Comic Book Review: Queen & Country: Definitive Edition Volume 01 written by Greg Rucka, art by various
Tara Felicity Chace is a field agent for the Special Operations Section of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS.) She’s one of three operatives known as Minders who are assigned to the most dangerous tasks, and is code-named Minder Two. It’s a necessary job, but a dirty one, and it is beginning to take its toll.
According to writer Greg Rucka, this series was heavily inspired by the British television series The Sandbaggers and borrowed the organizational structure for SIS from that show, but the geopolitical situation of the new millennium drastically changed the kind of missions the agents are sent on.
The first story arc, “Operation: Broken Ground” has Tara sent into Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia to assassinate a Russian gunrunner as a favor to the CIA. There are a few hitches, but she successfully completes the mission and escapes.
However, during the escape, enough clues were left behind for the Russian mob to identify Agent Chace and order a hit put out on her and British Intelligence. One rocket attack on headquarters later, SIS figures out what’s going on, but the only way to find the hitmen is to use Tara as bait. Her position is made even more difficult because she’s not allowed to carry firearms in Britain.
“Operation: Morningstar” is set a bit prior to 9-11 (by virtue of having been written in early 2001.) The Afghanistan Taliban (“Taleban” here) have seized several journalists and executed them as spies. This is bad, but they (by accident?) managed to execute a real spy as well, who had a list of anti-Taliban contacts he was going to deliver to SIS.
Agent Chace has a personal grudge against the Taliban, but she’s still suffering the aftereffects of her previous mission, and the same misogynistic behaviors that tick her off also make it impossible to insert a female agent without preparations there’s no time for. So Tara is sidelined while Minders One and Three go in to try to find the list. This does not mean, however, that she isn’t useful in the mission. Osama bin Laden gets a mention, but isn’t directly involved in the story.
“Operation: Crystal Ball” is post-9-11, with the shakeups that made in the intelligence community. Tara Chace is sent to make contact with a possible turncoat from a terrorist organization. He claims to have knowledge of a chemical weapons factory to sell, and his initial information seems almost plausible. But is he for real, or a scammer, or is this a deadly trap? Thousands of lives may hang in the balance as SIS attempts to decipher the truth.
The ethically questionable nature of spycraft is front and center here, as it’s pointed out that agents should be questioning the morality of their actions; one that doesn’t is going to make bad decisions. And there’s a counselor on station to help patch the agents’ psyches back together until they completely fall apart. We also see the complications of office politics in conflicts between agencies and even between managers within the SIS.
We see Agent Chace in her underwear several times, and a nude photograph of her is a plot point in the first story. (Due to the changing artists, her figure is anywhere from conventionally attractive but plausible to unlikely.) She has on-page sex with a random guy she picked up at one point, and later pursues an affair with Minder Three. Perhaps more of an issue is the sometimes quite gory violence.
At the end of the volume is a section of concept art, character portraits by the various artists, and some page breakdowns, as well as bios of the creators.
Mr. Rucka writes spy fiction quite well, and Tara’s a believable character given the genre. The politics may be a little America-centric for a series set primarily in Britain. The art ranges from good to overly stylized, with a couple of characters nearly unrecognizable from their other appearances.
Recommended to fans of spy fiction of the “gritty” school.
