Velvet vol. 2: The Secret Lives of Dead Men

Between the first volume of this and “The Fade Out,” Ed Brubaker has made his way back into my good graces after his lacklustre end years at Marvel and the never-quite-as-good-as-it-should-have-been “Fatale.”  That’s still the case in this second volume of the adventures of spy-on-the-run Velvet Templeton, even though there’s a plot twist towards the end which left me rolling my eyes more than anything else.  Backing up a bit, now that Velvet knows her husband wasn’t a traitor the question becomes why was he killed in the first place?  Her former bosses are the ones most likely to know, but that requires the spy to head straight back into enemy territory while everyone is on high alert.  Good thing she’s still one of the best in the business and still has her bulletproof stealth suit that she took as a parting gift.  Of course, even if she gets the answers she’s looking for, will they bring her peace of mind or lead her further down the rabbit hole of international espionage.

Velvet remains a compelling protagonist with this second volume.  Even with the world against her, the woman knows how to handle herself and keep at least one step ahead of her former employers.  Granted, the rings she runs around them does have these guys coming off as distaff relatives of the “Keystone Kops,” but we do get a couple scenes to show that some of them are starting to question Velvet’s motivations and the logic behind her actions.  At this rate maybe one of them will pull his head completely out of his ass in another volume or two.  It’s still entertaining to watch Velvet in action — beautifully illustrated with a real sense of the period from Steve Epting — and her interior monologue goes a long way towards fleshing her out as someone who is good with guns and causing mayhem.  The problem is that after all the effort Brubaker goes through in building up his protagonist, he has her make one obvious mistake and wind up behind the eightball again.  Given how well she handles everything up to this point, this development comes off as rather jarring.  After all this, it should be clear that Velvet will find a way to get back in the game for volume three and it will make for some entertaining reading.  That it needed to happen at all does feel like a miscalculation on Brubaker’s part.