2 out of 5

Yeah, this is why I don’t read most DC /Marvel comics… although, ironically, I’m here because of a Marvel book: Tom King’s Vision.  Tom has a unique, frame-by-frame style of comic writing, perhaps due to his relative freshness to the scene, but Vision has proven such a unique read – and his was the only short that’s stuck out (positively…) in Vertigo’s Quarterly mags – that I’ve wanted to see more, to determine if this dude is a flash-in-the-pan or what.  I’ve flipped through Grayson at the shops, but it’s so dreadfully Big Two – that is, wrapped up in stakes that only matter if you care about the book – that I couldn’t commit to just buying in due to King, especially given that Seeley scripts most of it over his and King’s story.

But I like spy stuff, and the hook with King is that he used to work for (insert some government agency here – CIA?), so legitimacy flair or whatever.  And I says to m’self: I’ll start from the start, and give it a shot.

Recently, I reread Rucka’s first Wonder Woman collection and a Morrison JLA trade.  Comics were different then, as I mentioned in each review, but it’s not like we didn’t have Marvel and DC bullshit then also.  But you know why those writers’ contributions worked?  Because they mostly existed in a vacuum.  The line is blurry, I appreciate that, but Grant’s JLA is unique – and his deftness at writing this kind of stuff so pointed – in that you can step into it a decade on and easily shirk off the electricity Superman and mentions of then-crossover events and just enjoy Grant’s crazy tale.  Similarly for Greg, he took a very naturalistic character approach; WW villains a’plenty popped up, and eventually everything got sucked into that damn Crisis, but for a while it satisfied the same feeling: you didn’t have to care about Wonder Woman to care about Greg’s Wonder Woman.

Grayson does not fulfill that.  Not one fucking bit.  So something something recapped in a ‘Secret Files’ included here, Dick is presumed dead, and takes the opportunity to go work for spy outfit Spyral, still fightin’ crime but staying off the radar.  Okay, character revamp, give us some learning the spy-ropes and butting heads with superiors because Dick trained with Bats, but no: we’re not one issue in to the regular series when other DC characters mentioning other DC things start showing up, and Seeley and King just decide to drop their cards on the table and show us that Dick is actually still working with Batman, spying on Spyral and…

…And so nothing has changed, except that Dick Grayson is sometimes out of costume.  Yes, there’s a well written elseworlds-y kind of tale by King at the end of the trade, from the “Future’s End” event, and the one Grayson issue he scripts is maybe a bit more spycraft focused than Seeley’s dramatics, but I’m not going total bias here: the book is total standard DC stuff through and through – e.g. quips and silly struggles – with, admittedly, some surprising “adult situations” sprinkled atop, presumably to satisfy a Bond inspirational necessity of having the hero bang chicks.  But because every other panel is just back to Dick Grayson, predictable DC dude, that feels like an especially odd inclusion.

Mikel Janin’s art Is.  I’m sure the normalcy of the story is influencing my opinion, but there’s nothing in his style – undeniably competent though it is – that you haven’t see before.  Nice batch of extras (covers, sketchs) in the trade though, including Seeley’s pitch for the book which just sort of proves how generic this whole deal is.