The Coldest City

The Coldest City from Antony Johnston is first and foremost an espionage thriller which happens to be in the form of a graphic novel. I enjoy graphic novels but am far from well-versed in the form so I am probably not as concerned with the artwork as many will be. Unless, of course, it just really moves the story along for me or it really bogs the story down. That said...

I liked the artwork here though at times I found it to be more difficult than I would have liked to follow the characters and whether we were still in a flashback. These were not major issues and usually I reoriented myself within a frame or two. I would have liked to have seen a bit more emotion in the drawings but I think that is largely a personal preference.

The show more story itself was quite good and the various twists and turns of the story were plausible for this genre. The end was particularly rewarding (or irritating if you hate these kinds of things) for being both foreshadowed but not overly so.

I would recommend this to fans of both spy thrillers and graphic novels, though readers who are resistant to "comics as literature" should probably skip it since this is indeed a novel, told with pictures and text, and thus is literature, so you'll only make yourself upset when you get caught up in the story when you dislike the idea of a graphic novel.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss. show less

I kind of want to give this one star because I was soooooo not into it - but the writing isn't actually bad so I won't do that.

I saw the movie first and I *loved* it. While I realized the comic would be different, I thought I would still enjoy it. Little did I know, I was wrong.

First, it was in black and white, which I wasn't expecting. That's ok, but sometimes it's hard to see the details when there's only two colors and I struggled to tell what was going on. Turns out, that didn't really matter, because action/movement wise little was going on. This comic is all talk. All the political intrigue is done via dialogue and I just tuned out.

There was like, one fight scene, one shooting scene...

The movie is utterly unlike the comic and I'm show more grateful for that. This comic just wasn't for me. I do think it's useful for maybe clarifying what happened in the movie? Only the plot does seem different in the movie, so maybe it's not even good for that.

Just ugh. If you loved the movie, the comic might not appeal to you. show less

read in anticipation of the upcoming adaptation, atomic blonde.

the plot felt a little thin, to me. a few twists and turns, sure, but not much meat to it. i absolutely adored the art - the sparse, shadowy very stylistic illustrations were stark and beautiful. but they did make it difficult to keep track of characters (as i kept forgetting names). still, it was an enjoyable and quick read. and i'm looking forward to the film adaptation.

Not understanding all the low-ball scores for this one, aside from the fact that they wanted a hot Charlize Theron Atomic Blonde to be kicking all sorts of ass and didn't get it.

Instead, what was presented was a spy thriller much more in line with Ludlum or even Fleming. It takes its time introducing the characters, and runs them through their paces. The art is understated but well done.

I'm guessing the same people who would get upset with this would be the same ones that would read an Ian Fleming Bond book and get pissed that there aren't as many boobs, wisecracks, and explosions as the movies.

Me? I enjoyed it for what it was. A decent spy thriller.

Originally posted here.

The history major in me could not pass up this particular graphic novel. Although the Cold War is not one of the time periods I especially gravitate towards, it is definitely a great era for spy drama, which is what The Coldest City is. There's as much drama, backstabbing and mystery as an episode of Alias. Well, maybe not quite that much, or quite that colorful, but still quite dramatic.

All of that drama, though, is told in a very detached style. Most of the story is told in flashbacks as Broughton, the female spy sent to Berlin to see what's going on after the death of an agent, gives her report to her superiors at MI6. The graphic novel really had a noir feeling I thought, which was only exacerbated by the show more black and white illustrations.

The artwork did not particularly appeal to me, although it did complement the atmosphere of the story. The images are very shadowed and obscured, rather like the truth. I appreciate them for that, but, aesthetically, they're not especially pleasing.

The one thing that I really felt made this graphic novel stand out was, for me personally, a big plus, but could, for another reader, be a serious detractor. Johnston does not just do all of the dialog in English; the language spoken by the character is the language on the page. This is not especially unique. What is unique is that there is rarely any translation offered. If you don't speak that language, it's all up to the context or an online translator for you. Most of the non-English parts were German, which, conveniently enough, is the other language I know, so I was fine and really enjoyed this. Had I not spoken that language, I think I might have been annoyed and frustrated, because the parts in German are not always simple and easy to derive from context.

All in all, I came away feeling rather meh about this one. The story didn't feel quite fleshed out enough for me to really feel wowed. However, I think it could have some definite appeal for fans of spy stories. show less

I kind of liked it. It's spy noir set in 1980's Berlin with the fall of the wall right around the corner.

The art isn't good and was bringing this book down from page one. It's black and white, which is ok, but frequently fuzzy which is not. I was particularly bothered by the main character who would go from vixen to tired schoolmarm in one frame. That could have worked too, either to show depth of character or the versatility of spies. It didn't work because it felt too random, more like an inconsistent artist than part of the story. That also made recognizing characters difficult. I often asked, is this a new guy, or the guy from two pages ago drawn a bit differently?

It also seemed a stretch that the British only have two people show more minding the store. They are more thinly spread than Americans, but two intelligence agents for a place as fraught with cold war intrigue as Berlin? show less

Picked this up because I enjoyed Atomic Blonde and wanted to see where it came from and what the differences were. Enjoyed this too, in a different way. (Just as quick and slick, less punchy-business, more spygrit noir, less pretty.) It had a few of the same issues as the film, inasmuch as it's not quite clear when the narrator is being unreliable, leading to some, "but..." moments. But since it doesn't try to be as convoluted as the film did, it's not quite such an issue. Then again, it's possible some of my uncertainties stem from that common problem in simplified-B&W-art comics where half the cast look the same. (Cynicism suggests that's why the main character is female: so at least you always know which dramatic silhouette is her.)