Wednesday, June 10, 2015

This is not the spy I was looking for

Tim Seely & Tom King “Grayson Volume One:  Agents of Spyral” (DC Comics, 2015)
Word is that DC has slowly started doing a few titles with a different style than their normal house style.  I’ve never been a big Dick Grayson fan, but that change in tone & style is more than enough to get me checking it out.

There’s some big convoluted nu52 backstory, but I don’t know that it matters a whole bunch.  All you need to know is that Dick Grayson is no longer a superhero, now he’s a spy!  He’s working with Helena Bertinelli (who is NOT the Huntress) for some super agency called Spyral (get it “spy” and the leader’s face is a spiral!  Yes, I’d groan if I didn’t feel sad & somehow dirty about the whole thing.)

Basically I felt like this was a big mess.  Apparently Dick is really undercover for Batman, because…. (Batman has to be in every title?) I don’t really know.  Or more importantly care.  

This is such a weird book.  On the one hand, it’s clearly not for adults—look at the groan worthy names, villains, etc… It’s like a Bond story written by a 13 year old.  Yet for all its childishness, it never actually feels fun or playful.  It’s adolescent all the way down.

Grayson is absolutely professionally executed, but I don’t know that in a crowded marketplace that means a lot.  If I want a spy book, Velvet is a much better one and it doesn’t have the odd superhero baggage that this title seems to carry with it.
 

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