Spy Superb #2: “Make a Plan and Plan to Ignore It…”

Spy Superb #2 pick up after Jay accidentally killed a group of spies who were after him. This leads the Russian and Chinese governments to send out their most deadly assassins to kill Jay, who they have misconceived as the actual spy superb. Jay fumbles around through his narcissistic mindset which leads him to believe that he needs to find the person who owns the phone so he can save them. The original owner of the phone actually turns out to be the Chinese assassin who struggles to get to Jay due to his ridiculous mindset and delusions of grandeur causing him to act in an unpredictable manner. She eventually finds him and quickly realizes that he’s not actually a spy and has no real talent. The issue ends with the Russian assassin confronting Jay and the Chinese assassin in Jay’s hotel room.

The way that Matt Kindt writes Jay is just perfect. Kindt has managed to perfectly capture the personality of the most hilariously unlikeable person imaginable. One of my favorite lines he gives Jay is, “Make a plan and plan to ignore it, or save time and don’t plan at all.” Jay is constantly coming up with these phrases that he thinks are super philosophical but ultimately either hold no meaning or are counterintuitive in nature. In just two issues Kindt has made Jay feel like someone that I can imagine running into one day at work. This dim witted optimism makes the character super unlikeable but also hard to turn away from since he is so hilariously idiotic. His instance on his own self importance pushes the narrative forward in a way that seems to be unheard of in just two issues.

Another aspect of this issue that hits home is how relatable some of the situations can be. In one instance Jay is urgently trying to call a ride share and has a tiny melt down when he has to go through the whole process of resetting the password that he forgot. I have definitely been in that position a ton of times where I urgently need to access something and am forced to spend five to ten minutes going through what seems like dozens of prompts in order to just reset the password that I forgot or my phone saved incorrectly. Parts of the issue like this help ground this comedic romp into reality and helps remind us that these comic characters are as fallible as we are 

The constant thread that pushes the narrative forward is Jay’s nature to accidentally be unpredictable which throws off his would-be assassins. At one point Jay thinks that it’s “too” obvious to take the first taxi he sees, so he decides to wait for the second but then decides that waiting for the second may also be too obvious of a moves which just spirals into him missing three or four more taxis until the guy behind him finally says something. These moments of clever writing show why Kindt is writing this book, since many writers don’t look at the world the same way. At the end of the day, this is just intelligent, situational comedy that made me think, oh why didn’t I come up with that?