I'm having a hard time warming up to here. It's not just the completely new appearance of all the cast, which is a chance you take with a rotating art book, but the sense that on parts of the book she's somewhat out of her depth. The storytelling is fine, the artwork beautiful enough if you step back and just view it as art, but it doesn't connect with me the way so much of the art on this book has. The sudden action sequence at the end, in particular, looks sparse and sketchy, too abstract to really hit the visceral level it needs to so that we can really feel like Tara's in real danger. Given her situation, the readers should be scared out of their minds for Tara, but it's all just one level too distant to really grab me on that level.
