3 out of 5

It definitely took Rucka quite a while to hone his narrative balance for comics.  In his DC work, he could get away with generally encapsulated story arcs, but in his indie fare – like Queen & Country – which allowed for freer reign in terms of character development and world building, he would try to spread his subplots out while still offering up bite-sized tales.  Years later, on Lazarus, we can see how good Greg has become at this, seamlessly slipping between fore- and background elements; Crystal Ball, the third Q&C arc, though, is early on, and so still shows the struggle.  A potential terrorist plot is stumbled upon by the Minders crew, and Kittering is sent to handle one part of it in exchange for some CIA help while Tara is off to handle a more direct fact-finding part.  Supposedly there’s a relationship between Kittering and Chase building, told via quickie sex and a kiss in a bar booth and then silent panels while each thinks of the other, but it feels stuck in as a fairly cheesy way of adding tension.  Which should be unnecessary given the stakes, but these never effectively crystallize either, as Greg doesn’t quite juggle the bits and pieces well this time.

We’re also unsettled tonally by an early outing for Leandro Fernandez on art, and discomfiting lettering from John Dranski.  Fernandez caused a slight furor as told in the letters pages, drawing incredibly stylized characterizations of the leads, but that I didn’t really take too much of an issue with (excepting Tara in, like, a fishnet top during an op, which just didn’t seem like a logical tactical decision); rather it’s that Fernandez was almost an out-and-out Eduardo Risso copy at this point in his career, making the general ‘look’ sort of half-and-half: the shadows and layouts are Risso, with Leandro’s developing style seen in his poses and exaggerations.  So the book doesn’t feel natural, per se.  The shadows are also all out of whack, painting the offices in noir lighting which is at odds with the dry, business-like discussions of huge-ass issues.  This stuff is the bread and butter of Q&C, finding intrigue in the required politics behind the scenes, and Rucka’s dialogue is crackling but then 90% of the panel is mystery shadows and it casts a theatric quality onto things which doesn’t work.  Top this off with Dranski’s habit of pointing the tails on his bubbles to odd places (a character’s body instead of their mouth) and back-and-forths feel clumsy.

The way the various ops play out bubbles up to some definite excitement, but it boils down to a somewhat standard espionage tale, saved from a mismatch on art with some sharp dialogue exchanges.