James Bond vol. 1: Vargr

Bond’s film status has seen better days recently, with the relative creative disappointment of “Spectre” and the ongoing drama of whether or not Daniel Craig will return to the role.  (If Idris Elba doesn’t want to do it, then the oft-rumored Tom Hiddleston would be a good second choice.)  Fortunately, Warren Ellis is on hand, with artist Jason Masters, to deliver a smart and efficient take on the character that fits well into his established style.  After a pre-credits opening that has Bond dealing with a killer with means involving a cinderblock to his back, he’s quickly shuffled off onto a new mission involving a designer drug that has hit the streets of England with the nasty side effect of eating people alive.  MI6 does have an informant on the matter:  Slaven Kurjak, a Serbian bionics inventor who is said to be richer than God.  How did he come to know so much about this designer drug?  All I can say is that Bond is about to find out the hard way.

If you found “Spectre” to be overblown and formulaic, then “Vargr” may just be the right antidote for that.  Ellis’ Bond still has the penchant for witty one-liners, but he’s also a ruthlessly efficient killing machine when the circumstances call for it.  He’s also someone with a knack for on-the-spot ingenuity when it comes to getting out of a jam, as we see when he has to bluff his way out of a fistfight and escape fiery decontamination in a lab.  The story itself is fine, as its mix of the grounded ethos of the more recent “Bond” films and more fantastic elements of  the ones that came before actually meshes pretty well here.  It’s all pretty straightforward, though I’m sure anyone familiar with the speeches traditional to “Bond Villains” will get a kick out of how Ellis utilizes that trope here.

Masters is probably the weak link here, though not in a way that ruins the experience.  He’s got a no-nonsense style that mixes well with the narrative’s efficiency, and makes the action quite engaging on the page.  However, Masters’ work also feels somewhat antiseptic.  I don’t know if he used any CG in composing his art, but it has the look of something that was done via computer with little warmth or personality.  The reason this isn’t a dealbreaker is because we’re dealing with a Bond where the lack of these things are an acknowledged part of his character.  Not a perfect “Bond” experience, but one that comes highly recommended to his fans (and Ellis’ too, for that matter).