Queen and Country

AUTHOR: Rucka, Greg; Johnston, Antony

ARTIST: Steve Rolston (illustrator); Jason Shawn Alexander (illustrator); Rick Burchett (illustrator); Leandro Fernandez (illustrator); Mike Hawthorne (illustrator); Brian Hurtt (illustrator); Carla Speed McNeil (illustrator); Christopher Mitten (illustrator); Mike Norton (illustrator); Stan Sakai (illustrator); Chris Samnee (illustrator); John K. Snyder III (illustrator); Christine Norrie (inker); Bryan Lee O’Malley (inker); Guy Major (colorist); Dave Stewart (colorist); John Dranski (letterer); Sean Konot (letterer); Doug Sherwood (letterer); Matthew Hollingsworth (cover artist); Scott Morse (cover artist); Tim Sale (cover artist); Durwin Talon (cover artist)

PUBLISHER: Oni Press

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2001-2007

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2002-2007

Publication History

Queen and Country began as a bimonthly comic in March, 2001, though the release schedule varied from monthly to sporadic from 2003 onward. Individual story arcs were completed within three to five issues. Each group of stories was subsequently collected into a paperbound graphic novel. The series, which ran for a total of thirty-two issues until August, 2007, was reprinted in eight volumes between 2002 and 2007. A related three-volume series, Declassified, was issued between 2003 and 2006 to provide backstories for key characters. The entire series, including Declassified, was reprinted, with supplemental material, in four “definitive” volumes between 2007 and 2009. Greg Rucka, the series author, also published three novels—A Gentleman’s Game (2004), Private Wars (2005), and The Last Run (2010)—that bridge or expand upon events referred to in the comics.

Queen and Country was the second major collaboration between Oni Press and Rucka, following the author’s award-winning series Whiteout (1998). Queen and Country showcased Rucka’s particular strength: writing tough, resourceful, independent, angst-ridden female protagonists.

It is testament to Rucka’s reputation as a storyteller that many across the graphics spectrum—series creators, artists, letterers, inkers, and colorists—have contributed to Queen and Country. Seasoned professionals such as Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo, 1987- ) and Tim Sale (Batman, Spider-Man) and emerging stars such as Leandro Fernandez (Punisher) have found Rucka’s terse, action-filled prose easily adaptable to sequential illustration. Several artists, including Steve Rolston and Brian Hurtt, achieved their first major success in the pages of Queen and Country.

Plot

Queen and Country is a fictional saga based upon a genuine secret organization: the special operations arm of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in the United Kingdom. London-headquartered SIS, also known as MI6, carries out missions abroad for the British government at the behest of the Ministry of Defense; the domestic counterpart of SIS, responsible for national security, is MI5. Special operations is a clandestine unit that plans covert missions to be executed on foreign soil via as many as three highly trained field operatives known as “Minders.”

The SIS gathers information through various agencies. If intelligence suggests the potential to affect British interests somewhere in the world, upper-echelon politicians decide whether and how to react, and orders are passed down the chain of command. When action is warranted, the Minders are sent to carry out objectives—such as infiltration, assassination, or extraction of people or objects—intended to defuse volatile situations, eliminate threats, or provide favorable national advantages. Goals may be general or specific, and individual Minders must be highly adaptable in adjusting to actual conditions once they are in place. As in real life, in Queen and Country, human nature is unpredictable, information is sometimes unreliable, and the best-laid plans do not always unfold smoothly.

The first story, Operation—Broken Ground sets the tone for the series. The initial scene unfolds in London in the map-dominated SIS operations room, where personnel await news from their operative in Kosovo. The scene shifts to that location, where Minder Two, Tara Chace, is hiding in a bombed-out building. When a former Russian general, now an arms dealer and mafioso, arrives, Tara shoots him dead. Chased by the Russian’s angry henchmen, Tara is wounded and must rely on her wits to escape the area. Meanwhile, back in London, Tara’s superior, Paul Crocker, justifies the mission to his boss: It was undertaken as a favor for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which is now beholden to the SIS.

In chapter 2, Russian arms dealers retaliate, firing a rocket into SIS headquarters, killing several workers. Though such an attack would normally be the province of MI5, Crocker wants the SIS to take revenge for the assault and argues with his superiors and with MI5 for the chance to do so. Crocker learns the Russians have placed a million-dollar bounty on Tara.

In chapter 3, Tara is used as bait for bounty hunters stalking her, with other Minders standing by as protection. Since they are operating within England, the Minders are ordered to turn in their firearms. Tara and the other Minders must make do with realistic-looking pellet guns and their superior physical skills to defeat a quartet of thugs. Contrary to Crocker’s wishes, MI5 takes surviving Russians into captivity. In the final chapter, Crocker tries to mount an assassination attempt on the captive bounty hunters, but his plans are foiled when the Russians are secretly traded to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Subsequent entries in the series deal with a variety of issues. Missions are mounted in global hot spots such as Afghanistan, Germany, Egypt, Sudan, Japan, and Zimbabwe as the SIS works to counter kidnappings, undermine brutal dictatorships, assist in defections, or dismantle terrorist plots. Operatives are damaged physically or emotionally in the course of their work and must be rehabilitated through medical and psychological care. Operatives and other members of the SIS die, become incapacitated, or leave the service and must be replaced. Conflicts rise and fall among the ranks, between the various rival British governmental bodies, and between the SIS and their foreign equivalents to further complicate matters.

Volumes

•Queen and Country:Operation—Broken Ground (2002). Collects issues 1-4. The cast of characters is introduced through dossier-like visual and brief verbal portraits. Individual character qualities are exhibited through the examination of a tension-filled mission and its equally stressful aftereffects.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Morningstar (2002). Collects issues 5-7. Drinking heavily and plagued by insomnia, Tara undergoes psychological counseling, as the other Minders risk death obtaining hidden information during a mission in Afghanistan.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Crystal Ball (2003). Collects issues 8-12. Shaken by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the SIS Minders globetrot to Berlin, Cairo, Sudan, northern Iraq, and Japan on the trail of a clever terrorist scheme.

•Queen and Country:Declassified, Volume 1 (2003). Collects issues 1-3 of Queen and Country: Declassified. Flashes back to 1986 in West Berlin. Newly married Crocker, then a Minder, aids the defection of Soviet Valery Karpin. Despite Crocker’s best efforts, Karpin is killed at the border. Meanwhile, Minder One, Lindsay Mills, is killed in the Ukraine.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Blackwall (2003). Collects issues 13-15. French officials blackmail British billionaire Colin Beck (via sexual videos of his daughter Rachel) to obtain business concessions. Tara, Rachel’s friend from Cambridge University, ends her own affair with Minder Ed Kittering and goes to Paris to neutralize the threat.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Stormfront (2004). Collects issues 16-20. Ed Kittering dies in Venezuela and is replaced by Brian Butler. In Tbilisi, Georgia, Russian businessman Lasha Karpin—son of would-be defector Valery—is kidnapped. Tara and Brian are sent to free Karpin, and Brian is killed in the effort.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Dandelion (2004). Collects issues 21-24. Supercilious Frances Barclay takes over as “C,” Chief of Service at the SIS. Tara goes undercover in London to tease information out of Daniel Mwamba, who has aspirations of replacing brutal Robert Mugabe as head of government in Zimbabwe.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Saddlebags (2005). Collects issues 25-28. Tara visits her jet-set mother in Switzerland. In London, Minder One Tom Wallace resigns; Tara replaces him, and Chris Lankford becomes new Minder Three. Tara fails in her mission to prevent a British national from selling secrets to the Russians.

•Queen and Country:Declassified, Volume 2 (2006). Collects issues 1-3 Queen and Country: Declassified, Volume 2. Flashes back to 1995 in Bosnia. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops, including Royal Marine sergeant Tom Wallace, battle insurgents. Wallace is recruited as new Minder Three and sent to Hong Kong before the Chinese takeover to determine the significance of the murder of a British official.

•Queen and Country:Declassified, Volume 3 (2006). Collects issues 1-3 of Queen and Country: Declassified, Volume 3. Flashes back to 1981 in Northern Ireland. Examines the interwoven careers of Irish Republican Army terrorist-attack survivor Lauren Mullen, terrorist Liam Finnegan, and Special Air Services trainee and future SIS Minder Nick Poole over the course of twenty years.

•Queen and Country:Operation—Red Panda (2007). Collects issues 29-32. Tara returns from Saudi Arabia, where her lover, Tom Wallace, has been killed. She and Minder Nick Poole are sent to Iraq disguised as journalists. They are kidnapped; in a rage, Tara kills all their captors. Returning to London, she discovers she is pregnant.

Characters

•Tara Chace is the main character. Blond, attractive, and in her mid-twenties, she is skilled in languages, firearms, and martial arts; she smokes, drinks to excess, and engages in meaningless sex to relieve stress. She has been Minder Two for several years. By the final issues, she has moved up to Minder One.

•Paul Crocker, a chain-smoking former Minder, is director of operations in charge of the Minders. A married forty-something with two children, he acts as a buffer between those at the top who issue commands and those at the bottom who carry out orders. He does not always agree with government strategies or decisions and employs creative methods to accomplish goals.

•Donald Weldon, formerly stationed in Prague, is deputy chief of service and Crocker’s immediate superior. An ambitious, middle-aged man, he is often torn between supporting those above and below him in the SIS hierarchy.

•“C,” the codename for the head of the SIS, is ultimate arbiter for all departmental activities. For most of the series, Sir Wilson Stanton Davies, a soft-spoken, pipe-smoking older man occupies the position. After Davies suffers a stroke, the balding, bespectacled former Prague station chief Frances Barclay replaces him.

•Kate is Crocker’s personal assistant. Young, pert, blond, and capable, she is both deferential and sarcastic toward her boss.

•Alexis and Ron are SIS operations room staff. Alexis, with short dark hair and glasses, is mission-control officer; she is responsible for communications between field operatives and headquarters. Ron, who is chubby, blond, and efficient, gathers and evaluates incoming information and arranges travel schedules and accommodations for operatives leaving on missions.

•Angela Chang, later Cheng, is the CIA station chief in London. She is a young, attractive Asian American known for her foul mouth. She often meets in secret with Crocker to exchange intelligence or to ask for or grant operational favors.

•Minder One for most of the series is former Royal Marines sergeant Tom Wallace. An eight-year veteran of the SIS, he sometimes goes on field missions but most often sends one of the other Minders. He is killed in Saudi Arabia.

•Minder Three designates the field operator with the least seniority. It is often an unlucky position. Edward Kittering is Minder Three when the series opens. After Kittering dies, Brian Butler replaces him but is immediately killed. Trooper Nick Poole replaces Butler and later moves up to Minder Two. Inexperienced Chris Lankford becomes new Minder Three.

•Simon Rayburn is SIS director of intelligence, at an equivalent level with Crocker, with whom he occasionally meets to discuss proposed missions resulting from the information his department has acquired and evaluated.

•David Kinney is the burly, blunt, mustachioed operational chief at MI5. He and Crocker often butt heads over jurisdictional issues. Kinney is contemptuous of Tara, and the feeling is mutual.

Artistic Style

Both the Queen and Country comic books and collected volumes feature evocative color covers, ranging in style from near photorealism to impressionism. Interiors, however, are entirely black and white, which act as a metaphor for aspects of the subject matter: the shadowy world of espionage, the “us-versus-them” mentality that operates within the intelligence community, and the darkness that lurks at the core of the human soul.

Unlike most long-running comics series, which typically feature a single creator as writer and artist or creative teams that remain together for many issues, Queen and Country showcases the talents of more than a dozen illustrators. Each story arc offers new artists for covers, chapter breaks, and panel layouts, which serves to shatter preconceived visual notions, provide variety, and keep readers alert.

The styles of the individual volumes are incredibly diverse, and thanks to the crisp, cinematic quality of Rucka’s writing, they all work. The light, clean, cartoonlike drawings of Rolston (Operation—Broken Ground and Operation—Saddlebags) could have been pulled from an adult coloring book. They contrast sharply with the high-contrast, ink-saturated, fine-line renderings of Fernandez (Operation—Crystal Ball) that veer from realism to exaggeration. Nonetheless, each artist skillfully draws the reader into the story, which always takes precedence over the art.

The sketchily realistic style of Jason Shawn Alexander (Operation—Blackwall) is quite different from the stark chiaroscuro efforts of Chris Samnee (Operation—Red Panda), but each is appropriate to the subject at hand. The various artists are all equally capable of creating interesting layouts that propel the narrative forward while fracturing the expected grid pattern and dividing the visuals into readable, aesthetically pleasing segments that can be appreciated singly or as a whole. Individual issues feature a plethora of eye-catching techniques: across-the-page horizontal panels, double-page spreads, overhead and low-angle views, trapezoidal frames, silhouettes, long-distance and close-up shots, and out-of-frame bursts to emphasize action.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the use of various artists is in the interpretation of protagonist Tara Chace. Most of the illustrators draw her as reasonably attractive, with subtle touches that enhance or downplay her physical appeal. Bryan Lee O’Malley, for example (Operation—Morningstar), shows her wearing a ponytail, with bags under her eyes and a haunted expression. Carla Speed McNeil (Operation—Storm Front) gives Tara a shag haircut and a boyish figure that deglamorizes her. Mike Hawthorne (Operation—Dandelion) imparts Tara with a fragile beauty. Fernandez, at the far end of the scale, makes Tara gorgeous and positively voluptuous, with a Playboy Playmate body.

Themes

One major thread that runs throughout Queen and Country is the contrast between appearance and reality. To the public at large, spying is an adventurous profession. The modern model of the spy is novelist Ian Fleming’s James Bond. His is a world of fast cars, exotic locations, fancy gadgets, designer clothing, and romantic encounters with beautiful women. The indestructible hero takes on and single-handedly defeats a diabolical, larger-than-life villain.

The reality as depicted in Queen and Country is far different. Much of intelligence collection is drudgery: endless yawn-inducing days of observation, documentation, collation, and interpretation leading nowhere. There is considerable downtime for field operatives between missions, during which they often indulge in self-destructive behavior. Field assignments are not always clear-cut but can rather be mazelike, with complications requiring contingency plans at every turn and hazy objectives at the end. Villains are less often megalomaniacal masterminds and more often simply greedy individuals or groups of ordinary people willing to take extreme measures to support a cause. Missions do not always succeed. Sometimes the villain gets away. Sometimes a hero dies.

Another theme concerns the deleterious effects of espionage work. Minders must be well versed in “tradecraft”: the ability to spot and lose followers, to glibly assume cover identities, to improvise, to become confident liars, to act brutally if necessary. Such habits can bleed into personal life. Outwardly, Minders present tough, impenetrable facades, but internally they are in turmoil because they are humans, not machines. Slippery issues such as ethics combined with the uncertainties and the life-or-death peril of missions, all take their toll. It is no wonder Rucka shows battered operatives suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after completing missions and drinking to excess or engaging in empty sex to forget what they have experienced.

Impact

The concept of Queen and Country was inspired, as Rucka has freely admitted, by the television series The Sandbaggers (1978-1980), which realistically depicted British-style espionage. Though Rucka retained the structure of the secret organization and the downbeat tone of the television series, he put his own stamp on the face of modern espionage: the story behind the story ripped from the headlines. In Rucka’s version, more sex is shown than was allowed when the television show was airing. More violence is depicted, though not glorified. The language can be coarse at times.

For Queen and Country, Rucka created a complete cast of well-realized characters who act in believable fashion within an established hierarchy: They try hard, make mistakes, suffer consequences for their actions, and if they survive, carry heavy baggage afterward. Rucka’s account of the SIS focuses on modern global issues: control of oil reserves, corporate dirty tricks, manipulation of foreign governments, and fanatical splinter groups. Queen and Country particularly emphasizes the stultifying effect of bureaucracy on an occupation like espionage. Ultimately, Queen and Country is both a tribute and a creative extrapolation of The Sandbaggers, which coincidentally ended with a mystery worthy of a spy thriller. The television series creator and writer Ian Mackintosh, a former intelligence officer, disappeared off Alaska during a flight in 1979. No trace of him has since been found.

Further Reading

Bartoll, Jean-Claude, and Renaud Garreta. Insiders (2009- ).

Fleming, Ian, et al. James Bond Omnibus (2009- ).

O’Donnell, Peter, et al. Modesty Blaise (2003- ).

Bibliography

Davies, Barry. The Spycraft Manual: The Insider’s Guide to Espionage Techniques. London: Zenith Press 2005.

Hitz, Frederick Porter. The Great Game: The Myths and Reality of Espionage. New York: Vintage Books, 2005.

Jeffery, Keith. The Secret History of MI6. New York: Penguin, 2010.