James Bond #6 - Dynamite Entertainment

JAMES BOND No. 6, April 2016

Focussing almost exclusively upon the movements of its titular character, this concluding instalment to “the debut storyline in the all-new James Bond comic book series” certainly brings Warren Ellis’ multi-issue narrative to a thrilling, rather blood-thirsty end as the British spy single-handedly storms a privately-owned battleship docked in Norwegian waters and ultimately blows it up. But such a dynamic resolution disconcertingly, never actually explains what motivated Slaven Kurjak to go to such extraordinary criminal lengths and put “a disease inside a drug” in the first place?

In fact, even the secret serviceman asks his mortally wounded foe as to just “why you did all this… The real reason. No justifications…” at the very end of the twenty-two page periodical and rather frustrating receives a nonsensical uninformative response from the bleeding villainous mastermind about him wanting “to be happy with friends and doing beautiful things.” It is little wonder therefore that the black-clad occasional assassin immediately shoots the crook neatly through the head once he’s presumably finished talking.

Plot holes as to his heavy’s incentive aside however, the Essex-born writer’s script for Issue Six of “James Bond” swiftly throws its 15,287 strong audience straight into the thick of things by having the former Royal Naval Reserve Commander utilise the “Russian collapsible suppressed sniper rifle” his Quartermaster has given him, and ruthlessly dispatch two of Vargr’s land-based guards with grisly throat shots. Indeed it’s hard to imagine a more pitiless cold-blooded incarceration of the main protagonist as the one Ellis has stalk the corridors of the German-owned “live action role playing” vessel, indiscriminately shooting men, women and unarmed laboratory technicians through the brains; “What the hell is going on --”

Impressively all of this pulse-pounding action is wonderfully illustrated by Jason Masters, whose pencilling of Bond furiously rushing through the ship’s sparsely decorated walkways, dodging bullets and eliminating his well-armed pursuers, quickly makes it evident as to why the comic pop culture website “Comic Crusaders” described the publication as containing “strong action pieces… full of pace and movement.” Certainly the South African’s detailed panels depicting the fragmentation of the secret agent’s bullets as they enter the heads, mouths and soft body organs of his victims are as insanely impactive as they are arguably ghoulish.

Writer: Warren Ellis, Artist: Jason Masters, and Colors: Guy Major