The world of espionage has long been a staple in pop culture. A beloved genre with incarnations ranging from the campy, such as the Bond flick Thunderball, to the gritty, like The Bourne series. Image Comics makes a foray into the spy game with Where Is Jake Ellis? Starring ex-CIA agent Jon Moore as he tries to outrun the very people he used to work for. How does it hold up? Find out with your latest and greatest Major Spoilers review!
WHERE IS JAKE ELLIS?
Story: Nathan Edmondson
Art: Tonci Zonjic
Colors: Tonci Zonjic
Letters: Tonci Zonjic
Publisher: Image Comics
Cover Price: $3.50
Previously in Where Is Jake Ellis?: Before Where Is Jake Ellis? there was Who Is Jake Ellis? which I, admittedly, did not read. There is a re-cap at the beginning of this book though. The re-cap is a bit messy and disjointed, but what I got from it was that Jon Moore had the mind of Jake Ellis put into his and Ellis would help him complete his missions.
WHERE IS THE PLOT?
There is not really much story here, Jon Moore is on the run for something and some government agents are after him. He suddenly gets a voice in his head telling him what to do (a voice I can only assume is Jake Ellis) and then kind of avoids the people after him. The action is well plotted and the panel-to-panel actions really convey the sense of speed the chase scenes are going for. The dialogue was solid and snappy, though it begged some more characterization and fluff outside of what was necessary to drive the plot. Overall, there is not much depth to this book, or really any explanation for new comers like me, but it did leave me with a yearning to want to know more of just exactly what was going on.
NOT QUITE DOUBLE-O STATUS
The art is solid, but nothing special. There is nothing wrong with it, but really nothing that sticks out to me. I am sure someone else would enjoy the art much more than I, but as of right now I do not see myself remembering it a month down the line. I do like the use of primary colors to represent the “important” or “good” characters, while the general enemy goons all wear the same grays/blacks. Its a simple trick, one that has been done before, but its put to good use here.
BOTTOM LINE: FOR THE FANS
I’ll level with you, dear reader, if you are a fan of Who Is Jake Ellis? then definitely pick this up or at least give it a look, though at the $3.50 price tag I would just wait for the trade. If you are a new comer, then do not bother, you will leave the book confused and off put.
[rating: 2/5]DID YOU READ THIS ISSUE? RATE IT!
Reader Rating
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7 Comments
Wait, you’re saying people shouldn’t read this because if they haven’t read the first installment they’ll be confused??? Isn’t that the point of a sequel? To carry on from the first? That’s like saying “Season 2 of the X-Files is bad because you can’t follow it if you haven’t watched the first season.” I dug the book. This review is dumb. Why are you reviewing a sequel if you haven’t read the first installment?
Because Major Spoilers reviews individual issues of comic books. The way that this individual issue read affected the writer’s enjoyment of it, and that’s a valid concern. Simply because you don’t agree doesn’t make the review dumb…
EVERY issue is somebody’s first issue, and the way that first issue goes can have a large impact on how successful the series as a whole is for an individual reader.
Matthew hit it on the nose, but in addition to that there IS a re-cap at the beginning that does a bad job of informing the readers of what used to happen. Additionally, it makes no effort in telling the reader there was a previous installment, it was something I had to go look up on my own.
You mean you work for a site that reviews comics and you didn’t hear of a book that was nominated for an Eisner, a Harvey and an Eagle award?
Jake Ellis was in my top books of last year. The latest issue–it says issue “6”, plus “previously” with a recap in the first three pages, so how could you not know there was a first volume?–was great continuation from the last. I won’t trust any more reviews from this reviewer.
I have to agree with Jerry. Of course you are going to be confused if you haven’t read the first installment. The recap is there to give you a vague idea if what happened. They aren’t going to tell you every detail of what happened in the first one. They want you to buy it to inform yourself before trying a sequel. Which is what the reviewer should have done. Also, to say they made no effort to tell the reader there was a previous series is dumb. If you pick up a number 1 issue of a comic and it has a recap in it that’s a pretty big clue something happened before it and you might wanna check it out.
So someone shouldn’t read Spider-Man #680 if they haven’t read Amazing Fantasy #15? Interesting…
Look, if you don’t want to invest the time to read a fantastic series, then don’t. Since it’s just impossible for a site to task a reviewer to read 5 issues before commenting on the sixth one, we won’t argue about it. This is a limited series, they’ve said so. It’s not Spider-Man.
But if you don’t like it, don’t read it. No one cares about that. But what’s stupid is when you tell others not to read it simply because you couldn’t bother yourself with reading the first trade.
It’s also like saying “THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is terrible because you have to watch A NEW HOPE to understand it.”
WHO IS JAKE ELLIS? is great and I hope your readers take more time than you did to check it out.