You missed an iteration! We also need to think about Bourne and/or anti-Bourne vs. the figure of the anti-Bond. After all, anti-Bond/Stark characters have got to be some of our worst actors in the global scene. Maybe they are shitty billionaires like Musk or old money inbreds like the Trump sons or something like Saudi princes. Or more under the radar, there are probably a bajillion suave Oxford men who use privilege and oldboy networks to push terrible corporate exploitation around the world.
Who is the network spy taking on the old money privilege villain? Maybe Mr. Robot? Maybe the hacker kids in Bacigalupi's The Doubt Factory? In a way, it's not hard to imagine Bourne using his skills to do some good in the world, rather than just seek revenge/truth/revelation/whatever. Actually, he kind of did that in whatever the last Bourne movie was, right? Stopping a nefarious partnership between Google and the NSA? But like, what if instead of being chased all the time, after losing his memory Bourne had just sort of built a life and slowly recognized that he had all these latent spy skills he could use to help his community? Suddenly he's the Taken father, out of the game, but with a very specific set of skills if he finds a cause he cares about.
I'm just riffing here. But it's interesting that Bourne mostly takes on people who are as globalized as he is. What does it look like when he's using the city as a battle suit to lay siege to the fortresses of pre-global power?
have you read Ellis's Global Frequency comics series? very much this, though the spook creates network to clean up the mess left in the world by all the secret things
and Bond becoming the woke, spook going after the destroyers of the world as the end result Quantum of Solace is absolutely my jam.
it kills me that they dropped that arc, though SPECTRE almost ends like that (but its more like, fuck it, i'm out - drives off into the sunset.)
him dropping the gun (as i recall it) is very much in line with the 2nd volume of the Invisibles
(there's a panel where he's like, NO MORE JAMES BOND BULLSHIT, but I can't find a snapshot, and i'll end up re-reading this again if i go looking any further)
bruce lee never used a gun.jpg
you've seen The East, yeah?
woke spies are very much a part of this novella i'm developing
and any further references/influences are appreciated
you're absolutely correct. the Bond/Bourne thing was just where my thinking was at back then
Yeah Global Frequency was a fave of mine. Kind of always been sad it didn't continue—such a good anthology format—long enough to develop its own larger mythos. I feel like 100 Bullets maybe did that, though my knowledge of the later trades is sketchy. I guess the thing about GF is, they *have* the network, but Bourne is *in* the network. What's fun about Bourne is that he's a low resourced spy hero. He doesn't have financial backers or a support team, and goes going up against these infinitely resourced state operations. But he wins by making them play his game on an asymmetrical terrain. That's the kind of hero I'd like to see take on Bond and anti-Bond types more often. Honestly maybe the best example (other than Mr. Robot) might be Killmonger from Black Panther.
You missed an iteration! We also need to think about Bourne and/or anti-Bourne vs. the figure of the anti-Bond. After all, anti-Bond/Stark characters have got to be some of our worst actors in the global scene. Maybe they are shitty billionaires like Musk or old money inbreds like the Trump sons or something like Saudi princes. Or more under the radar, there are probably a bajillion suave Oxford men who use privilege and oldboy networks to push terrible corporate exploitation around the world.
Who is the network spy taking on the old money privilege villain? Maybe Mr. Robot? Maybe the hacker kids in Bacigalupi's The Doubt Factory? In a way, it's not hard to imagine Bourne using his skills to do some good in the world, rather than just seek revenge/truth/revelation/whatever. Actually, he kind of did that in whatever the last Bourne movie was, right? Stopping a nefarious partnership between Google and the NSA? But like, what if instead of being chased all the time, after losing his memory Bourne had just sort of built a life and slowly recognized that he had all these latent spy skills he could use to help his community? Suddenly he's the Taken father, out of the game, but with a very specific set of skills if he finds a cause he cares about.
I'm just riffing here. But it's interesting that Bourne mostly takes on people who are as globalized as he is. What does it look like when he's using the city as a battle suit to lay siege to the fortresses of pre-global power?
MKY:
have you read Ellis's Global Frequency comics series? very much this, though the spook creates network to clean up the mess left in the world by all the secret things
and Bond becoming the woke, spook going after the destroyers of the world as the end result Quantum of Solace is absolutely my jam.
it kills me that they dropped that arc, though SPECTRE almost ends like that (but its more like, fuck it, i'm out - drives off into the sunset.)
him dropping the gun (as i recall it) is very much in line with the 2nd volume of the Invisibles
(there's a panel where he's like, NO MORE JAMES BOND BULLSHIT, but I can't find a snapshot, and i'll end up re-reading this again if i go looking any further)
bruce lee never used a gun.jpg
you've seen The East, yeah?
woke spies are very much a part of this novella i'm developing
and any further references/influences are appreciated
you're absolutely correct. the Bond/Bourne thing was just where my thinking was at back then
Yeah Global Frequency was a fave of mine. Kind of always been sad it didn't continue—such a good anthology format—long enough to develop its own larger mythos. I feel like 100 Bullets maybe did that, though my knowledge of the later trades is sketchy. I guess the thing about GF is, they *have* the network, but Bourne is *in* the network. What's fun about Bourne is that he's a low resourced spy hero. He doesn't have financial backers or a support team, and goes going up against these infinitely resourced state operations. But he wins by making them play his game on an asymmetrical terrain. That's the kind of hero I'd like to see take on Bond and anti-Bond types more often. Honestly maybe the best example (other than Mr. Robot) might be Killmonger from Black Panther.