Writer: Greg Rucka
Artist: Steve Rolston
Letterer: Sean Konot
Issues # 1-4 due for trade paperback release in March.
Individual issues available for $2.95 each.
Publisher: Oni Press.

In between making the exploits of the Dark Knight readable again at DC and revamping b-list bad girls for the esteemed opposition, writer Greg Rucka has a nice little sideline going with his creator-owned ongoing series from Oni, QUEEN & COUNTRY. ELEKTRA AND WOLVERINE might be getting all the fan attention, but QUEEN & COUNTRY is a steady seller. Its estimated sales level out at the 8,000 mark, and the first issue sold out in just a week, making it a respectable indie success in the current marketplace. With the film rights freshly sold, Tara Chace may yet be the property that Rucka retires on.

Heavily inspired by the classic seventies TV show THE SANDBAGGERS, QUEEN & COUNTRY focuses on the Special Section of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS - better known as MI6). Informally known as 'the Minders', the Special Section is tasked with conducting 'Special Operations', the dark and ugly side of espionage work that includes sabotage, kidnapping and assassination.

Director of Operations (D-Ops) is Paul Crocker - an arrogant and manipulative but quite brilliant man whose fanatical devotion to the service has made him plenty of enemies both inside and outside Vauxhall Cross. His star performer is Tara Chace, a tough, beautiful and resourceful agent who resembles a younger and more flawed version of Lily Sharpe, the spy from Rucka's excellent WHITEOUT series, also published through Oni.

Their supporting cast includes fellow Minders Wallace and Kittering, as well as Crocker's secretary Kate and the CIA's head of London Station, Angela Cheng. All are summarised in a handy 'roster' at the back of each issue, further emphasising the TV-show style format.

The first story arc begins in war torn Kosovo, with the unsanctioned assassination of a former Russian general and front man for the Organyzatsia, Igor Markovsky. While Chace is hotly pursued through the bullet-ridden streets of downtown Prizren by the Mafiosi's Serbian bodyguards, Crocker is fighting his own battle, trying to ensure that the highly illegal operation gets done without anyone at the Foreign Office finding out about it - much to the chagrin of his superiors.

The juxtaposition of the action in Kosovo with the cynical, bureaucratic infighting back at Vauxhall will be familiar to readers of post fifties British spy fiction, and speaks volumes about what Rucka is trying to achieve with the series. In the field people are dying while thousands of miles away, the men responsible bicker about deniability.

Meanwhile, Chace, sporting a gunshot wound to the leg, dodges both KLA gunmen and UN troops before eventually reaching safe sanctuary in the British Sector of the country. Back home in London, Crocker too seems to have been successful. Returning to his office to learn that Chace is alive and well, he orders her to report in by the next morning.

But the story doesn't end there.

You see, like all good spy fiction, QUEEN & COUNTRY doesn't just deal with the planning and execution of Special Operations, but with the political, personal and moral fallout as well. Actions have consequences - and the characters in QUEEN & COUNTRY have to deal with them.

A terrorist strike on SIS headquarters (strongly reminiscent of the Real IRA's rocket attack last year) signals that Markovsky's associates aren't about to take his death lying down. Crocker, of course, immediately wants revenge, but his hands are tied by bureaucratic and legal restrictions and the age-old inter-service rivalry that exists between SIS and her sister organisation, MI5. Worse still, MI5 suspect Tara Chace herself has been personally singled out for assassination...

First and foremost, QUEEN & COUNTRY is a great comic book - Rucka delivers a superbly crafted episodic thriller that plays to the strengths of the 24 page format rather than being constrained by it. Each instalment is tightly structured and moves along at a cracking pace, driven by Rucka's exciting and suspenseful plotting. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as ever, and on the whole, QUEEN & COUNTRY makes for a fast, easy and compelling read.

Rucka's tough, lean writing style is perfectly complimented by Steve Rolston's excellent black and white art. Rolston employs a clean line approach to drawing; - his figures are caricature-ish, but they interact with superbly detailed backgrounds. The crisp, lucid lines serve to draw the reader into the story, and Rolston employs several other design tricks to enhance this effect as well; black page borders for night-time scenes, white for daytime, for example.

It's an art style that works surprisingly well with the subject matter, which, particularly after WHITEOUT, would instinctively seem to be better served by a more realistic approach. I hadn't encountered Rolston's work before reading QUEEN & COUNTRY, but I certainly look forward to becoming better acquainted with it in the future.

As a reader and huge fan of spy fiction in general, however, what concerns me most isn't so much whether or not it's a masterpiece of sequential storytelling, but how it holds up as a piece of genre fiction. There's a tendency to over-praise any half-decent attempt to do a commercial comic book that steps outside the superhero genre, but how often do these attempts compare well to the work in the other media that inspired them? In other words, QUEEN & COUNTRY may well be a great comic book, but is it a great spy thriller?

In a word, yes.

Rucka is obviously a connoisseur of the genre, and proves himself extremely adept at employing its conventions and trappings. QUEEN & COUNTRY has it all: the cynical and fatalistic worldview of those who play 'the Great Game'; the sense of complex, hidden machinations behind the daily headlines; and the deep seated moral ambiguity of the whole profession and everybody in it.

Like THE SANDBAGGERS, QUEEN & COUNTRY is more action oriented than say, Deighton or Le'Carre, but that doesn't mean it lacks the depth and intrigue of these authors' defining works. The 'action' in QUEEN & COUNTRY tends to be brief, violent and bloody - and usually causes more problems for the characters than it solves. The real battles are fought in the corridors of Vauxhall and Whitehall - and are usually won or lost in Paul Crocker's office.

QUEEN & COUNTRY is top-notch thriller writing in anybody's book, and can hold its head up high next to the very best examples of the genre, whether they be in film, television or print. I could give this book to my Dad to read and he'd love it. Do yourself - and Greg Rucka's retirement plan - a favour, and give it a try.

Nick Brownlow is an IT professional and writer.

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