Queen & Country by Greg Rucka and many others

Owing more to the TV series Spooks than the James Bond or Jason Bourne movies, Greg Rucka’s comic series Queen & Country has managed to carve itself out a niche in a superhero dominated medium by portraying the espionage community with intelligence. What sets the series apart from its counterparts is that while there is plenty of action for the people that crave it, politics and character interaction are the things that propel the plot forward more often than not.

Tara Chace, our protagonist, and the rest of the cast are introduced in the first trade as she attempts to assassinate a Russian arms dealer Kosovo. She gets the job done, and Rucka does a good job of showcasing where he’s going with the rest of the series: brief moments of action followed by the consequences, both in the personal and in the political realm, with a special emphasis on realism. It might seem weird to point to a comic book as being especially realistic, but Rucka does an inordinate amount of research for his scripts, which he provides for the reader as an extra in the third collection.

The interesting thing about the book is how Chace’s gender comes into play. Far too often, it is a trope that women, because of their gender, have to prove themselves worthy in what amounts to a man’s world. This isn’t the case in Q&C, where Chace’s abilities are never called into question unless her performance in the field leaves something to be desired. She’s more than capable and Rucka should be applauded for not saddling his creation with something that’s been beaten to death in other places. Anyone complaining about the lack of strong female characters in comic books would be well advised to pick this book up.

While the four collections are mostly well done, there is at least one niggling problem that would hinder the enjoyment of the series for readers both new and old. In between story arcs, Rucka also added to the Queen & Country series by writing two prose novels, and the third collection suffers because there gaps where the novels took place. Without any explanation as to what happened, certain events remain hazy and uncertain unless the reader is familiar with the novels. The emotional resonance that accompanies the death of a major character is rendered moot because there is no context for the audience to latch onto. This could have been mitigated by adding a simple recap page to the start of each arc, and it’s such a simple addition that it’s surprising the editors didn’t take the time to put it in.

Rating: 3.5 Kate Beckinsales starring in Whiteout out of five. (In the original comic, written by Rucka, a British spy shows up and was originally supposed to be Tara Chace, but once work began on Queen & Country Rucka changed his mind.)