A special, but difficult, relationship.
Creative Staff:
Story: Kieron Gillen
Art: Antonio Fuso
Colors: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Simon Bowland
What They Say:
In contemporary politics, where Britain’s world standing is often more zero than 007, an assassin plans to exterminate the “special relationship,” and lead Britain and the United States into a very dark place…especially when he does so by aiming down the sights of an ancient Enfield rifle! It’ll test Bond’s deadly talents to their limits, in order to defeat the assassin and avert certain geopolitical disaster…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With Dynamite Entertainment working several different projects for their James Bond license, one of the best things has been the opening up of it to various writers and artists so that an array of stories can be told and different audiences can be drawn in. We’ve had the ongoing and a couple of miniseries and now we’ve got a new extended one-shot issue that comes from writer Kieron Gillen and artist Antonio Fuso. Both fit everything into what we’ve seen in the past year or so from the publisher so that it provides the right nods and feels connected but allows the team to bring their own style to it. I’ve really enjoyed a lot of Gillen’s work in the last couple of years and this is my first time seeing Fuso, which is definitely a great fit for how the Bond books have been working.
Keeping to the theme of the real world today, we get to see how MI6 and other branches are playing things wary with the arrival of a new secretary of state that’s far more interested in an isolationist approach and doesn’t pay much mind to the special relationship that the US and Britain shares. It’s an area that has played out publicly before and we’ve seen it in film and comics with some fun ways to deal with it. This also ties into what Bond is feeling in how MI6 is being hamstrung these days in-country when it comes to weapons combined with how the nature of an agent has changed and there are far less sports cars and beaches involved than there used to be. It’s the nature of helping a property to navigate the times in which it takes place, which the films have managed to do as well.
What serves as the main story movement here is that someone has been sending cryptic information to MI6 for a while now and there looks to be ties to extremism related to the secretary that now views him as a threat to the nation. It’s rare that we see Bond in action in Britain so it’s fun to watch him navigate the local area, figure out who has been sending the information easily enough, and work to track him down and defuse him. This is balanced with some nice time with Felix early on as they talk about the nature of the two country’s relationship over time and how they have to navigate it as well as some nods to the past in regards to the war museum and various tricks of the trade – and Bond’s own understanding of the history of his craft.
In Summary:
As a standalone tale that clocks in at just under forty pages and tells a pretty good tale, the Service special is a carefully threaded nod to real world events and the way things can be impacted by them. It’s not a deep or really challenging look at it through nuance but it makes clear that there are issues and they do make an impact on how organizations interact and react with each other. Bond’s fun enough to watch here and I was glad to get a little more Felix time. Kieron Gillen gets the voice just right for Bond and the rest while trying to carefully walk an obvious line and that opens things up for Antonio Fuso to dig into the details of the design work. I like the character material and the layouts are solid with some good flow to it amid all the action. Fans of the franchise will definitely enjoy a standalone tale, a rarity in comics form.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: May 24th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
