Simon N. Kirby, The Agent #2 - G-Man Comics

SIMON N. KIRBY, THE AGENT No. 2, October 2020

Pitching the Agent into a titanic head-on tussle with the ultra-violent alter-ego of Henry Rothländer, Rik Offenberger’s script for “Sting Of The Murder Hornet” surely must have delighted the 130 backers who ‘helped bring this project to life’ on the crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. Indeed, this twenty-page periodical’s plot is arguably faultless with its entertaining mix of decidedly deadly night-time doings, political double-dealings and a noble stand against the despicable fascist ideology of the Third Reich; “I don’t kill kids, even punks, for the crime of graffiti.”

Foremost of this book’s successes must be the novel idea of the comic’s central antagonist using a doppelgänger to persistently keep the American authorities at bay, whenever the billionaire industrialist crosses the line and savagely mistreats the street-level criminals who prove such an anathema to his prejudicial philosophy. This ploy proves particularly fruitful following Hornet’s epic fisticuffs with Simon N. Kirby in Boston, when a badly battered Rothländer is just able to swap places with a fully fit Jeffrey Schmitt to avoid incarceration.

The ultra-rich arms dealer’s money-driven manipulation of the American justice system is also intriguingly penned and doesn’t bode well for the future of the Agent, despite him being “a third generation F.B.I. special agent with five years of service to the Bureau.” Debatably one of this publication’s most shocking moments comes when Henry callously stabs Mateo Martinez within an inch of his life, after the feline-themed crime-fighter aggressively objects to Hornet’s treatment of two adolescent shoplifters. Initially, it appears that the legally registered super-hero will be imprisoned for life for attempted murder, but the white supremacist’s lawyer is incredibly slick at using the legislation to condone her client’s near-lethal conduct rather than condemn it.

Similarly as sense-shattering as the penmanship though, is Alan Faria’s awesome-looking layouts, which grab the reader’s attention straight from this issue’s outset and simply don’t let them go until the title’s cataclysmic cliff-hanger of a conclusion. Clean-lined, dynamically drawn, and absolutely packed full of pulse-pounding action, the Brazilian artist’s style wonderfully captures all the storytelling success of the Bronze Age of Comics with Kirby’s initial savage beating by Rothländer proving to debatably be the highlight of the book.

Writer: Rik Offenberger, Artist: Alan Faria, and Letters: Eric N. Bennett