James Bond Agent of Spectre #004

James Bond Agent of Spectre #004

Dynamite Entertainment 2021

Written by Christos Gage

Illustrated by Luca Casalanguida

Coloured by Heather Moore

Lettered by Simon Bowland

It's all-out action in Athens, Greece as Bond and Blofeld's tenuous alliance is tested under fire! Can they survive the mountainside attack by upstart SPECTRE member Titania Jones...and can they survive each other? The double-crosses and triple-crosses hurtle toward a shocking and explosive conclusion in this penultimate issue!

God damn this is a great book. I mean it’s been bloody great for the first three issues but this one certainly raises the story a new heights. While there are moments it is extremely typical moments with James and how he has managed remain calm in the face of adversity all while giving off that special Bond feel that’s he has been manipulating all this the whole way. There really is something magical about the way Christos is managing to tell this story and it is an infectious kind of thing as the story manages to seep into the readers soul in such a way that you don’t want to put this down and you want it to continue a lot sooner and faster than is possible.

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 as well as how the reader learns information is impeccably laid down. The character development is really extraordinary thanks to how we see the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances that they encounter. The characterisation here is bloody brilliant and I cannot stress enough how we see these characters being who they are being so important to how we see the story. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way we’re left slacked jawed with eye wide open and begging for more.

I am amazed at how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to grow, evolve and strengthen not to mention continue to emerge. The fun bits that we see which both strengthen the main arc while others just swirl around it is where some of that characterisation takes place and it’s frakkin glorious. How everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved perfectly.

While the style of the interiors wouldn’t have been my first choice I will say they’ve grown on me to the point where I don’t anyone else could’ve done any better. When we see that copter rise it just hammers home how impressive and talented Luca is and how his vision for this story can have a massive impact upon how the reader sees this story. The linework is fabulous and how we see the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this kind of detail work is astonishingly well rendered. How the backgrounds enhance the moments and how they work within the composition of the panels to bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story is stunning work. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The colour work is equally as gorgeous. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work is exceptionally rendered. The sheer brilliance of how the colour is laid down is breathtaking.

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This is one of the most recognisable characters in pop culture and has been the moment Sean Connery made the first film and to this day we have seen his influence in so many other books, films and so on and so forth. That this book is able to make us remember his humble beginnings, through novels mind you, and continue to get us excited about James Bond is feat in and of itself. This is both classic and yet modern in its approach and I fall in love with James Bond all over again with each new issue of this series.