In the Comics, the Atomic Blonde Favors Brains Over Butt-kicking (and She’s Not Even Blonde)

We tend to associate the great spy thrillers with the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis—the desperately chic but chaotic ’60s, when a world on the brink of modernity seemed very close to throwing it all away. It’s a great backdrop for spy drama, but Johnston and Hart’s graphic novel moves into territory that’s a bit fresher, even if the Cold War was by then growing stale: Germany, in the closing months of 1989. In a relatively short period of time, the fall of the Berlin Wall has gone from an impossibility to an unlikely dream to a near-inevitability. As the protests build, there’s chaos on the ground, but also in the multi-textured, multi-national world of intelligence in Berlin. Some look at the end of an era wistfully, others are making preparations for the new world to come. Some just want to get on with business as usual. Spies gonna spy, but the war’s gradual thawing has created an added layer of chaos as the old rules begin to dissolve too.
The story is appropriately full of twists and revelations, so it’s hard to discuss the plot without giving too much away, but we can tell you Broughton is sent to Germany by the British government in order to recover an all-important list of assets in Berlin, most recently in the possession of an MI6 agent, now dead, in questionable circumstances. The list is more than just British assets, mind you; it includes the identities of espionage agents from each of the four-plus countries operating in the city. Broughton is called in for her experience, but also because, unlike virtually every other available British agent, she’s unknown in Berlin. She’s quickly challenged by touchy long-time Berlin station chief David Percival: he’s used to running the show in Berlin, and he’s not accustomed to having to work with an independent outsider—and a woman, no less, one who won’t be having any of his nonsense. There are assassinations and defections alongside the growing unrest, all boiling over on the night the wall falls. Like any good espionage story, real or fictional, the single mystery that kicks off the action quickly becomes a whole host of them, and it’s always anyone’s guess who the real baddies are.

That Berlin section chief, David Percival—or BER-1 as he’s called in spy parlance—is the subject of the second “Coldest” work, The Coldest Winter, again written by Antony Johnston but illustrated by Steven Perkins. His presence in the story isn’t a spoiler: this is a prequel, set in the early ’80s and showing the rise of an agent with a somewhat middling reputation to the head of British espionage in Berlin. It’s just as propulsive as the first volume, with just a bit more action: after a string of high-profile failures, Percival is soon to be booted from Berlin in favor of a less weighty assignment. He’s given one last task: oversee the moderately simple defection of a Soviet scientist who has been, rather handily, allowed to attend a symposium in West Berlin.
It should be an easy coup for the ambitious young agent, but these things never go to plan. The grab is set to happen on one of the coldest nights of one of the coldest winters on record…that’s a potent metaphor, but it also means the buses, planes, and trains are all out of commission, and there’s no way to get the scientist out of the city. It also means the inevitable car chase between Percival and the Soviets takes place in the snow. Where the first book is full of icy deliberation, this one takes place at a time when the Cold War was still hot.
Atomic Blonde, the movie, is based on the first of this pair (in the most recent edition, The Coldest City has been renamed for the film; don’t be confused). There are some differences between book and movie, to say the least. Though the stories are similar, the tones vary wildly. You could say it reads less like our traditional notions of a comic book. If John Wick is an analogue for the movie version, the spy thrillers of John le Carré are the most apt points of comparison for the graphic novel. The movie is a bit more Ian Fleming, the book a bit more Len Deighton. Lorraine Broughton is fearless in either case, but in Johnston and Hart’s work she tends more toward realism: there’s no black leather lady-spy drag nor shocking blonde hair. She’s every inch the working spy.
In appearance, she’d probably be described as “plain,” with features that are both sharp and cold, but not too sharp or cold—her every feature is designed to blend in with a crowd. (She’s not even blonde.) It’s the same with the male characters, by the way: there’s no one that you would give a second look to on the street. The book’s Lorraine not an action hero, but instead an extraordinarily competent civil servant in just a bit over her head (or so it seems). Charlize Theron is one of our most compelling modern action stars, full stop, no less so for being a woman. Her Lorraine Broughton is a far more physical presence than the book’s more cerebral and practical version of the character, but she’s no less effective. She’s also got some secrets of her own, as does every other character. You’d expect no less from a great modern spy novel.
The Coldest City (aka Atomic Blonde) and The Coldest Winter are available now.