Comic of the Week 01/17/2012
Two years before Marvel’s premiere super team of the same name debuted in 1963, the The Avengers debuted on British TV screens with Patrick Macnee and Honor Blackman. The rights to air the hit spy-fi show in the US were sold to ABC in 1965, when Diana Rigg joined the cast as Emma Peel – it’s the 1965-1968 era of the show that this comic draws from.
The show continued without Diana Rigg until 1969 and was revamped in 1976 as The New Avengers, this time running for two seasons and starring Joanna Lumley. The concept refused to die, re-emerging as a 1998 movie starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman that suffered scathing reviews.
Comics legend Grant Morrison has now revived the concept as a six issue mini-series from Boom! Studios, with his artistic collaborator Ian Gibson, the first issue of which goes on sale tomorrow.
Tara King meets an old sailor, Admiral Fanshawe, in a gambling pub. They walk to the quay and discuss the existence of a mole in his department. The sailor is next seen tied to an anchor at the bottom of the sea.
Steed descends into the sewers to meet his boss, Mother. They discuss the ‘rash and irritatingly impetuous’ Miss King and Steed is asked to investigate the death of Fanshawe. He shows Steed a die found beside his body.
Steed calls Mrs. Peel and they meet in a graveyard, observing Fanshawe’s funeral. He recruits her to work the case with him. They visit Chez Fanshawe, where they’re instructed to play hopscotch down a long hallway by a butler who assumes them to be members of the Palamedes Club, which Fanshawe used as a meeting place for games enthusiasts. They search his ‘ship in a bottle’ conservatory and find a letter to an ‘agony aunt’, Doris Storm, on the subject of foxhunting. Mrs. Steed goes to visit Doris and learns she is giving blood at that moment.
Mrs. Peel heads down to the ambulance to speak with her as one of the nurses injects her with ‘something’. She rugby tackles the nurse and then finds the apparently dying Doris who mutters the last words ‘Rooks and Ravens.’
It’s a bizarre issue, delightfully paying homage to the surreal, stylish spy drama origins of the source material. It’s more nostalgia than new reading pleasure, but an enjoyable diversion.
You can discuss Steed & Mrs. Peel #1 here on the HAIRcomics forums.
