Stumptown

Stumptown
Greg Rucka (writer)
Matthew Southworth (art)

Stumptown features Dex Parios, a private investigator with shit luck at gambling. Down nearly eighteen grand to a casino, she is offered a case by the head of casino operations: find the missing granddaughter of Sue-Lynne Suppa, and the debt is erased.

Greg Rucka has worked on some of the biggest franchises from Marvel and DC Comics, but should be best known for his work on Queen & Country and Whiteout. Queen & Country is some of the best espionage fiction you're likely to run across, and given the difference in medium, I'd hold it up against prose fiction. It's damn good.

The thing about comic books is that where a writer can be so good on one series, his next work can fall flat and not meet the expectations his own excellence has set. Granted, this is true about anything, but I am a bit more hesitant with comics than with prose novels. Whiteout was good. Queen & Country was great. Could Stumptown even compare?

Happily, yes.

Charlotte Suppa has been missing for four days, and like any good detective story, Stumptown isn't quite so simple as “find the girl who ran away.” There's more to it, but not so much in a way that would begin to strain credulity. After telling personal stories on the world's stage with Queen & Country, Rucka tells a smaller story with Stumptown. Though the focus is on Dex's investigation, readers get a sense of Dex's life and personal story in an organic manner that serves both the macro story of the investigation as well as the micro story of introducing this new world. Rucka is very good at that balancing act. He does well with Dex's characterization and gives enough hints for the supporting cast to come alive as well.

Matthew Southworth's illustrations should also be commended. There is a certain washed out quality that serves the tone of the story while perfectly conveying who the characters are and what sort of world they inhabit. The art does its job, but it is more than simply serviceable. Matthew Southworth helps tell Rucka's story and with a different artist, we'd have an entirely different book – and probably not as good as the one we have now.

The four issues collected in Volume One cover “The Case of the Girl Who Took her Shampoo (But Left her Mini).” That title is the only bit of cheese to be found in the book. The only collected edition available is the hardcover that'll run you in the neighborhood of $30, but it's well worth checking out. One can only hope that Rucka has more Stumptown books in the works and that Southworth will be back doing the illustrations.  This interview suggests that there is.

A Gentleman's Game, by Greg Rucka

A Gentleman’s Game
Greg Rucka
2004


Written by Greg Rucka, Queen & Country is a graphic novel series centering on Tara Chace, one of the “Minders” of England’s Special Section. Chace is an operative carrying out various missions throughout the world. From assassination to pickups of intelligence, the Minders do whatever is required of them. They are the elite operatives of England’s espionage game.

A Gentleman’s Game is a novel set in this series. Tara Chace is Minder One, the Head of Special Section. A Gentleman’s Game is the story of Operation Tanglefoot and the fallout from it. This novel is set late in the Queen & Country series, between Operation Saddlebags and Operation Red Panda. The issues of Operation Red Panda are the last issues of Queen & Country, and A Gentleman’s Game sets up the finale.

Given that this novel is set so late in the chronology of Queen & Country, it would be fair to be concerned about whether reading the first 28 issues of Queen & Country is essential to understanding or appreciating A Gentleman’s Game. This is not necessary. The opening A Gentleman’s Game gives a character profile / history of Tara Chace and is a very solid overview of pretty much everything that has happened thus far in the series. All of the high points are hit, both the positives and negatives of Chace and her various missions. Now, this is capsule overview, so the heart of watching the events unfold through the graphic series is not captured, but as a background as to who Tara Chace, what she has done, and what is the situation in Special Section – Rucka successfully introduces the character for the new reader. This is a different medium, after all.

So, A Gentleman’s Game. The novel opens with a terrorist attack in the London Underground that kills more than 300. There must be a response, a retaliation. Because the response would likely not be an official military response, the response will fall to the Minders. As Minder One, Tara Chace would get this mission. After some fact finding and investigation, blame is assigned and a target chosen. Tara is sent to Yemen to assassinate a prominent Muslim cleric who has preached jihad and hate, a cleric who is believed to be an enemy actively plotting against England. This is Operation Tanglefoot.

Not having read many espionage / spy thriller novels, I cannot speak to whether or not A Gentleman’s Game works within the conventions of the genre or if Rucka plays into (or with) what readers of that genre would expect. As a reader of the first 28 issues of Queen & Country, the one thing I do know coming into this novel is that there is no guarantee that the mission Tara is sent on will end with success. There is no guarantee that even if the mission is successful, that there will be a happy ending or that everyone will come out of it okay and that the good guys will get to bask in the sun. Reading Queen & Country I do come in with an expectation, that things will be unpleasant for Tara Chace and that Rucka will not ignore potential fallout from Operation Tanglefoot, no matter which way the mission goes. Greg Rucka is a smart writer.

A Gentleman’s Game is not strictly Tara Chace’s novel. Rucka presents the perspective of her boss, Paul Crocker, and a couple of different perspectives from the terrorists. The reader gets into the head of the men perpetrating and planning these actions, though not entirely. It is difficult to say whether Rucka gets this aspect of the novel right because it is (or should be) difficult for a Western reader to really grasp that mindset. Rucka’s track record with Queen & Country suggests that everything he writes in regards to that series is done with the highest levels of quality and accuracy, so there is a level of trust the reader should have with Greg Rucka. Even so, that mindset is a difficult one to understand. This adds to the tension of the novel because the reader knows certain events are coming before the British government does. These scenes are well done, but I have to admit that I really wanted to get back to Chace or Crocker. That’s where the heart of Queen & Country is.

This is a difficult novel to discuss because it falls into the chronology of a graphic novel series. Rucka has written A Gentleman’s Game so that it can be enjoyed and appreciated by people who have never heard of Queen & Country, but fans of the series will come in to the novel with very different expectations for character and action. As a reader of the series, A Gentleman’s Game works. It is one more mission before the finale of Operation Red Panda and directly sets up those last four issues. The novel complements the series very well, and adds a level of richness to the character and situations that builds on what the series has done. I wonder if A Gentleman’s Game is not a stronger novel for readers of Queen & Country than it is to new readers. New readers do not have an emotional investment in Tara Chace.

New readers are given a solid spy story told in a realistic manner (though not bogged down with an excess of technical detail as with Tom Clancy at his worst). I think A Gentleman’s Game will intrigue the newer readers and will probably lead them to seek out Private Wars, which is the second Tara Chace novel, set after the events of Operation Red Panda and which is the ultimate close to the series (haven’t read it yet, I’m working in chronological order). Will it lead to the Queen & Country series? I can’t say. I don’t know how A Gentleman’s Game would read to fans of the spy genre as compared to how it reads to fans of Queen & Country.

As a Queen & Country reader, A Gentleman’s Game is good. It provides necessary information, but is also an emotional gut punch to the series reader. Rucka does not relent.

Doom!

I feel doom hanging over my head. I finished reading Operation Saddlebags, the penultimate Queen and Country graphic novel. Because Queen and Country is absolutely fantastic, I’m going to read A Gentleman’s Game next. It’s a Queen and Country novel set between Operation Saddlebags and the finale, Operation Red Panda.

I know that I have A Gentleman’s Game, Operation Red Panda, and then one final novel which is set after the close of the graphic series, but I’m beginning to feel the sadness that comes from seeing the end of a really damn good series looming in front of me.

It’s not that I’m going to avoid or delay the last books so I can still have something to look forward to, but I kind of wish there was more. Because I’m not done yet.

I want more Chace and Crocker and Weldon and Tom and Chang, and even Chris (it’ll be interesting to see how Chris develops as Minder Three). I think the new C is a complete wanker, but that’s sort of the impression Rucka is giving us through the eyes of Crocker and the fact that the new C isn’t a big fan of operations. I just want more.

Yes, I do know that Greg Rucka is planning a new Queen and Country series that takes place after whatever it is that occurs in Red Panda. And, reportedly, that Tara Chace’s life as a Minder is probably not going to continue – which makes me wonder exactly what direction the series would go. To me, Q&C is Tara Chace and does the series exist without her, or does it work with Chace NOT as a Minder. Keep in mind that I haven’t read Red Panda or the final novel, so any and all of this is based on speculation and maybe one or two lines I sorta remember reading in an interview.

This is all to say, of course, that Queen and Country is absolutely fantastic and gritty and delightful and one of my favorite graphic series out there. Perhaps only second to Fables and right now I have to question even that, if I had the choice between more Fables and more Q&C, I’m honestly not sure which way I’d lean.

Graphic Novels: Queen & Country

The other day I noticed that graphic novels have taken over my reading habits for the month of April. Seriously. They’re piling up. I figure this is as good of a time as any to acknowledge what I’ve been reading.

Queen & Country, written by Greg Rucka. The short version is that it is about a team of British spies in Operations (not Intelligence). The primary character Queen & Country focuses on is Tara Chance, one of three operatives (codenamed Minders) Each volume covers a different operation. Operation Broken Ground (Volume 1) introduces readers to Tara and the Minders and features Tara assassinating a former Russian General who provides arms to terrorists – and the fallout of that action. The second volume, Operation Morningstar, is a new operation and is recovering documents in Afghanistan before the Taliban can get them.

The interesting thing about Operation Morningstar, pointed out in the introduction, is the threat given to the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Tara, in a therapy session, explains why she wanted to be in on this mission – about the human rights / gender rights issues of the Taliban, the danger posed by this government, and Osama Bin Ladin. The issues of Operation Morningstar were published in the wake of 9/11 when this was on everybody’s lips. What the introduction points out is that these issues were written Summer 2001, before the attacks. Extremely good work by Greg Rucka in his writing of this set and well thought out to come up with it before Afghanistan / Taliban takes the world stage.

Solid writing here. I like it. A lot.

Queen & Country is a completed series, I believe. There is discussion that Rucka will launch a new Queen & Country series, but we can rest assured that this first sequence is complete. There are eight collections in the main series, plus three Declassified collections that tie into the main series. 32 issues + Declassified.