Steed and Mrs. Peel #0
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Steve Bryant
What the fans need to know: Steed and Mrs. Peel #0 is a fantastically written, drawn, action-packed, and charming comic, all while respecting the original source material it came from! Fans, grab this book.
For those of you who don’t know what Steed and Mrs. Peel is, and didn’t check out the classic comic reprints Boom! did a few months back, it is based off the cult British TV series The Avengers. Here specifically from the episodes that ran from 1965-1968, starring Diana Rigg as Emma Peel and Patrick Macnee as John Steed (this series of episodes is arguably the most popular of the bunch in both the U.K. and U.S.A.).
Issue #0 gives us a great little tale that actually ties right into the TV episode “A Touch of Brimstone,” in which our heroes battled the occult Hell Fire Club, and Mrs. Peel wore a very,*ahem*, memorable outfit. In this issue, set a few years later, it seems the club is active once again, and has taken to bumping off spies for information while aging them to be old. This time the club has fashioned itself as one of “the future” in the far away time of “the year 2000.” Of course, Steed and Peel get down to solving the mystery, with plenty of action and a few laughs.
To kick off this new ongoing, Waid has done an excellent job with the writing, finding both a nice pace and sense of nostalgia, all while giving us a brand new story. On the art side, Bryant does good work here, though often at times feeling like he is trying too hard for these characters to look like their TV counterparts. That aside, he does nice design work visually, both in the panels and the layouts. The biggest thing this title has going is the feeling that it’s a part of the TV series, giving us a lost episode we never got to see.
Steed and Mrs. Peel #0 is available now in both print and digital.
Rating: 4.5/5
Drew McCabe
drew@comicattack.net
