MILD SPOILERS AHEAD: The blurbs, reviews, and comments on this book are enthusiastic, but don't really give you much of an idea of what you're actually going to read. I enjoyed this a good deal and want potential readers to consider giving it a try. What follows is vague enough to not spoil things, but offers a taste of what's on offer.
This is James Bondian in the sense that it involves, in part, a Bond style secret agent. There are some sly references to Bond. But this isn't part of the Bond canon, or like the Fleming Estate authorized extensions that have popped up in books and graphic novels with some regularity. It's just Bond-ish in part.
The grander setup is that a mysterious author, Philip Verge, has tapped into either time traveling or an altered reality or parallel worlds, and so has written books that prefigure future "actual" blockbuster action events. (Understand, though, that words like actual and real are used rather fluidly throughout these issues.) Anyway, Verge has a number of different series, and we meet the "real" heroes of each series. There's a Bond guy, (Thomas Cord). There's a Bruce Willis/"Die Hard" sort of guy, (John Shaw). There's an elderly retired mystery writer, a la "Murder She Wrote", (Paige Turnier) . And so on. (There's even a female "Knight Rider" angle.) Each character comes complete with a little mystery background to keep the reader guessing. In each "Bang!" issue one of these heroes is introduced, has adventures, meets Verge, and is drawn into the fight against "Goldmaze", the terrorist organization that spans the entire series.
The writing is clever and the action is fast paced. Stories are introduced, or explained, with full page printed "excerpts" from the Verge books, which is the smartest infodump monologuing solution ever. There are loads of jokes and shoutouts to the fictional heroes and works that are being parodied. Well, they aren't really parodies, they're more like good humored homages. (Indeed, you could go back further to the Phantom, and Shadow, and Doc Savage, and so on, but that's probably too far back to connect with all of today's readers.) The Bond character here is Black, which is a nice touch. The John McClane guy looks like Bruce Willis, which makes sense. The mystery writer is a cross between Angela Lansbury and Miss Marple, which also works. Michael Knight is now a wheelchair bound woman with extreme skilz, which was a sweet call. It all seems to be heading toward an odd throwback gang of heroes, but that remains to be seen in future issues. For now, it's just good insider fun that stands up perfectly well as straight action adventure.
The art works well. Since the narrative and the meta approach is so trippy it might have been too much to add gonzo drawing. Instead, here, we get crisp, straightforward drawing, pencils, coloring, and letters. Characters are expressive, and the action is perfectly clear, but the drawing takes a back seat to the story telling.
The first issue doesn't really give you a clear view of the overall frame of the series. The first volume, which collects the first five issues, does. And I'm now all settled in and ready to follow this wherever it goes. The first five do give you a more or less complete story arc, but there is a promise of more to come.
(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
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