Pages

Wednesday 1 May 2024

James Bond: Agent of SPECTRE Review (Christos Gage, Luca Casalanguida)


There’s civil war within SPECTRE and Blofeld enlists the help of Bond, Jamesh Bond, to help him defeat his rival Titania (teehee) Jones. Bond and Blofeld on the same side? I can’t believe it’s not butter!


Christos Gage is one of those writers whose work is so indistinct and bland you’d be forgiven for thinking he was really an AI mainly used for spitting out ad copy for cereal boxes, and the occasional comic to plug gaps in publishing schedules. But, credit where it’s due, Gage-bot has actually written a decent James Bond book in Agent of SPECTRE.

The book’s got a fine opening action scene that leads into the titles, per classic Bond, and then the first couple of chapters set up the story well - it’s solidly constructed and Gage writes Bond and Blofeld convincingly.

Longtime Bond artist Luca Casalanguida’s artwork though is quite minimalist and looks washed-out and unimpressive throughout. It’ll do but it doesn’t look great and feels like a workmanlike effort compared to his other books in this series.

The story is intermittently interesting from the midpoint-on in a story of who’s-playing-who, even though you can probably guess quite easily - lots of slow-moving talky bits mixed in with some flashy action. The story never becomes quite so brilliant as a result and it ends in a predictably bombastic finale but it’s never so dull that it’s boring either.

I was pleasantly surprised with Agent of SPECTRE. Mildly entertaining, well-written, though with lacklustre art, you could do worse than check this one out if you’re in the mood for a Bond comic.

No comments:

Post a Comment