Too Dead to Die: A Simon Cross Thriller

I’ll freely admit that I ordered this graphic novel expecting an enjoyable hatereading experience.   I mean, look at that title “Too Dead to Die.”  It’s ridiculous on its face and there’s no hint that writer Marc Guggenheim and artist Howard Chaykin weren’t going to play this tongue-in-cheek.  Not in the solicitation text for this comic, nor on its back cover.  None of this boded well for their attempt to launch a new character and maybe get in on some of the success that “Reckless” has enjoyed in its format.

In terms of actually reading it, “Too Dead to Die” is perfectly decent for what it is.  Which is the story of an American super spy who has been retired for a while now and is currently enjoying an uneventful retirement.  Until he gets a visit from an old flame by the name of Liberty Nuance who has come to tell him something important.  It’s something that causes Simon to get back in the game in order to save someone close to him from his old antagonists at the Army of X International Spies.  Oh, and the fate of the world may hang in the balance as well.

Yes, this is basically “Old James Bond” reckoning with his age and life choices as he comes back for one last hurrah.  We see him butt heads with the current supervisors at the C.I.A., sneak into a fancy party where he strikes up a rivalry with the main bad guy, and travel to many exotic locations while remarking that this kind of stuff used to be a lot easier.  It’s familiar stuff that hews closer to the pre-Daniel Craig era of “Bond” movies and comes off as what Garth Ennis and Russ Braun’s “Jimmy’s Bastards” would be like if it was played completely straight.

I mean that as a compliment by the way as humor was not that title’s strong point.  Guggenheim and Chaykin are aiming for a breezy international caper and they deliver on that count.  Your enjoyment will likely come down to whether or not you appreciate the story’s quick pace, Chaykin’s grittily stylized art and Guggenheim’s efforts to make Cross as suave and stylish as advertised.  I’m more a fan of the art than the writing as the former is quite distinctive while the latter isn’t so much.  Chaykin does his best to bring the book some style, but Cross comes off as more of a decent concept than an actual character.  Guggenheim does try to have the character reflect on his life’s choices over the course of the volume, except it never comes off as more than window dressing for actual characterization.

What I was more impressed by were the creators’ efforts to make this volume appear as the return of a lost comic book character from the 80’s.  Guggenheim talks in his introduction about how much he loved “Simon Cross:  C.I.A.” as a ten-year-old kid and how legal circumstances had prevented his thirty-six issue series from being reprinted.  We’re told about how awesome the final six-issue arc which had Cross fighting a resurgent A.X.I.S. and hacking every set of headphones on the planet to defeat their mind-control scheme.  There are also “lost” stories attributed to original writer Geoffrey Harris that are illustrated by comics legends Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and Christopher Golden, and a prose story from Guggenheim – I mean, Harris – as well.

All of this gives the impression of “Too Dead to Die” being part of something much larger than it actually is.  It also adds some resonance to the story’s general concept as it makes you wonder what the character would look like back in his actual prime in the context of these original stories.  We get some glimpses here, but they lose their effectiveness when you realize that any “old” “Simon Cross” stories would look and read more or less the same based on what we’re given here.

Which is all perfectly fine.  “Too Dead to Die” isn’t the trainwreck that I was hoping it would be and that’ll probably be good news to fans of Guggenheim and Chaykin’s previous work.  If I sound disappointed it’s because I found the overall experience to be closer to a zero-sum than something I could laugh at as I read it.  As something that the creators are clearly hoping to turn into a franchise, and apparently Guggenheim has already sold the movie rights, it doesn’t strike me as having the style or personality to make that happen.  However, if you’re looking for an “Old James Bond” story featuring a Yank instead of a Brit, then I feel confident in stating that there are probably worse versions of that story out there than this one.