The setup begins!
Creative Staff:
Story: Andy Diggle
Art: Luca Casalanguida
What They Say:
When a counterespionage operation in Rotterdam goes catastrophically wrong, James Bond finds himself in the crosshairs of a plot to smash NATO. Someone is assassinating allied agents, and 007 is the next target in the kill chain. Having kept the peace for decades, the old alliance is collapsing, pitting MI6 against its former ally – the CIA!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Diggle and Casalanguida had a solid run with their previous Bond miniseries and I’m always up for more Bond. The property allows itself for endless storytelling when you get down to it but you have to do something that stands out each time to be distinctive, which was hard for some of the films as they ended up being stunt vehicles for a period. With this miniseries it feels like the team is off to a very good start, convoluted as it may be, as it works to bring SMERSH into the fold and explore some storytelling there. And, naturally, it does it with some appropriate sexiness as well because that’s just baked into the franchise as a whole. The comics haven’t leaned into it hard, which is good, but they’re not ignoring it either.
While based on a real thing, the Bond version is an interesting organization focused on dealing with eliminating spies from the opposition and expanding their own interests. This organization is the backbone to events here as we’re introduced to a potential double-o operate with Rika, except that she’s gone rogue and Bond is sent to investigate. He’s got the goods on her because she hasn’t openly moved on yet which means he gets closer to her in an intimate way so he can find out the truth. But that’s all part of the larger setup the SMERSH is playing to incriminate and set MI6 and the CIA against each other. It’s something that takes an amusingly interesting extra layer considering the nature of the real world today and one can see that being part of the selling point of all of this in the original pitch. Diggle and Casalanguida definitely put it all together well here.
While the bookends kind of work through Rika as we see her arc and the truth of how far rogue she is, the middle deals with the meet that Bond is set to observe and potentially interrupt if it goes south too far. Unfortunately for him, the person that Rika is meeting ends up being assassinated by a sniper and that’s made worse when it’s revealed that the operate was CIA that Rika was meeting. It’s all a little confusing on first read but once things settle in and are explored by the end you can easily see what kind of counterintelligence operation SMERSH is running and how it’ll potentially seed a lot of chaos into the opposition that they can take advantage of with their own operations for some time. Sow distrust between allies and you can run wild.
In Summary:
A new James Bond miniseries shifts gears into a new area working familiar elements. Kill Chain gives us solid Andy Diggle story material with a lot of room to mess around with combined with some great artwork from Luca Casalanguida. Rika’s wonderfully sexy as presented but she also has that right kind of feeling for someone that’s a candidate for the double-o service as well, and makes it clear through what she accomplishes here that it’s fully earned. The use of SMERSH is a big plus for me and I’m definitely looking forward to seeing more of what their goals are and how they’re accomplishing it while we watch a real cyberwar play out in the real world.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: July 19th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
