Anthony Johnston wrote The Coldest City, which is what the movie Atomic Blonde was based on, which was enough to catch my attention. This isn't Johnston and Chankhamma's first mini-series starring the Russian heiress secret agent called Baboushka (real name Annika Malikova), but you can follow the story in this volume easily enough without having read The Conclave of Death.
It's a familiar sort of spy thriller. Someone is hunting down legendary "Ghost Stations" that the Soviets had scattered throughout the world, and destroying them. Baboushka is tasked by the CIA to figure out who is behind it, and what they're looking for. There are obligatory casino scenes, death-defying escapes from disasters both manmade and natural (my other option for the image was her trying to escape an avalanche on a snowmobile). The mastermind who has big plans that will, of course, endanger countless lives of other people. A trained killer that pursues our hero doggedly, with a fairly distinctive look by the end. That's her up there. She's got the eyepatch when Baboushka shot her in the face with a nail gun.
Huh, Danny Glover killed a guy that way in Lethal Weapon 2. She must not have done it right.
But Johnston and Chankhamma use the standards of the genre pretty well. Annika's internal narration guides the story, and Johnston allows her to get frustrated with herself or annoyed with others where it's convenient, even as Chankhamma mostly lets the character maintain her cool exterior. It drops when it's a good time for it. Her coloring gets sharper over the course of the series. What I mean is, in the early issues, the colors seem to shade and blend together. In the casino, the coloring reminds me of the sort of gauzy filters they would use for actresses in old movies (smearing Vaseline on the lens or whatever). That falls away as the chase really begins and bullets start flying. As a result the linework is starker and better defined, making characters appear harder-edged, as Annika drops the Russian countess role and goes full butt-kicking secret agent.
The end of the collection teases there would be another adventure, titled "The Malikov Gambit", but it hasn't come out yet as far as I can tell.
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