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Monday 24 April 2017

James Bond: Hammerhead Review (Andy Diggle, Luca Casalanguida)


Spinning off from Warren Ellis’ James Bond series, creators Andy Diggle and Luca Casalanguida take 007 on a new adventure in Hammerhead. A villain called Kraken is targeting Britain’s nuclear arsenal with plans to wipe out London - here comes Bond to save the day! Bah da bah baah, bah da daah! 

This was great! Diggle ticks all the Bond boxes with effortless style and panache: dramatically-named villain and evil organisation, exotic locations, lots of violence involving guns and death, dry martinis, sexy times with a bombshell, sharks, and a flashy car with gadgets. It’s also a very entertaining action thriller that’s fast-paced and exciting to read. Newcomer Luca Casalanguida’s art is excellent too - I’m sure he’ll get more gigs off the back of his impressive work in this book. 

The only flaw for me was Kraken’s endgame to blow up London. I just don’t get how that’s good for their business or makes Britain “great again” (an obvious slight against Trumpy). Targeting London with a nuke and using Hammerhead, a giant railgun, to blow up the nuke before it hits, yes, but the plan was to just nuke London and then they’d make loads of money…? Sorry, that’s just dumb. Everything else worked for me but Diggle couldn’t stick the villain’s motivation.

Otherwise, James Bond: Hammerhead is a stonking good comic that fans of Bond or great action comics in general will definitely enjoy. It’s also good to know that with Warren Ellis now off Bond, there’s at least one writer like Andy Diggle around to keep up the new quality line of Bond comics.

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