Review - Super Spy by Matt Kindt
March 29th, 2008 John Posted in Comic Books, Reviews |
In Matt Kindt’s artful and dense graphic novel “Super Spy,” there is a nostalgia for the intrigue and confusion of old-style spying — while gadgets and action are present, they do not overtake the actual stories. The humanity is not lost in the excitement and Kindt’s portrayal of War World II espionage is a one built of smaller tales of the people involved in such activities and how it effects their lives.
The series was originally a weekly Web comic and when Kindt went about compiling it for the collection, he began to re-examine the presentation. Rather than let the multiple short stories unfold in their original chronological order, Kindt has given them a new way to unfold. This new structure gives the book an extra level on which to function, where the reader becomes much like the spies in the book. The stories are revealed through small bits of information, little slices of life and experience from which the wider picture unfolds the more you move onward.
Merely reading the book, however, doesn’t lay out everything in front of you — there is some work, and it’s quite rewarding. You will find yourself struggling to link some of the chapters with earlier ones, placing characters in their earlier — or sometimes later — situations, working out chronologies and connections and building a picture of the entire tapestry. In this way, reading the novel is its own bit of espionage — it’s a giant puzzle, a massive code to be broken.
Despite the daunting larger girth of Kindt’s vision, the small pieces stand on their own and are almost deceptive in that way — you are so engaged by Kindt’s little tales that you don’t really think much about their possible connections. It’s only at a certain point where your mind starts stringing things together unconsciously that you get an inkling of bigger picture being presented here.
All totaled, Kindt’s book is a chronicle of sacrifice and survival, of being forced to play a game in order to stay alive. The game — espionage — is the folly of warring nations and Kindt makes great pains to point out that the information passed along in the situations does save lives and turn the tide of wars. They also ruin lives and take lives — people are killed and those left feel dead. Some, however, are reborn through their experience. Kindt rounds them all up and turns their stories into an inventive tapestry that brings espionage alive, actually personalizing a wartime experience that is often, by its very nature, at arm’s length.
Kindt’s larger message is that we are all spies, that the lives of those in espionage are only different because of the context in which they unfold. We all keep secrets and we all play roles, we speak in codes and hide agendas, create outcomes behind the scenes. All you really need to know in order to become a spy is how how to be human. The rest is all in choosing the side you want work for.
Leave a Reply