Review:
Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers

When we were given this assignment about two new graphic novels to review, I immediately chose this book by Matt Kindt—Super Spy: The Lost Dossiers. Why? Because first and foremost I am an espionage novel fan—deep down to the core of my bones. I grew up reading John Le Carre, and trying to understand the intricacies that he created in his stories and characters, and how espionage for Le Carre is so very different from the “spy image” portrayed by James Bond. His novel, in particular “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is quite hard to understand (I was in my teens during the time I got my hand on the book) even after reading it twice. Maybe it is because of my inexperienced critical thinking at the time. Another book from Le Carre, “The Russia House”, gave the same experience as well for me. Nevertheless, the point is, the world of espionage as portrayed in novels before is not all wham-bang and running and driving fast cars and having the coolest gadgets—it is manipulation and counter-manipulation, and intelligence, and cover and concealment, and intrigues, and critical and intense analytical thinking. Disguises and dead-drops and double-meanings and triple-meanings and hidden messages rolled into one. Although my next favorite author, Robert Ludlum, on his part, presented a different—“modern” if I may say—espionage characters and plots, at least the underlying plot is not just pure action, but a world of intrigue and complex intelligence that would definitely stir your imagination.

And that is not what I can say about Matt Kindt’s new book, The Lost Dossier—but from what I can picture out from the said book, in reference to his first book, Super Spy. You see, my problem is, I wasn’t able to read Super Spy. And this new book, The Lost Dossier, is like the “Bonus Track” at the end of a DVD—somehow a view from the “Director’s chair”. So from what I just said, I was able to get a picture of what the first book is all about based from reading this new material from Matt. For those of you who have read Super Spy, the new Lost Dossier won’t appear to be a sequel or a “complete guide”. It isn’t even an “essentials to Book 1”. But in here, Matt takes us in a ride to have a glimpse of how he crafts his materials, where his ideas come from, how he plans the frames/sketches, and even funny enough, some pages from his diary.