5 out of 5

The greatest growths can emerge from the smallest seeds…

After posting a pic of a character he’d apparently created as a youth – Spy Seal, an anthropomorphic you-know-what bedecked in cool, secret agent gear – a flurry of online response suggested that this may be a source for a new story.

Was it ever.

Tommaso delivers on all fronts with Spy Seal’s first “case,” roping in his stylization for tight, supremely choreographed and acted panels that call to mind a clare ligne Tin-Tin type adventure, and crafts a mini-mystery that manages to be legitimately exciting, legitimately twisty, and insanely fun as well as pretty all-ages accessible.  Not that the last point matters, but the can-do spirit of the book and its character is entrancing, setting us in a world of pulpy adventurism that’s in a far corner away from nervy sexual explorations like Perverso or horror mind-trips like She-Wolf.  Then again, that’s Tommaso just being a boss: choosing his genre and wrapping himself around it.

Spy Seal’s dime-novel eagerness is the play this time, and the book design, the wintery-toned but bright colors, and the animalia cast of thieves and agents – chewing scenery in the most delightfully fulfilling fashion – bring this awesomeness to fruition.

There’s a fairly standard setup of Malcolm Warner, our titular seal and ex-Navy man, inadvertently landing himself a job as a member of MI-6, but Tommaso plays it entertainingly cool thereafter: Warner is neither a super spy nor a dolt, adapting to his situation (within context) believably, and getting that same contextual understanding from his new employers.  In other words, yes, this is obviously a fantasy, but steps are taken to make the focus equally on the story’s natural flow over just window-smashing, train-hopping antics.  …Though there’s plenty of that, too!

I would’ve told you that Tommaso’s most recent two books, Dark Corridor and the aforementioned She-Wolf, were acquired tastes, and understood if they didn’t appeal.  But if anything about Seal even sounds intriguing enough to check it out, there’s no such qualifier here: Rich has added a gem to his already impressive catalogue.