Kingsman: The red diamond
Gary On Spying
released OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics
Writer rob Williams Artist simon Fraser
While Playboy serialises Kingsman: The Big Exit, Rob Williams and Simon Fraser have taken on the official second volume of Eggsy’s adventures.
When Prince Phillip is abducted, Eggsy is on the case. He succeeds in rescuing the royal, but his standing in the agency takes a battering when he punches Phillip out for being “a mouthy wanker”. Likewise, with his new-found taste for Kensington jazz clubs, young Gary Unwin no longer fits in on his old Peckham estate. Meanwhile Red Diamond, a villain with a distaste for modern society and a love of James Cameron movies, has a scheme to destroy the world’s technological infrastructure and, in his eyes, bring meaning back to our shallow digital age.
With its blend of comedy, Bondian piss-takes and vague social commentary, the first two issues of The Red Diamond feel like a near-repeat of Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’s original. With issue three, however, the story tilts in a new direction as Red Diamond’s scheme pays off and London falls into anarchy.
Fraser’s pencils and Gary Caldwell’s bold colours bring an appropriately retro, Boy’s Own style to a book full of sports cars and rocket pods, while Williams’s script is genuinely hilarious – as irreverent as Millar’s original, but with more pathos. On the surface, Eggsy has everything, but he’s a man caught between two different worlds and at home in neither. Considerably sharper than the recent cinematic sequel. Will Salmon
A blend of comedy and Bondian piss-takes