Friday, October 16, 2009

Friday Book Review: Super Spy

Okay apparently Matt Kindt's book Super Spy came out back in 2007 to much fan fare and I missed it. Luckily as I was attending this years Windy City Comic Con I was introduced to Matt by Jeff Lemire. I had just recently heard about Matt's new book 3 Story: The Secret History of the Giant Man but for some reason I was drawn to Super Spy instead.

This book is about the lives of spies in World War II. That alone should be enough to convince you to pick up this book. The narrative is interwoven through a number of non linear short stories each with their own protagonist. Each character has their own arc that occasionally crosses over with the other spies. Thankfully all of the concluding threads take place in the latter half of the book to tie everything together.

I absolutely could not put this book down once I started reading it. I was on my way back to the hotel on the day of the con taking the red line to Roosevelt where I needed to transfer over to the orange line. I was so engrossed in the book that I mistakenly got on the green line ending up in, literally and figuratively, the wrong part of town. This did cause me to miss the after con party but at least I did get to finish the book with all the extra time I spent on the train.

The one negative I will point out is that my books cover immediately fell off the book once I started reading it. It seems like the glue was too brittle. However this minor problem did not detract me from my enjoyment of the book.

With this review I'm borrowing a rating system from the Comic Geek Speak podcast. The buy, borrow, pants system to be exact. A buy rating means that I think the book is worth the money, a borrow rating means go get it from the library and a pants rating means leave it alone.

To that end I rate Matt Kindt's Super Spy a solid buy!

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