Codebreakers

I love good, smart, spy stories. James Bond flicks are fine and dandy until you get him just pulling out more gadgets than Adam West Batman and dealing with hot girls who die horribly if he sleeps with them. I'll be straight up, the standard I measure every spy comic I read is QUEEN AND COUNTRY by Greg Rucka. That's about as good as it gets for me. So, when someone tells me that a comic is going out that is in the same vein then that's going to get my attention. If anything it'll spur me to go in and read it if only to make horribly unfair comparisons to my beloved Q&C.

So BOOM! Studios hits me square between the eyes with CODEBREAKERS. I dive in ready to honestly rip this book a new one. I like BOOM! I like their work, but they dared invoke Q&C, and my fanboy rage had risen. "No" I said to myself, "I will not have comic book companies pulling that Hollywood crap of comparing work to something else even if there's nothing comparable." Y'know, like how every other movie with a hint of sci-fi was "like The Matrix" before the sequels made people not care about The Matrix, and in fact flee theaters with their brains shutting down from smashed in skull from overwrought symbolism. So, just as I was reading to get my teeth gnashin' on, it hit me. CODEBREAKERS does have a glaring similarity to QUEEN AND COUNTRY: it's not stupid.

Its funny at times. Sometimes a bit silly. But it's not stupid. Its a smart comic about smart people doing smart things. Carey Malloy pulls us along, introducing us to team of ciphers working for the F.B.I. that handle codebreaking. I dig that. I've had my fun jerking people around online with codes. I've had people cursing me at dinner tables while away from their computers for the horrible things I've inflicted upon them. What I like about this book is that I honestly believe that cast of this book wold hand me my ass in an intellectual arena, and they seem like real people. This isn't like THE BIG BANG THEORY where someone handed off the cliff notes to what smart people and 'nerds' are supposed to be like and we all mock it. These feel like real people. And these really people have problem.

Can these people use their skills to solve a mystery not on paper or a computer screen. Especially since their skills are what tells them that the mystery is even there to begin with and their superiors either don't see it of don't want them to.

Scott Godlewski handles the art chores really well. I like his stuff. he had to be really could since nothing blows up in here. Its tough sometimes for an artist to handle over the top action. It can be even tougher for an artist to make a story compelling when all the action is going on my someone's mind. Godlewski pulls it off, and damn well.

The book hits stores tomorrow (April 7th). BUY IT!

I don't want to be the only one sucked down this rabbit hole.