James Bond Agent of Spectre #001

James Bond Agent of Spectre #001

Dynamite Entertainment 2021

Written by Christos Gage

Illustrated by Luca Casalanguida

Coloured by Heather Moore

Lettered by Simon Bowland

AGENT OF SPECTRE Part 1!

There's a civil war brewing within SPECTRE. An upstart American member of the international criminal organization is attempting a coup, threatening to depose Ernst Stavro Blofeld. She's on guard against Blofeld's men, so to take her out, Blofeld recruits a wild card - James Bond! With Blofeld threatening the life of Bond's friend Felix Leiter as leverage, Bond agrees...but he has a plan to use this internal strife to bring SPECTRE down once and for all. Will he succeed, or is this a dark path from which even 007 can't return?

James Bond has been a part of my life since I can remember, I mean my parents took us to see Moonraker at the Drive-In when I was a kid, so it’s really an automatic thing for me to pick these stories up. I mean James has his wits and gadgets and is basically Batman in a suit though he does have a licence to kill. I love that he’s a man who is smart, athletic, skilled and when it comes down to it ruthless as it gives us a look at what we could be with the right training. It’s dare I say more realistic in many ways and that has an immense attraction to a lot of folks.

I am a huge fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. I greatly appreciate how we see the opening here with James already smack dab in an assignment. This is great because it shows us that while we may not be reading all his adventures he is having them and that is the aspect of the real life scenarios that I was referring to. The character development is perfectly shown as through actions and dialogue we get to establish James’ personality and of those around him as well. Moneypenny for instance is someone who needs to showcased more after what we learn here. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the story we see just how well this is crafted.

I like how this is structured and how the layers within the story start to emerge and take such interesting shapes. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow is marvellous! This is so well written and crafted that we feel like we’re a part of this world already.

At first I wasn’t sure I liked the work on the interiors but the more I look at it the more I like it. It is nice to see someone with their own style take something so familiar and actually make it work this well. I am pretty impressed with how we see the linework and how it creates these patterns, see the jacket and the buildings in the backgrounds and even in the faces that we see. I like how we see the composition within the panels and how they bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a talented eye for storytelling. The color work is nicely rendered as well. From the colour choices to seeing the hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work we see a marvellous eye for colour.

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This is fun, it’s a perfect example of how the franchise is alive, vibrant and full of verve. It is what we want to see from James Bond whether it be the novels, the films or here in this comic. I am extremely impressed with the work from everyone involved in this.