Greg Rucka “Queen and
Country: The Definitive Edition Vol. 1”
(Oni Press, 2007)
Saying that Queen and
Country is a standard spy story is missing the mark. It’s very much like saying that The Wire is just another cop
story. Sure, the elements are all there –
message drops, assassinations, cover stories, handlers, etc etc – but the
emphasis is not on the action, but rather the bureaucracy and the people who do
the actions. How does a person commit
horrible actions and stay sane? How do
you justify what you’ve done? That’s one
of the central issues in Queen and Country.
There’s a certain amount of irony that in a genre who best
known examples (Bond, Bourne) are superheroes by another name, that a comic
book story is perhaps the most “real” story I’ve ever read about spies and
their world. There are no super spies
here. There is no inexplicable
technology. There are just people trying
to do what they believe is the best thing for their country.
Rucka makes an interesting choice in that the reader usually
doesn’t know if the actions of our protagonists are the “right” thing. At times even the characters themselves don’t
know. We are intentionally not given any
broader context to these actions. Given
the temporal setting of these stories (late 1990s – early millennial) the “bad
guys” are Middle Eastern/Islamic terrorists.
Their larger goals and concerns are not developed. Rather, we are presented with isolated
actions. Will terrorists release sarin
gas at the World Cup? This allows for a
certain moral clarity to the story, while subtly acknowledging that the issues
are far more complex than can be dealt with in a comic book.
While this title still has legs – you do see it mentioned
occasionally on “best of” lists; Queen
and Country does not get the love it clearly deserves. Rucka has developed a rich world surrounding
the covert operatives of the UK, and these stories have earned a much wider
audience.
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