4 out of 5

I think my disenchantment with some of the Queen & Country arcs is due to the way that the stories seem conflicted between character / world building and delivering a standalone tale. As I’ve commented previously, the large, constantly evolving world is something Greg Rucka would get extremely good at writing, especially with Lazarus; I remember being so invested in Tara Chase and the minders at the time of Q & C’s publication, but looking back, her development feels a little weak early on, and the sidesteps we do take to her character undermine the impact of the operation-of-the-day to a certain extent, as well as Greg getting distracted by working in the then-timely 9/11 impact. This is why the first Q & C arc stands out so well: it really nailed the impersonal nature of the ops, as well as the high stakes / minimal effect duology: asking the minders to be willing to die for something that might not move the needle in any notable way. It wasn’t wrapped up in too obviously seeding a long game, so its emotional impact and thrills registered immediately.

…And because Declassified is a mini-series, and a flashback to when Crocker was Minder Three, it can tap into those same sensibilities, cut off as it is from needing to directly feed into a followup arc. Brian Hurtt returns on art, and has made leaps and bounds of progress in the interim: his characters are a bit chunky, but this is up to the quality of his later work, with camera direction feeling more justified (not just cinematic for the sake of it) and ace character acting, despite it boiling down to a lot of muted snarls. The story is fairly straightforward, featuring a five-years-of-experience Crocker being tasked to Prague to attempt to abscond with a contact… the exact same mission his superior, Minder One, just failed at elsewhere. What’s fascinating, though, and where the series does benefit from what’s come before, is seeing Paul make mistakes, and stumble through his op. He’s far from incompetent, but he’s not at all perfect, and the stunning bummer conclusion to his task again brings forth the utter hopelessness of what these agents are sometimes out to do.

Declassified tries to step outside of the op for a few pages to show Crocker’s relationship with his wife, and, unfortunately, this comes across as a missed opportunity: we’re meant to register the shitty nature of only grabbing minutes with someone you can’t actually share the details of your job (and most of your life) with, and we do, but it’s delivered with the same sort of shorthand shallowness as the Chase bits mentioned above. Another issue that would’ve allowed some more depth to this part – or maybe excising down to something completely dialogue-less, only showing his wife as he’s leaving the home or something – might’ve punched this up.

But this is a rather minimal part of our three issues. Declassified is prime Queen & Country – you get the nonsense politics; you get the blips of action – with the extra benefit of an already awesome Brian Hurtt classying up the joint.