King of Spies, Volume 1

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Sex, gore, and violence are not the things I mainly look for in the books I read, but I also don’t avoid a title just because those things are part of the story. King Of Spies” is very stylish, courtesy of Matteo Scalera’s lively art, but Mark Millar’s AARP-James-Bond-with-cancer-and-a-conscience revenge tale is too cliched to keep up. Now, death has come knocking at Roland's door, giving him six months tops to live before cancer takes his life. Matteo Scalera's artwork is so perfectly suited to Millar's storytelling style that it's almost literally mind-blowing. Mesmo os quadrinhos que trazem mulheres como protagonistas, tais como Imperatriz e Renascida, também lidam com crises de meia-idade e um machismo enrustido.

Beyond the visual appeal, there's very little to be said about King of Spies and that seems to be a key selling point of the Millarworld brand now. Far from a dedicated retiree coming back for “one last job for queen and country,” Roland King has realized that the system he has upheld hasn’t just betrayed him, it has betrayed everyone. It almost feels as if Millar wrote this book with the movie-going audience in mind, diving headfirst into the story and leaving everything else to fall into place on its own. Seeing a character in the latter half of his life learning to live with the atrocities and carnage that he laid in his wake as a young man could have been incredible and yet it is wasted here in service of telling yet another undeveloped, juvenile tale of mindless mayhem. So then I read the first issue, and there's the usual Millar stuff - ultraviolence and gore, men being manly (albeit in a slightly unconvincing ironic way), not a whole lot of characterisation.The way that he draws action also has an undeniable dynamism to it, which works very well in this issue. He drank, smoke, and womanized his way through the world, and loved every minute of it, or at least that’s what he’s told himself. I went in expecting nothing but the usual Millar-verse excesses (and fear not loyal fans of Millar, those are here in full force), but I’m nothing if not a glutton for punishment, and am always willing to give a new book a shot no matter who wrote it. Five stars for the books I totally live, and one star for the books that aren’t just bad but actually bug me for committing some narrative sin (usually, cynical half-assery or a repugnant view of humanity in general).

There’s greed and corruption at every level, untouchable despots he was forbidden to go near and a system he just doesn’t believe in any more. The series then cuts to the present day, where an older King has been put out to pasture, spending his days drinking, performing mundane tasks for his old handlers and ruminating on his past mistakes. The story focuses on Roland King, an obvious James Bond stand-in who spent most of his life fighting for what he felt, at the time, was Queen and Country.He won the Distinguished Service Cross, along with a chest full of medals for valor and initiative in the Korean War. Mark was DC’s art director until very recently and I love this old school spy paperback vibe he’s brought to this. And you know what, I could care less about Bond's spiraling demise, because King of Spies is everything a Bond movie should've been, and then some. Superior, além de trazer a mensagem do homem adulto como sujeito realizador também traz uma menagem capacitista. Netflix is describing the graphic novel by saying a “translation of this original Netflix property is written by Millar and will also be drawn by a superstar artist chosen from the comic book world, based on designs created by the team at Netflix.