In The Ministry of Compliance, IDW places a rather typical alien invasion story into a somewhat unusual narrative setting: a conspiracy-driven political thriller. The best word to describe the whole thing is “cinematic” – a blockbuster spy-thriller in comic book form. The art by Stefano Raffaele – with colors by Brad Andersen – is clean and detailed. Most pages are filled from top to bottom with wide-screen panels, adding to the cinematic quality.
This cinematic feeling also comes undoubtably from writer, John Ridley – who is best known for his Oscar-winning work on 12 Years a Slave. In comics, he wrote the critically acclaimed The Other History of the DC Universe. For this reason, I was expecting a story with more racial commentary. But, other than main character, Avigail Senna, being a Black woman, I didn’t find anything in that direction.
In fact, I found a lot less social commentary than expected. To summarize the premise: 39 years ago, aliens started placing themselves into all areas of human society, secretly and slowly grooming the human race for final absorption into their empire. So, I thought I’d find metaphors of colonialism and racial oppression. But, the only real social commentary was the suggestion that the broken state we currently find ourselves in is the result of aliens trying to make us weak. And even that isn’t the focus of the book.
What we get instead is a very well-crafted political thriller. You see, just as the aliens are ready to completely take over Earth, internal corruption and mysterious political chaos spring up out of nowhere to ruin their plans.
We follow the alien Minister of Compliance, Avigail Senna, whose job it is to make sure all of the other alien “ministries” are dutifully doing their jobs. If they aren’t, Avigail and her team bring them back into “compliance” – usually by cutting their heads off. The action scenes reminded me a lot of Tarantino’s Kill Bill, but with Avigail taking Uma Thurman’s place, cutting off any number of body parts with her katana.
Oh, maybe I should mention, this would definitely be an R-rated movie for its violence and strong-language – more John Wick than Mission: Impossible. The sexual content stays at a PG-13 level, but, yeah, lots of gruesome violence.
It’s very interesting that the story is told from the perspective of the fascist alien invaders whose most important tenet is unwavering service to authority. The protagonist, Avigail, is basically the most devoted to this ideal of unquestioning duty. After all, she’s the one tasked with enforcing it. We have to question our own natural tendencies to cheer her on as she ruthlessly brings other corrupt aliens into “compliance.” Should we be routing for the fascist enforcer?
For what it is, The Ministry of Compliance #1 is really very good. But, in the end, it is much more a conspiracy-filled political/espionage thriller rather than a social commentary framed in an alien invasion story. At almost 50 pages, there is plenty of interesting plot-development and twists. Furthermore, the writing and art are good enough to keep me intrigued. Unfortunately, I’m just not sure that it’s really what I was hoping for when I originally heard about the premise.
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