Elizabeth Breitweiser

A tremendous spy thriller with the wonderfully simple but alluring premise -- what if the Moneypenny-trope character was blamed for the murder of the James Bond-trope character? Only this Moneypenny turns out to have quite the past, and might just turn out to be more Bond than even Bond. Fast-paced, exciting, with great character moments and great use of the genre. My only slight complaint is that the end feels a tiny bit abrupt and by-the-numbers compared to the rest of the tale -- but it's show more still quite good. show less

Velvet Templeton is a secretary at the super-secret espionage agency, ARC-7, in London in the 1970s. Just a quiet, competent secretary, liked and trusted by her coworkers and the agents.

But Velvet has a past her fellow secretaries and most of the agents don't know, and when an agent is killed in circumstances implicating another agent as a double agent, she's not about to sit idle. She starts investigating on her own.

Velvet is a former agent herself, a highly skilled and dangerous agent, and show more her skills are still with her.

There's a reason she's not a field agent anymore; a reason she sits quietly behind a desk and very few know her professional past. And when she starts investigating the circumstances behind Agent X-14's death, she discovers that things she believed about that past were lies. That there's a bigger conspiracy than she suspected.

That she has no idea who she can or can't trust.

Velvet's past is revealed gradually, unfolding in well-crafted layers. We learn her career as an agent in the 1950s in flashbacks, and we follow her dangerous hunt for the truth of what happened then, and the truth of the death of X-14, and what is being covered up.

There's a lot of action, and a fair bit of blood, because neither Velvet nor her shadowy opponents are playing a game here. The character development is beautifully done, and the plot builds to a convincing climax. In memory, the images try to becoming moving images in my mind; something I watched rather than something I read. Velvet Templeton is going to stay with me.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this graphic novel from the publisher, and I am reviewing it voluntarily. show less

This is a beautiful deluxe edition of one of the best comic spy stories I read (Queen and Country came to my mind when I first saw Velvet comic). Art is great, it feels like you are following a TV show frame after frame. Setting is also very well selected - Cold War period, 1970's. There are no omnipotent devices so common in today's fiction - everything requires investigation and field-work. At moments you truly sympathize with the security officer chasing down Velvet - she makes them jump show more all over the world after her only to find out they were chasing ghosts and are nowhere near to capturing Velvet.

Main protagonist, Velvet Templeton, works as a secretary for a director of ultra secret intelligence agency. When one of the agents gets killed in action she takes interest and soon find herself fighting on all fronts trying to escape people that are now trying to frame her and paint her as one of the conspirators. She is forced to run but decides to find out the truth and finally punish those responsible. What her enemies do not expect is that Velvet is not just a secretary - she is retired agent and what an agent indeed. In all aspects Velvet is female James Bond - both in the way she looks at male agents she works/worked with and the way she can control her emotions and eliminate threats without second thought. Mission comes first, everything else comes second.

Non-stop action, various locals, again art is just gorgeous. If you like novels like adventures of Matt Helm, Modesty Blaise, James Bond, [above mentioned] Queen and Country or novels like Mask of Dimitrios and of course Le Carre's works you will like this.

Highly recommended to all thriller and spy-fiction fans. show less

Another comic that has been out for a few years that doesn't look like its ending soon. I like conclusions to the things I read. I enjoyed the first issue in regards to the plot and dialogue. However, the artwork wasn't the greatest. I won't be continuing the series.