The Old Guard Book Two: Force Multiplied
It took three years, and a Netflix movie, but we finally got a second volume of “The Old Guard.” I really enjoyed the first volume and the self-contained story it told made it so that the wait for this volume wasn’t as taxing as it could’ve been. Still, it was advertised as “vol. 1” so it was clear that creators Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez were planning on making more of this series. It just became a question of when we’d actually see it. Now that we finally have, I can say that “Force Multiplied” was worth the wait… until you get to its ending.
When we left off, the group had gained and lost a member. New recruit Nile, formerly of the U.S. Army, and former French soldier Booker, respectively. Their leader, Andronika “Andy” the Scythian, lovers Nicky, and Joe, are taking it in stride as they begin the volume by breaking up a human trafficking ring in Malibu. It’s just another day in paradise for these immortal soldiers of fortune, but maybe not for Nile as she starts growing close to the FBI agent the group has been feeding info to.
After being around for more than 6,000 years, Andy knows all about heartbreak and what’s waiting for Nile and Mustafa, “Moose” to his friends, six or seven decades down the line. She’s been there plenty of times herself. The problem here is that when her lovers die, they stay dead. They don’t show up a few hundred years later looking to settle their differences with a shotgun. Oh, and to punish the whole of humanity as well.
Boiled down to its core, the story of “Force Multiplied” simply asks what would happen if one of these immortals was evil. While the bodycount of Andy and her crew is just one thing that would likely exclude them from sainthood, they’ve always been presented as people who want to do the right thing. This story asks what it would take to flip someone’s switch in that regard and why they would keep doing it. It may be a simplistic setup, but Rucka is a smart enough writer to give this character more nuance than you’d expect from that premise.
It isn’t just that she suffered for so long. It’s that she suffered for so long alone. One of the ideas that’s driven home in this story is that these immortals really only have each other. All of the mortals in their lives are transient, so being cut off from them is really the only lasting punishment they can inflict. See Booker in the previous volume and witness his state at the start of this one.
Yet even if their antagonist takes a dim view of humanity, the counter-argument against it comes from a surprising source. I won’t spoil who it is (but it’s a rather limited pool of suspects if you remember the first volume), yet the examples they provide are surprisingly simple. It turns out that if you do try to do the right thing, it has a ripple effect. Or maybe calling it a cascade would be better since it leads to more good things down the line.
If you’re thinking that my description of this volume means that there are a lot of scenes of people just talking to each other, then you’d be right. Fortunately Fernandez is good at drawing people engaged in conversation, and letting their body language imply how they’re really feeling towards each other. You know what else he’s good at? Drawing action scenes. From the car chase that opens the volume, to a stealth operation by night, to big ‘ol scenes of feudal tribal warfare, he can do it all. Fernandez’s work is a big reason why you’re never bored when people are just talking in this volume, as opposed to shooting or bludgeoning each other.
(Spoiler warning for the end of the volume..)
Yet even he can’t quite make the big revelation at the end of the volume work. You see, after Andy and company have taken Booker back from her former comrade, we get to find out something about our ostensible protagonist. This comes courtesy of Nile asking her about a specific Code of Hammurabi after she was prompted to do so by the volume’s antagonist. After some prompting, it turns out that Andy was a slaver for a good portion of her life way back in the day.
It doesn’t stop there as Andy starts to vent and exclaim that people are vermin. They always have been and always will be, that she’s still living in that same old world, and she’s tired of it. Which leads Andy to effectively quit the team as she states she has no fight left in her after realizing this.
I can kind of see what Rucka was getting at here. How the beliefs and attitudes of someone who grew up in the Old World clash with those of the Modern Era. The problem is that it feels like he’s trying to force this characterization onto Andy. Let’s not forget that her first scene in the present day involves freeing some victims of human trafficking and shooting their captors. She does go HAM on the security forces holding Booker captive, but this is after they’ve shot her a few dozen times. The point I’m trying to make is that she’s not a monster and she’s been trying to do the right thing (for two whole volumes now). All that Nile appears to be doing here is breaking one woman’s attempt to make up for the wrong that she’s done in her life.
(End Spoiler Warning for the end of the volume…)
I don’t doubt that Rucka has a plan for what he’s done here. Maybe it’ll involve Andy finding another way to atone for the awful things she’s done in her life. MAYBE, it’s a secret plan to infiltrate her former comrade’s organization. I’ve got enough faith in the writer to see where he’s going with this in the next volume… which will also be the series finale. Yeah, “The Old Guard” is only going to be a trilogy of graphic novels. I can’t say that I’m disappointed that Rucka and Fernandez aren’t going to stretch this out longer, but I get the feeling it’s for the best that they’re wrapping this up now.
If I’m a betting man, however, don’t expect this third volume until the sequel to the movie hits Netflix. So… expect it maybe sometime in 2022.