Super Spy is a great graphic novel that blends fiction and reality to create a wonderful array of characters that all play off one another, filling the world of Europe in WW2. I loved the stories and how they intertwined.

At the same time, Kindt's art is dual: sometimes it's great, and sometimes the characters look so similar that I have no idea who is doing what, which means I have to go back and piece it together.

Overall, engaging and wonderful. I would, and probably will, read it again. ( )

WW2 spies, with lots of plot twists

http://www.unshelved.com/archive.aspx... ( )

Matt Kindt’s Super Spy is an ideal example of the kind of excellent work being published online by independent artists. Super Spy is a weekly strip unlike the things you find in the newspapers. The anthology collects a full year’s worth of strips — 52 in all. Each week’s story ranges from a couple to several pages long, generally holding up as more substantial chapters of a mostly continuous story. The story is arranged in a nonlinear format, so it feels rather disconnected at first. However, after the first dozen or so shorts the overall narrative begins to emerge and plays out in a more focused way throughout the second half of the collection.

Super Spy is an excellent mix of noir stoicism and playful crypto-thusiasm. The anthology is a playful collection, embedding hidden messages and appropriating all sorts of print media forms. For the most part, Kindt finds a lot of success in creating a wide variety of alternative media, from spy code books to children’s books to illustrated reference books, all embedded in a more traditional comics format.

A couple of times this stuff gets heavy handed and it feels like Kindt is, like so many artists, swayed too much by his own love of comics. In a few spots he inserts comics from the period of the narrative. These inserted “retro” comics are rendered in full-color and with a near-photographic quality to them that makes them stand out prominently. These illustrations and the story surrounding them represent the major downfall of Super Spy: They feel cliche. Too often the stories and plot twists feel relatively typical. Even the setting of WWII Europe feels overdone.

Kindt is a talented artist and writer, and Super Spy aptly displays that talent. He is able to weave a more complete story than many other creators working in comics today. Here’s hoping that he continues to find himself more and borrow the conventions of his art a whole lot less. ( )

This is an excellently conceived and beautifully illustrated book that brings a brings a somewhat new perspective to the time-tested spy genre. In popular culture espionage is typically portrayed as a sexy or thrilling line of work, but as Kindt shows, the reality is likely much more grim. As the numerous intertwined storylines show, people get trapped in impossible situations and become pawns of forces larger than themselves. All of that deception eventually takes an enormous physical and psychological toll.

If anyone in the film industry has any sense, they would turn this book into a feature-length animated film. The noirish, sepia toned artwork would likely translate phenomenally to film, and the stories are all very compelling. ( )