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A review by morgandhu
The Coldest City by Sam Hart, Antony Johnston
4.0
The Coldest City, a graphic novel by Anthony Johnston, is a complex spy thriller set in Berlin on the verge of the fall of East Germany and the Berlin Wall. It was the inspiration for the recent film Atomic Blonde, which I watched and enjoyed, so I thought I might enjoy the comic as well.
The narrative is in the form of a verbal debriefing of an agent, just returned from a mission in return. All we learn of the present is that an agent named Perceval has died. As the agent being debriefed begins to make her report, it’s easy for the mind to slip between the two framing narratives, to forget this is not a narrative of ongoing events, but of an agent who was involved in those events being debriefed. One can lose sight of the fact that we have an unreliable narrator.
The set-up as given in the agent’s report. which those who have seen the film will recognise, involves a missing list that purports to contain the names of every secret agent in Berlin. It was to be delivered to a British agent by an ‘asset’ codenamed Spyglass, but instead the British agent, James Gascoigne (Ber-2) is dead, his presumed assassin, a Russian agent named Bahktin, is in the wind, and the list is missing. The higher-ups don’t fully trust the lead British Agent in Berlin, David Perceval (Ber-1), so they are sending in someone who’s never worked in Berlin and has no previous connections with Ber-1 or Ber-2 - Lorraine Broughton, who is going in under cover as a lawyer, Gladys Lloyd, arranging for the repatriation of Gascoigne’s body. Her real mission is to find the list.
The visual style of the novel is stark, drawn in black and white, the characters mostly line drawings never fully fleshed out in detail, faces often drawn without any features, or partly or fully blacked in, shadowy figures echoing the unreality of the characters themselves, who are never what they seem and never display everything abut themselves. And in many panels, there are characters in the corners, watching the other characters, sometimes taking up whole panels themselves as they all observe each other. It’s a graphic illustration of a world where nothing can be taken for what it seems to be, and suspicion and surveillance are unspoken, eternal presences.
It is, of course, a complicated story, of agents and double agents and moles and plots, all unfolding against the imminent collapse of the Wall and the inevitable changes in the world of spycraft in Berlin, which will no longer be a place where multiple nations intersect, and people and information move back and forth.
Quite engrossing, a spy story in the classic style, worthy of Len Deighton or John LeCarré.
The narrative is in the form of a verbal debriefing of an agent, just returned from a mission in return. All we learn of the present is that an agent named Perceval has died. As the agent being debriefed begins to make her report, it’s easy for the mind to slip between the two framing narratives, to forget this is not a narrative of ongoing events, but of an agent who was involved in those events being debriefed. One can lose sight of the fact that we have an unreliable narrator.
The set-up as given in the agent’s report. which those who have seen the film will recognise, involves a missing list that purports to contain the names of every secret agent in Berlin. It was to be delivered to a British agent by an ‘asset’ codenamed Spyglass, but instead the British agent, James Gascoigne (Ber-2) is dead, his presumed assassin, a Russian agent named Bahktin, is in the wind, and the list is missing. The higher-ups don’t fully trust the lead British Agent in Berlin, David Perceval (Ber-1), so they are sending in someone who’s never worked in Berlin and has no previous connections with Ber-1 or Ber-2 - Lorraine Broughton, who is going in under cover as a lawyer, Gladys Lloyd, arranging for the repatriation of Gascoigne’s body. Her real mission is to find the list.
The visual style of the novel is stark, drawn in black and white, the characters mostly line drawings never fully fleshed out in detail, faces often drawn without any features, or partly or fully blacked in, shadowy figures echoing the unreality of the characters themselves, who are never what they seem and never display everything abut themselves. And in many panels, there are characters in the corners, watching the other characters, sometimes taking up whole panels themselves as they all observe each other. It’s a graphic illustration of a world where nothing can be taken for what it seems to be, and suspicion and surveillance are unspoken, eternal presences.
It is, of course, a complicated story, of agents and double agents and moles and plots, all unfolding against the imminent collapse of the Wall and the inevitable changes in the world of spycraft in Berlin, which will no longer be a place where multiple nations intersect, and people and information move back and forth.
Quite engrossing, a spy story in the classic style, worthy of Len Deighton or John LeCarré.