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‘Bang! #1:’ Advance Comic Book Review

Hoo-wee! I cackled openly and often while reading the first issue of Matt Kindt and Wilfredo Torres’s new series, Bang! Think James Bond with a Philip K. Dick flare, both in quite the literal sense.

Thomas Cord is our Bond in question. A secret agent working for MI-X against an evil organization called Goldmaze. Kindt uses our knowledge of Bond lore to quickly paint the picture of two long-time warring agencies. Everyone seems to be after a book by a sci-fi author named Philip Verve who embeds hidden messages into his text. That’s as much as I’m going to give you story-wise, as there are a lot of wonderful surprises along the way, especially for people who love the super spy genre.

Kindt loves tropes, and he loves violently smashing them up into little pieces and playfully reconstructing them in such a way that your expectations are immediately dashed and then you’re just there for the ride. This story could easily be a part of his other mind-bending worlds like Mind MGMT.

I like Torre’s artwork style. His action sequences are seamless, like storyboards capturing the movement and punctuating the moments of violence with flair. Nayoung Kim’s colors are vibrant, at first capturing the exotic early days of Bond and later a more corporate modern spy world. Torres and Kim get to have a little fun with psychedelic ’60s visuals and color palettes when Cord starts to question his place in the world; I imagine we’ll see a lot more of that as we go.

The team does a bang-up job balancing the fun and joy of a really good spy story with the bonkers elements of a story that comments on spy stories. This is one really good element to touch on when considering why #StoriesMatter. There are stories so ingrained in who we are that, if approached properly, it’s almost like a creative team is having a conversation with creative people from the past and also with the audience. The stories never stop; they continue from one hand to the next.

The first issue of Bang! is how you capture someone’s attention.

Creative Team: Matt Kindt (story), Wilfredo Torres (art), Nayoung Kim (colors), Nate Piekos of Blambot (letters)
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Click here to purchase.

Phillip Kelly, Fanbase Press Contributor

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