3 out of 5

Though, in part, a logical narrational continuance from the previous arc’s sudden trauma afflicted upon Minder Tara Chase, Operation Morningstar feels like an aside; like it’s never fully committed.  This is interesting given Greg’s editorial in the back of the first issue, positing a ‘Taleban’ focused tale that was written before, but published after 9/11 and that was motivated – as suggested by his wife – a need to write about the group’s travesties against women; one would be expecting a fire and brimstone takedown, but instead, we get three issues of relatively minor intrigue as our other two Minders hunt down an out-in-the-open secret agent list in the Middle East while Tara goes to a shrink and then also gets drunk and laid.

The exposed secret agent list is a somewhat tired spy trope that I always struggle to understand – like, why is this precious information being passed around in such a way that it can be lost? – but then I just have to relate it to any of the given data breaches of this current era and, yeah, I guess this stuff happens.  The info has to be somewhere.  But, still, after Greg’s rather masterful introduction into CIA / MI5 / MI6 intrigue, this feels like a suddenly simple setup.  The ‘aside’ feeling comes, in part, from the Taleban involvement – which is relatively nil, except for being the ‘reason’ Crocker gives Tara for not being the right agent for the job, as she wouldn’t be able to move freely about in the field – as though Greg was purposefully holding back his opinions in order to stay focused on the story, which is undeniably the right tactic but it, again, lends a sense of restraint to everything.  The other part of the ‘aside’ness is the rather straightforwardness of the premise: Tara acts exactly like the cold, “I ain’t givin’ you no feelings” secret agent you’d expect; she cracks in her sessions with the therapist exactly when you’d expect; the hunt for the secret list mostly goes in a straight line (okay, a roundabout straight line) without much conflict; etc.  Not much feels like it actually happens.

Q & C, with Brian Hurtt appearing on art this arc and Leandro Fernandez the next, would prove to be quite the breeding ground for up and comers.  While Hurtt’s art isn’t as dialed in as Rolston’s from the previous issues – a regular letter writer in issue #7 remarks on something similar, how Hurtt stretches for some interesting layouts but it doesn’t directly connect with the material / reader – he displays, early on, a good sense of character and offers up an impressive level of details in the city scenes.

Reading Greg’s blurb, mentioned above, does confirm something, though: Rucka has always been Rucka.  His expressive rants in the backpages of Lazarus are nothing new; our boy has always been a very smart, researched guy, doing his best to blend his interests with writing, and admirably downplaying his opinions in favor of character and story, even if his attempt at that in Morningstar undercut its tensions a bit.