Agent Provocateur
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IDW Comics Agent Provocateur |
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| Published | 2008 |
A Review by Finn Clark 17/4/12
This might be the worst thing Gary Russell's ever written. Obviously I realise the enormity of that claim, especially since I've never heard his work for Big Finish, but I don't believe his books and comics have anything to beat it. Certainly his other comics don't come within a million miles of it, being quickies that tend to be dreary, pointless or (at best) so mad that they're oddly charming. I like Party Animals, for instance, which is more entertaining than City of Devils or Black Destiny. Meanwhile, his novels get pretty bad at times, but they're not this fundamentally broken. Divided Loyalties is more deranged than, well, anything, for instance, but at least you can laugh at it. It also flows quite well.
Agent Provocateur isn't making itself look stupid with continuity excess, but it's more illiterate in its chosen medium. It's like a bicycle with square wheels. There's something pitiful about watching it go.
Incidentally I heard a rumour that Agent Provocateur was going to be an ongoing series until IDW killed it and then later started an ongoing series by different people. They're not Doctor Who fans, you see, and I'm guessing hadn't heard of Gary Russell when they commissioned him. On paper, he's quite a catch. DWM editor, Big Finish producer, BBC Wales script editor, author and so on. He'd even written comics before, but the problem is that he'd never done anything in this format. His only long-running gig had been writing half-page episodes for the Radio Times, with everything else being a handful of seven-page DWM episodes and eight forgettable pages for the 1992 Sarah-Jane Holiday Special.
Now I'm not defending Gary Russell's novels as actually good, but they do have a P.G. Wodehouse knack (no, really) of being able to burble along merrily on their own vacuousness, almost making a virtue out of saying nothing at all. Obviously, Wodehouse is masterly and Russell isn't, but both of them write books that move along nicely. Agent Provocateur unfortunately demonstrates that this doesn't translate to comics. This would be a good DWM story arc, by which I mean that each 22-page issue contains a perfectly good eight-page core story and then a further fourteen pages of padding, incoherent character work, clunky storytelling and the kind of time-wasting wibble that he used to do in prose. Furthermore you can tell that Russell's day job these days involves TV and audio scripts, since he's written some speeches here that you might give to actors but don't work at all in a comic strip. Here's an example:
"Listen to me Martha. This is big. And dangerous. The Pantheon have effectively bullied, cheated and manipulated us into doing this. Blackmailed almost. And there's nothing I can do, I can't walk away, can't give this one a miss, because there are too many lives at stake here." "And the existence of the entire universe." "Well, yes there is that. But seriously, we get back to the TARDIS and head after Tharlot. Fine. After that, I can offer no guarantees for your safety. Or mine. Or anyone's. And I made a promise to your mum - and heaven help me, your mum has a left hook George Foreman would've been proud of - a promise to keep you safe. And I can't keep that promise if you come with me. So, if you stay in the TARDIS till it's all over, I'd be happier. You'd be safer. And your mum will still have a marvellous, magnificent Martha." "Tell me something Doctor. Do you think I can be of any help on the battlefield? Do you think that even one person could benefit from my presence? Because if you say yes, I'm with you one hundred percent. It's what I signed on for. It's what I do. The Doctor and Martha Jones. Team Supreme. I just need you to say yes."
Actors could say that. The length and tone aren't wrong at this point in the story in a performed medium, despite the cliched sentiments and "Team Supreme" (shudder). The fractured, staccato sentences would work too. But to look at? I bet you couldn't even read it all. Your eyes slid past, even without the additional comic strip deterrent of word balloons the size of dinner plates. This isn't just bad writing. It's also ugly to look at.
The first three chapters are standalone stories. The first one couldn't possibly be more of a cliche, with a Sycorax organising rare alien hunts, but I like the way in which the Doctor being the last surviving Time Lord makes him just another lucratively rare alien. We begin with eight pages of rather nauseating padding in which the Doctor buys chocolate milk shakes and Martha says things like, "You spoil me, Doctor, and I love it!" After that comes the inner story (DWM length, of course), followed by a pointless epilogue in which the Doctor gives the bad guy a chance we know he'll spurn. There's also a catchphrase. "Sycorax strong, humans weak, that is why we rock!" I can't tell if Gary's deliberately trying to make his Sycorax look stupid there. I also like the cartoonish art, despite the occasional amateurish page that I presume was drawn by Mr "art assist".
The second chapter is my favourite of the book, despite the fact that the Doctor's involvement in the story is to stand there and watch stuff happen. We begin with an opening page of weird stuff on the planet Kas. This is cool. It will become less so after we've seen the same idea repeated without variation on the planets Nyrruh 4, Mer and so on, but it's still a fun idea. After that comes the traditional eight pages of "claw your eyes out" Doctor-Martha padding, in which they go to a pop concert and try on clothes at Carnaby Street. Because it's 1974, Tennant tries on a Pertwee outfit. This makes them look even shallower than last month's wibbling about chocolate. However, in fairness, it's not all padding because an evil cat watches the Doctor and Martha being invited to an art gallery and then a gigantic sand monster attacks London.
After that though, we see people turned to sand and some ancient Egypt backstory, in which a princess commits regicide and patricide for the sake of her lost lover. Check out the way she shows her concern for him. "Father, I have not seen Temhut for a few days." Priceless. After that, a cat god called Bubastion takes vengeance because the humans deceived him (how?) and stopped him from doing his duty (how?), in one of the goofier examples of divine wrath you'll see all year. This is laughable gibberish that's forgotten to give the Doctor anything to do, but it kinda works as a comic strip because it looks cool. Evil cat gods are always fun, while sand people crumbling away to nothing even while they're still talking is an oddly powerful image. Oh, and this month's artist draws great women. They're not offensively well endowed or anything, but just... fun. I don't think it's a sexist thing because he clearly likes curvy muscles on men, too. He likes curves.
There's also some Shadow Proclamation stuff here. Now, it has to be said that on seeing them namechecked I immediately wanted Russell's tiresome, predictable, continuity-obsessed nuts to fall off. However, on the last page we actually see them and, y'know, they look cool. Unexpected triumph for the artist there.
I liked chapter three immediately for its lack of chocolate milk shakes and pop concerts. Instead, it has the TARDIS being zapped by a planetary core and a building getting blown up. This is good. The Doctor lands in the aftermath and starts helping people. This is good too. Unfortunately after that it degenerates into a porridge of opposing alien factions and an offscreen debate about whether or not the planet of cat people should accept or reject the help of the human empire. Apparently, the planet's only two choices are: (a) losing all autonomy and being subsumed into the empire, or (b) starving to death. "The savannah is beautiful but no longer able to sustain us. Those that returned to the savannah died within months, starved." This despite the fact that 260 years ago everyone lived in straw huts and there's been no indication since then of ecological collapse.
All this is confusing and boring. It improves when giant cat mecha with laser eyes start killing everyone, but the cool factor goes away again when they just stop and fall apart by themselves after the Doctor's come back from his chat with Bubastion.
Chapter four is where the Doctor gets involved with the plot. He visits one of the depopulated planets we've been seeing! This isn't bad, but it's bloated and would have worked better at its correct DWM-strip length. I liked the flawed machine logic, though. Chapter five is incoherent, pointless and where the story arc really starts going off the rails, not to mention having colouring that reminds me of stained-glass windows. Finally, chapter six is the one that convinced me that I was reading the worst thing ever written by Gary Russell, with horrible dialogue and a plot that flails around without connective tissue. There's an ugly page of recap exposition that's actually not recap at all, but Russell telling us chunks of story he couldn't be bothered to show us. The villain's McGuffin is that he wants the Doctor's sonic screwdriver to let him rule the universe, but he's defeated by the Doctor just meeting him, basically. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver as a weapon, then trades up for a big gun and blows away the Lovecraft thingy. The end.
In summary... 1. Dull and predictable, but okay once you're past the stomach-churning padding. 2. Entirely without merit as a piece of writing, but the best chapter in the book because it works visually. 3. Stodgy cardboard with sporadically cool visuals. 4. An actually intriguing story, but slow and meandering. 5. Eh? 6. Go and kill yourself. There's a good idea here - specifically, the notion that a planet's population could disappear in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a single survivor - but unfortunately Russell never gets around to explaining the fascinating bit, i.e. why one survivor? However, on the upside, I quite liked the throwaway mention of some Valhalla Wars in the 41st century, which sound good. To be fair, a few chunks of this manage to get up to the level of "inoffensive filler", mostly in the first two-thirds. However other chunks will make you never want to read a comic book again.