The complexity of… everything.
Creative Staff:
Story: Ales Kot
Art: Antonio Fuso
Colors: Valentina Pinto
Letterer: Thomas Napolitano
What They Say:
PART TWO – THE BRAIN James Bond leads the interrogation of a scientist who allowed a lethal virus to be stolen. But when the investigation takes a surprising turn, Bond begins to question whether he is enough.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of the miniseries for The Body delighted me in providing an engaging standalone tale that got me really excited for what was to come. The second installment does something even better in a way, and I say that with as much as I love Luca Casalanguida’s artwork, it changes out the artist side. We’re getting standalone tales under a single writer but with a new artist each time and I’m loving that. Antonio Fuso steps into this one, which I think may be the hardest one to illustrate of what’s being done even without seeing the rest of the stories, and knocks it out of the park. The small grid panel layout is one that isn’t done too often, and not for as many pages as they do here, and it’s very hard to really make it compelling. But Fuso nails the character visuals and comes up with some creative twists to really make it shine beautifully in all its darkness.
This one brings us an interrogation story where Bond is dealing with a woman named Mrs. Cleese who is one of the brightest scientific minds in the country. The problem is that she’s apparently given some very problematic bioweapon materials to a terrorist organization and naturally MI6 wants answers and information. Bond’s given some time to do it the polite way to figure out what he can get out of her before it goes to actual torture. Cleese, for her part, isn’t hiding what she’s done but is teasing it out of Bond a little bit at first before digging into it a bit more. The dialogue between the two with the quirks is great, from her asking for the time to his refusing since it could give her useful information and then to the meal he provides to try and confuse her while also putting her on edge about it possibly being poisoned.
One of the things that have made the Bond films compelling at different times over their run is how closely aligned they are with events in the real world. After the first couple of books Dynamite put out they’ve adjusted more to playing to the real world and the dramatic shift in geopolitical events in the last couple of years. That factors into it well here with Kot detailing what Cleese does what she does, the view of how bioweapons will change in twenty years, and an intriguing tie back to Britain’s own history and how much ownership of events from centuries ago they must atone for and how. It’s a strong series of dialogue points – they’re not really having a conversation here – before it gets to the grand reveal at the end that works well even if I don’t think Cleese’s goals will be achieved.
In Summary:
Damn. Damn, I say. Books like this are not easy to write and make compelling, particularly as a standalone without any story material backing it up beyond your understanding of the real world. And it’s even more problematic for an artist unless there are a lot of flashback scenes and other material to give it more to work with. But Ales Kot delivered from start to finish and Antonio Fuso put together a book that was engaging in each panel, with each look, that conveyed what was necessary. While I wish they were more blunt toward the end with the torture that was used as there’s no reason to truly shy away from it considering what’s in the films, I’ll give that they may think that doing it off-panel as they did gives it a more terrifying feeling and they’d be right. A strong book.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: February 21st, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
