The Secret Service: Kingsman - review

Click for source

by Gemma Williams

This year, a film was released that quickly became one of my favourites. After leaving the cinema, I couldn’t stop smiling and talking about the spectacle I had just seen. I loved it so much that I just had to get the source material and read where the film had originated from. It was based on the comic, The Secret Service: Kingsman.

---

Click for source

Gary is just a normal young man who is feeling lost and hopeless. His home life is a disaster and he seems to be good for nothing more than causing trouble and being arrested by the police. Fortunately he has an uncle who can bail him out of trouble. Naturally, his uncle is fed up with having to do this and so finally offers to get him into employment – as a spy, so to speak. Meanwhile, celebrities are disappearing around the world.

The story is fast paced and drawn clearly. It’s obvious what’s going on from panel to panel, who is there and where they are. A problem I sometimes find with manga is that the panels can be too busy and confusing, so it was a nice change to be able to understand everything and see clearly what was happening. It helped with the story telling and kept it flowing neatly.

The artwork was pretty ugly at times and the characters seemed to have the same faces and features overall. It was hard to know sometimes if it was Gary or Jack in a scene, and some of the women would have really masculine faces, yet have the stereotypical large chests and be scantily dressed. Not all tropes need to be followed within every genre. 

---

Click for source

Kingsman is full of testosterone and sexist views. Women are there as sex objects while the males are out saving the world. There was one female agent at Gary’s level that we see and she doesn’t speak a word. But, credit where it’s due – there’s an example of domestic violence and the effect it has on the woman and why she may not necessarily leave the relationship, bringing to light an important issue. There’s also the wedding massacre where somehow, a woman is the survivor. We’re living in the 21st century, can we not also have equality within these story lines too and move away from the Bond spy era? One thing this does combat is the view that ‘working class’ people are bad people or that they are stuck there. Instead it shows that, with that with the right opportunities, it’s possible to work your way up.

The comic was enjoyable and I sped through it. I even forced myself to slow down, so that it wouldn’t be over too quickly. Once it finished, I was disappointed as I wanted more. It was full of twists and turns and the motivation behind the enemy’s actions will make a lot of people laugh. It could be because I’m biased after watching the film first, but though I enjoyed the comic, I think the film beats it tenfold.

---