Super Spy

by Matt Kindt

Book 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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1891830961
• ISBN13: 9781891830969
• Release Date: September 2007
• Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 13 to 16 years
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 11

Customer Reviews

One of the best graphic novels I have ever read

Super Spy is easily one of the very best graphic novels I have ever read. The author skillfully interweaves several stories of everyday lives of WWII spies into a completely engrossing nonlinear narrative that will still captivate the reader after several revisits. After finishing this book, I was left wondering why it has not been made into a movie yet (perhaps by Quentin Tarantino)? It would be perfect! Super Spy is money very well spent. I am now looking for the author's other titles. Terrific job!

Interwoven and fresh!

He's a fantastic story teller. Truly speaks from the heart and provides you with a story of loss, connections, and love. Truly powerful.

Great comic that will have you rereading it a few times

I loved this comic. The spy slant of the book is neat but the book is really about the relationships of the characters in the book and how they interact with one another. You can read this comic on a few different levels. One is just to turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. It works okay as "popcorn fiction" but if I did just that, the book would have gotten more of a 3-4 star rating. I think it really shines when you take the time to read it (in fact, I think the book almost demands to be reread). The book is arranged in a nonlinear format - meaning that the events as they appear in the book are not arranged in chronological order (he gives you guides for each chapter so if you wanted to read it in a more linear manner you can). A lot of the stories are connected to one another and the nonlinear format had me flipping back and forth between different chapters and rereading a lot of parts. It also has some connections to past works (2 sisters) but you don't need to read anything else to get the stories in this book. To be honest, the art style didn't appeal to me that much at first but after the first chapter, it didn't even bother me. The book is a good example of what makes telling a story in comic form so unique As I was rereading the book, not only was I picking up elements of the storyline I might have missed ("Oh, that character was in this scene and doing that") but I was also noticing design elements of the book that I didn't notice before. For example, there's a chapter that starts off with a photograph of a briefcase with numbers tagged to each item. It was only after I reread the book and started to think why that photograph was there did I notice that each page of the chapter has a different item in the briefcase from the beginning. Very well thought out - from the way the book uses different colors for different reasons in each of the chapters to the panel designs, you can get a lot out of this book if you take the time. Neat design feature that I didn't get until it was pointed out to me - in the paperback version, if you take the front cover and just take that page and hold it up to the light, you'll see elements of what's on the other side shine through creating a nice effect. All in all, a great comic. The more time you put into it, the more fulfilling the read becomes.

Easily the best graphic novel of 2007

I can't say enough about Super Spy. While espionage stories are fairly common, Kindt provides a passion, a realism, and a sympathetic eye that are all rare in the genre. Espionage is far from the glamorous work portrayed in movies, and Kindt masterfully reflects this in his work. When you're finished reading this book, you'll marvel at its intricacy, yet pity the characters and their thankless line of work. This is the emotion, I believe, that Kindt is trying to pull out of the reader, and he does it perfectly. If you are fan of indie graphic novels and have yet to read Super Spy, you are definitely missing out.