CrossGen's financial problems would seem to be dragging on.  Interestingly, the company has chosen to deal with this, in part, by ploughing ahead with new launches such as El Cazador and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and decimating the line of titles associated with the unsuccessful sigil universe.

One thing hasn't changed, however - when CrossGen want a new series, they fire up the GenreTron 5000 and see what genre it spits out.  I'd like CrossGen to stick around, if only so we find out what finally happens when they run out of workable genres.  Will they turn to inventing their own templates, or will they attempt to wring comics out of Bollywood, noh theatre and kitchen sink melodrama?

Anyway, this time the GenreTron has come up with James Bond.  Technically that's a character rather than a genre, I admit.  But the films and books have produced enough variation on the central idea to qualify him as a one-man genre in his own right.  Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is hardly shy of inviting the comparisons - lead character Charles Basildon has double-oh security clearance, and spends half the issue in a tuxedo.

In the original novels, Bond was a bit of a bastard.  Writer Tony Bedard appears to subscribe to this view as well.  However, he puts it in the context of a tongue-in-cheek parody of the Bond films.  It's one of those stories where some of the characters seem to be happy in their genre roles, and the others are appalled and bemused by the weird genre conventions that only they can see.  Basildon is, on any conceivable view, a complete asshole - a man who does get the job done, but is utterly oblivious to whether his unwanted partners survive the process.  In fact, he seems fairly determined to get them killed.

Bedard writes Basildon as an outright psychopath, somehow protected from the consequences of his horrible behaviour by the mystical force of genre convention.  The black comedy takes the edge off things a bit, but there's no doubt that this is a seriously unpleasant character.  It's not simply a clone of the source material; instead, it's a fun riff on the source material.

The plot, admittedly, isn't entirely successful.  There's a bunch of cloned global dictators wandering around as henchmen, a joke that falls a little bit flat.  But the energy of the book's general approach carries it by, thus far.

Of course, it's a CrossGen title, and therefore it looks fantastic.  Mike Perkins and Andrew Hennessy strike the ideal balance with Basildon, combining Bond's style with a loathsome oiliness.  They've pitched it at the right level of deadpan where the book looks like a straight adventure story, and the deconstruction works around the edges.

Much better than I was expecting, to be honest.

Rating: A

back | continue