“Queen & Country” film adaptations have spent the last decade in development hell. With the recent news that Ridley Scott is in talks to direct an adaptation of Greg Rucka’s spy opus at 20th Century Fox, it seems like a good time to revisit a modern comic book classic.
Written by Greg RuckaCover by Tim Sale
Illustrated by Steve Rolston, Stan Sakai, Brian Hurtt, and Leandro Fernandez
Lettered by Sean KonotIn this first collection of the Eisner Award-winning and critically lauded espionage series, readers are introduced to the thrilling and often-times devastating world of international espionage as SIS field agent Tara Chase is sent all over the world in service to her Queen & Country.
The first volume of Oni Press’s classy “Queen & Country” Definitive Editions collects issues 1-12 (the first three missions, plus an interlude tied into the first arc). In “Queen & Country” the glamour of 007’s employer is stripped away in favor of telling lean and very mean stories about the extraordinary and extraordinarily flawed people, the minders and their masters, in the Special Section of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. Looking back at the series’ landmark beginning, the first thing about Rucka’s scripting that is striking is that the first chapter of the first arc (‘Operation: Broken Ground’) is such efficient storytelling that it only takes him 25 pages to tell a story that other writers would be tempted to stretch into three issues or even an entire arc. It’s a complete story, but in the world of “Queen & Country,” this story has ripples that spread through the rest of the arc, the rest of this edition, and in fact the entire series run, being amplified and redirected by the actions of the minders, their superiors, and world events.
Nothing ever goes away, particularly for the series protagonist, Tara Chace. For her there are no dry martinis. There’s only the bottle, her unkempt flat, and a private life in shambles, nonexistent, and subservient to the job, a job where she is asked to pulled the trigger in an assassination, a successful op that almost costs her her life and may end up costing her the will to live. Chace wants to serve her country, and it turns out she’s a bit of an idealist who starts getting a bit self-destructive when operations run counter to her sense of patriotism—an occupational hazard. Rucka’s precise scripts reveals these characterizations as a function of the plot, plots where there are no conclusions at the ends of each arc, only the basis for further operations and further character development and revelations. With each mission, the minders are tasked to make the best of bad situations, salvaging something good from a world gone wrong. Each operation in this first collection is deceptively simple in its endgame, but the script complexity lies in the details, the parsing of the political and idealogical machinations of those in the intelligence community. By its nature, this storytelling style can lead to fantastic chapter cliffhangers but unsatisfactory emotional conclusions. What hope does a small team of espionage operatives have for making a significant difference? But herein lies the beauty of Rucka’s stories, the joy is in the tiny victories. You never know how many lives can be saved by ones actions.
The black and white artwork in these first three arcs run the gamut from Rolston’s precise cartooning, Hurtt’s gestural renderings, and Fernandez’s chiaroscuro caricatures. Three styles couldn’t be more different, but each one is equally effective in carrying the narrative. In the Rolston arc, his skill with draftsman-like detail lays the groundwork for the mechanics and the architecture of Special Section. Hurtt tweaks the formula by focusing on the light and dark, adding drama to a high stakes search for information in Afghanistan, but more importantly mirroring Chace’s crumbling psyche in the wake of the previous arc. The expressions on the characters faces are more crucial here as Tara seeks a reason to pull herself out of her psychological morass, and Hurtt’s brushy lines are equal to the dramatic task. The final arc in this collection easily contains the most polarizing art. Fernandez, who has since reunited with Rucka on the recent Image series “Old Guard,” renders Chace with a form that defies gravity and the face of a supermodel. The rest of the characters are also taken to elastic Tex Avery extremes, but this over sexualized rendering of Chace feels particularly off. Otherwise, Fernandez’s work is a fun and interesting—if somewhat odd—departure. This arc certainly has more dynamism than the preceding stories. This edition’s artwork when taken as a whole begs the question if the artists were selected on the basis of the nature of each script. There is likely less editorial engineering at work here. While this collection (and the series) would have likely benefited from a consistent artistic hand (even Konot’s lettering style changes by arc 3), it doesn’t necessarily suffer in the variety.
“Queen & Country” is an interesting series to revisit in today’s political climate, particularly because it is not about seismic and sensationalized matters of state. Rather, Rucka chose to dwell on everyday espionage where everyone in the office punches out at 6:00, the secretary makes coffee and runs the show, and the agents throw darts to alleviate boredom. Underneath it all, it’s a workplace like any other. It’s also a series that predates the ubiquity of personal technology devices, carries a very British attitude toward firearms on home soil, and may send readers scrambling to Wikipedia a handful of times to decipher acronyms.
Rucka admits the primary inspiration for his series was a British show The Sandbaggers. You can watch it on tubitv for free. Like Rucka’s series, your entertainment mileage depends on your patience and affinity for spy games. It also depends on your affinity for sideburns and wood paneling. It’s certainly an interesting artifact of a bygone television era, and just like “Queen & County” it takes a humanistic view of spy craft. In the end, this is why this first collection of “Queen & Country” is intriguing. It won’t knock anyone’s socks off, but heroism by way of bureaucracy rarely does. Fortunately, a little heroism in spite of bureaucracy goes a long way.
