Super Spy

by Matt Kindt

Overview

Super Spy is 52 interwoven short stories about cyanide, pen-guns, heartbreak and betrayal. Each story follows the life of a spy during World War II. Spanning the globe from Spain to France and Germany, this book takes the reader on a tour of the everyday life of the spy. From the small lies and deceptions to the larger secrets that everyone hides, Super Spy reveals the nature of espionage and how an individual can be lost and also find redemption. A children's book is something more than it seems... a woman swims the English Channel to deliver a deadly secret... a German spy desperately seeks escape for herself and her daughter... and a spy continues to serve his country even beyond death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781891830969
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	09/11/2007
Series:	Super Spy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.88(w) x 8.31(h) x 0.86(d)
Age Range:	13 - 16 Years

About the Author

Matt Kindt is the Harvey Award–winning writer and artist of the comics and graphic novels MIND MGMT, Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E., Revolver, 3 Story, Super Spy, 2 Sisters, and Pistolwhip. He has been nominated for four Eisner Awards and three Harvey Awards (and won once). His work has been published in French, Spanish, Italian, and German. The author lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 10 Up -Dark sitting rooms, bleak urban settings, cobblestone streets, and train rides through a desolate countryside are the illustrative details that Kindt winningly uses to accentuate these 37 noirlike World War II spy stories. Resigned loneliness, unrequited love, self-sacrifice, flashbacks to childhood memories, and loss and betrayal humanize the otherwise ruthless agents as they murder, double-cross, and sabotage their way across Europe while carrying out their missions in the name of patriotic duty. Kindt uses ink washes in grays and sepia tones and solid black shadowing to emphasize the dark, moody circumstances and ever-lurking dangers. The stained and yellowed pages are an effective design element, adding to a pulpy, newsprint effect. Kindt's choice of a nonlinear chapter format may confuse some teens as it muddles the story line, leaving readers to wonder if the stories are actually chapters of a novel or meant to stand alone. Adding to the confusion is his sketchbooklike drawing style; with their simple facial features, the characters tend to resemble one another. Yet those with a penchant for hard-boiled Chandler-esque superspies, tough femme fatales, double agents and double-crossers, secret codes, and messages hidden in body cavities, combined with clever graphic elements and product design, will enjoy this worthy effort.-Jodi Mitchell, Berkeley Public Library, CA

Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

12/01/2022

Kindt (Apache Delivery Service) explores the lives of spies in Europe during World War II in this wildly ambitious short-story collection. Thrilling action and suspense abound in tales like "Chanel," which details a woman's attempt to smuggle top-secret documents into England by swimming there from mainland Europe, and the titular "Super Spy," starring a swashbuckling secret agent using a range of fantastic gadgets to infiltrate an enemy stronghold. The most affecting material here, however—like "Henry," in which an English secret agent posing as a German bureaucrat falls for a woman claiming to be an American intelligence operative, and "Cairo Nights," about a cryptographer smitten with a femme fatale—is less reminiscent of Mission: Impossible than of John le Carré's or Alan Furst's depictions of complicated men and women straining to maintain romantic attachments, or to experience anything even close to meaningful connection with another living soul, while embroiled in international espionage with the fate of the free world at stake. VERDICT A tightly plotted, high-stakes masterwork about the terrible cost of life in the shadows.

Library Journal