Yumi: 00EX #1
Writer: Doug Wagner
Artist: Hoyt Silva
Colorist: Kevin Lennertz
Cover Artist: Nicoletta Baldari
Publisher: Image Comics
I've read a lot of deep, thoughtful, heavy comics this week. Books that made me think, made me feel. Books with deeper meaning.
And then there's Yumi: 00EX.
This book is bright, colorful, loud. It's chaotic, with a madcap pace, kinetic action, and pop culture references galore.
It's a total blast.
The Spy Who Loved Me
This book is crazy. Right from the start, we have Yumi invading MI-6 headquarters to find information on her 00 Agent would-be beau’s whereabouts. She’s on the phone with her father, broadcasting Billie Eilish over the building’s speaker system, and utterly demolishing the security staff. Oh, and one of the guards is named Connery. So yeah, it’s like that.
As she tears through the facility, the music continues to play, and she continues the conversation with Papa. Oh, and she finds time to make Instagram posts of her antics. She’s really good at multitasking, it turns out.
Confronting the head of MI-6, a man named Montague, she doesn’t get the information she’s seeking. But she does hack their database, so maybe she’ll find it there. On her way out, she stops by Quinlan’s lab to check out all the cool tech. She ends up leaving with some new toys, most notably a super-customized AI-powered Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 Roadster named Jules.
In the aftermath of her raid, Yumi has a clue where Richard might be—and a price on her head…
Live and Let Die
Yumi: 00EX asks the question “What if one of James Bond’s female conquests became convinced they were in love and would do anything to find him?” Since this particular woman is an Instagram girlie who’s also a trained spy/assassin herself, the answer is “there’d be a whole lot of death and destruction in her wake.”
This book is chock full of James Bond references, which is to be expected when your lead is obsessed with a 00 Agent. Security guards named Connery, references to being trained to fight using “a tall guy with titanium teeth” and “some old fat dude with a laser-brimmed bowler hat.” Laser pens, supercars, and wearable jewelry like a ring or a watch the 00 Agent in question constantly loses. As a James Bond fan, I loved catching all of these.
I also have to mention the very casual reveal of the mysterious Richard’s last name late in the issue. It’s Head. Now take the common nickname for someone named Richard, and I think that tells us all we need to know about his character.
Yumi is so obsessed with Richard that when she tells someone about how they met and “fell in love,” the art shifts to a full-on manga style with comedic portions and overly exaggerated expressions. But to literally everyone else that mentions Richard, he is portrayed as what his full name suggests—a total dick. So is Yumi seeing everything through lovestruck glasses, or is everyone else wrong about the “real” Richard?
The book also fires off a ton of pop-culture references. So many, in fact, that I don’t think I got all of them. It’s the kind of thing that is mostly funny, but can also get a little annoying. And it’s definitely going to date the book faster than if they weren’t there. That said, I loved the use of the Captain Picard “Make it so” meme during Yumi’s raid on MI-6. And when she’s trying to change the “snooty British butler voice on her new car, she cycles through options like Ahnold and Sam Jackson before finally settling on… Cardi B? Yeah, I don’t get that one.
License to Kill
Writer Doug Wagner packs this issue so full of rapid-fire jokes and references that I wondered if he had a scorecard to keep track of them all. Yumi is a likable lead who has plenty of agency of her own and isn’t just a lovestruck girl. There are plenty of hints as to the larger world that she’s part of, and her unseen Papa is clearly the head of some kind of organization. Japanese spies? Yakuza? It’s hard to say. Whatever they are, thanks to Yumi’s actions at MI-6, I don’t think they’re very popular with the rest of the spy world right now.
The art by Hoyt Silva works incredibly well for this kind of style. Everything has a very stylized design, with characters having distinctive looks. The action is very well choreographed and bloody without being overly gory. Everything is very kinetic, even the quieter moments (of which there aren’t many). And the manga-style sequences where Yumi tells the “story” of her and Richard’s courtship are hilarious, perfectly capturing the over-the-top dimensions and expressions of the genre. The end of the issue promises a one-on-one “fatal fatale match” next time, and I’m excited to see what Silva can do with that.
Colorist Kevin Lennertz brings a variety of palettes and styles to this issue. For the main raid sequence, everything is a little darker, which helps the blood and explosions stand out. The manga sequences are much brighter and have a pink filter over them, giving them a totally different tone than the rest of the issue. The closing scenes set outdoors in Paris have a brighter palette used, while still feeling similar enough to the darker raid bits that they don’t stand out as completely different.
For Your Eyes Only
Is Yumi: 00EX #1 for everyone? Heck no. But I had a blast with it. It’s super fast-paced, with well-choreographed violence and destruction. More of the jokes and references hit than miss. And the slight mystery of whether there’s really something between Yumi and Richard is just engaging enough to keep me invested in the story between the fights and the references.