{"id":822,"date":"2010-04-13T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/04\/13\/comic-book-report-checkmate-vol-1-a-kings-game\/"},"modified":"2010-04-13T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T15:30:00","slug":"comic-book-report-checkmate-vol-1-a-kings-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2010\/04\/13\/comic-book-report-checkmate-vol-1-a-kings-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Comic Book Report: Checkmate Vol. 1: A King&#8217;s Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_5B85svs4ENE\/S8NLzDSXNKI\/AAAAAAABAO4\/STmOobtjKds\/s1600\/e6e653a09da0e9bfbcb06110.L.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 208px; height: 320px;\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_5B85svs4ENE\/S8NLzDSXNKI\/AAAAAAABAO4\/STmOobtjKds\/s320\/e6e653a09da0e9bfbcb06110.L.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\"id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5459290513730909346\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was still in high school in 1988, when Action Comics #598 introduced Checkmate to the DC universe, and I remember being intrigued by the high-concept, high-tech James Bond riff.  Unfortunately, the execution didn&#8217;t quite live up to the promise&#8211;from what I remember, they were pretty run-of-the-mill espionage stories.<\/p>\n<p>But like most things in mainstream comics, the fictional organization never really went away, and in 2006, writer Greg Rucka helped restart a monthly <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Checkmate<\/span> title, one of the many repercussions of the <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Infinite Crisis\/OMAC Project\/52<\/span> continuity clusterfuck.  (Don&#8217;t get me started.)<\/p>\n<p>The good news is, this second-variety Checkmate behaves much more like I imagine a real espionage outfit would, dealing with at least as much info-war intrigue, intramural rivalry, and personal politics as pistols-blazing action.  Did I mention that I also devoured many John le Carr&eacute; novels in high school?<\/p>\n<p>Rucka portrays the Checkmate organization in very much the same way as SIS in his <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Queen_&amp;_Country\"><span style=\"font-style:italic;\">Queen &amp; Country<\/span><\/a> comics and novels (which itself was nearly a direct copy of <span style=\"font-style:italic;\">The Sandbaggers<\/span>).  And that is a very good thing.  The fact that this particular spy shop lives in a world populated by superheroes is almost secondary to the real drama.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">Buy the book:<\/span> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/34809\/biblio\/1401212204?p_isbn\">Powell&#8217;s<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ISBN=1401212204\/curtiscchensfree\">Amazon<\/a> (affiliate links)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"CKL\" title=\"CKL\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was still in high school in 1988, when Action Comics #598 introduced Checkmate to the DC universe, and I remember being intrigued by the high-concept, high-tech James Bond riff. Unfortunately, the execution didn&#8217;t quite live up to the promise&#8211;from&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[51,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-comics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}