Customer Reviews

Queen & Country: The Definitive Edition, Vol. 1

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I liked the story lines. They seemed realistic with lots of "spy tech" jargon thrown in here and there to make the conversations seem real. Not a lot of gadgetry or outrageous villains. The characters are pretty well developed. The female lead character is interesting enough for a guy to read about without feeling self-concious. The art work changed as the stories unfolded; Tara looks a lot different by the 3rd tale. Overall I enjoyed all 3 stories.

Great news for fans of this series who had been put off by the rather anaemic previous collections, this bargain priced MASSIVE volume offers hours of Rucka's Sandbaggers inspired spy drama.

For those new to the series, I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys smart, realistic female leads, modern spy politics and action (more Bourne than Bond), or SIS geeks.

I hope to see these collections beside the Queen and Country novels on the bookshelves.

I'm a fan of Greg Rucka. I felt I should say that since I'm a fan of his writing, both comics and novels. Queen and Country could be considered his best work, and I can see how. It's tense, gripping and filled with intrigue. It's as character driven as his work on Batman and Wolverine, but the action is subdued like in his Atticus Kodiak novels. The origin for his Checkmate comic series can be found here, and this is arguably done better since all the characters are expendable and the "real" situations are more suspenseful.

i'd heard some good reviews, and purchased this volume on a whim. it was a fantastic read. this collects the first three multi-issue stories from the queen and country monthly comic. the stories are all tales of modern-day espionage, dealing with in-department politics, relationships, and agents in the field performing their missions. lots of action, but the action is well-balanced with other story elements.

each story has a different artist, but i didn't mind at all. the black and white styles varied from very simple and clean to dark, heavily-inked, exaggerated images. they each had a different feel, yet were all appropriate to the book.

this collection gives a lot of story for the price, and is nicely designed as well. i'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes espionage stories, and anyone who enjoys good comics.

I like graphic storytelling and I like a lot of espionage stories (be they fiction, film, nonfiction), so when the four-volume collection came out, I figured it was high time I sample this series. This first volume collects three stories about the British SIS (Special Intelligence Service, aka MI6). In "Operation: Broken Ground" (illustrated by Steve Rolston) an agent is sent to Kosovo to assassinate a Russian arms dealer. In "Operation: Morningstar" (illustrated by several artists) an agent is sent to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to retrieve a list of pro-Western contacts that are in danger of falling into the wrong hands. In "Operation: Crystal Ball" (illustrated by Leandro Fernandez) agents are sent to disrupt an al-Qaeda plot to set off a WMD at the 2002 World Cup in Japan.

The focus of the books is not on the "action" of each operation (although there's enough of that to keep things lively), but on the covert ops team and their London handlers. In trying to be as realistic as reasonable, a great deal of time is spent on various bureaucratic argy bargy concerning the operations. Lots of venomous bureaucrats with barely contained anger and loathing with each other (plus the inevitable involvement of the CIA station chief in London). As realistic as this may be, the various suits snarling at each other gets old, and there's altogether too much of it. Somewhat better and more interesting is the limited glimpses we get into the non-work side of some of agents, especially Tara Chace, who probably has the most page-time of any character, as she battles her inner demons.

When it comes to the action, it's generally drawn and thought through pretty well -- except when it isn't. For example, in the first story, one of the team is set up with a sniper rifle to kill an arms dealer -- from a building about 75 feet from the target. The whole point of having sniper training and weaponry is to kill stealthy from afar -- like hundreds of yards. Here, the close range action naturally results in a tension-filled foot chase and the enemy identifying the sniper, all of which propels the plot further along -- at the expense of realism. In another story, two agents are running around Afghanistan looking for a canister hidden by another agent, apparently completely obvious to the notion that they may be being followed. There are too many examples of this kind of unreality for a genre that only works on either the hyper-realistic level (such as John Le Carre's George Smiley series), or the completely unreal level (such as the James Bond films).

The three black and white stories were all drawn by different artists, resulting in some very disconcerting stylistic differences. Steve Rolston draws in a very realistic mode, wherein everyone looks like normal humans, and the main character, Tara Chance comes across as a rather mousy, drab agent. On the flip side, Leandro Fernandez draws in a hyper-exaggerated more "heroic" style, whereby Tara has a Barbie-doll figure and is clad in either skintight or see-through clothing. This wild divergence in styles keeps things fresh, but at the expense of the reader really being able to settle in with a character for the long-haul. Due to those swings in style and some of the storytelling flaws, I doubt I'll go out of my way to read the next volume in the collection.

This was the first graphic novel I ever read, recommended by the extremely well-versed staff at Forbidden Planet in New York. I was worried I wouldn't like graphic novels, but QUEEN & COUNTRY definitely made me a convert.

Tara Chace is a tough, smart spy, struggling with her own demons and the requirements of her job. She's an empathetic role model. I immediately picked up the second volume in the series, as well as Rucka's "Whiteout" immediately after finishing this installment.

If you love J.J. Abrams' ALIAS, the Bourne movies, or even Bond, you need to read this, absolutely.

Length:: 1:57 Mins

Who doesn't love a great spy story? Growing up, I had always though secret agents were of the James Bond variety. Then one day, I was introduced to Greg Rucka's Queen and Country. My entire idea of what a spy story and a comic book could be completely changed. Queen and Country was the first independent book that I'd ever read, and I couldn't stop reading it. Series lead Tara Chace is one of the most dynamic, damaged, and daring heroines in modern fiction, and you'd do well to read Queen and Country and find out why.

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If you like any spy, espionage with political intrigue and character development then this is the book for you, who cares if its a comic book it describes scenes in much more detail than a conventional novel would take - I'm talking specifically on those sections where the writer is trying to describe what gun is being used or what type of situation is present for the protagonist the threats present, the gear available and operation centre simultaneously in a much more appreciable fashion.

If you like "24", James Bond, Jason Bourne, Mission Impossible or simply females in strong leads then you will love this entire series.

I highly recommend this as a first foray into comic books.

It's hard to rate such books. It is exactly what you've expected - CSI-with-spies. It is well executed. I definitely will keep reading it.

But it is not "capturing imagination". And I really didn't like the art in 3rd arc (Operation Crystal Ball)

This book is a great graphic novel and i recommend it to anyone who loves graphic novels, but if anyone is just starting graphic novels I don't suggest this. It is a little boring but it is worth the read. If you love graphic novels it isa must read, as for newcomers... try another graphic novel.