Jennifer Kajiwara is starting college with a plan. Well, two plans, really. And neither of them is actually hers. Jennifer’s father wants her to study all things economics, the better to run the family business one day. Her mother wants her to catch a man who will run the family business for her. Jennifer, a brilliant student as well as an Olympic-level athlete, has always wanted to make her parents proud, so she works hard. She doesn’t know she’s attracted the attention of a top-secret government organization, the Agency – and they have yet another plan for Jennifer.
The Agency wants Jennifer to train in their secret facility with a class of young would-be agents. Most won’t complete the program –standards are set high by the agent known as Master Control, who is in charge of training. If Jennifer accepts, this will be a massive time commitment as well as potentially dangerous. On the other hand, the Agency will pay for her college education, regardless of what classes she takes. This is a tempting offer, given that Daddy Dearest will only foot the bill if she drops her beloved science classes to focus on business and economics. But if Jennifer starts training with the Agency and keeps taking science courses, her family will find out sooner or later . . .
Indeed, when Jennifer’s father discovers that she’s still taking science – and dropped econ – he is furious. And when Jennifer skips going home for break to attend a mandatory Agency training session (which she can’t really explain to her family – see “top secret”), he tells her not to bother coming home again. Jennifer then devotes herself wholly to the Agency, where she has found not just purpose but people to care about. Master Control takes a fatherly interest in her, while fellow trainee L (trainees’ identities are classified, each one referred to only by the first letter of her or his last name) becomes her sweetheart. They even exchange real names – something out of character for by-the-book Jennifer – and when she and Dan “L” Lincoln are the only two members of their class to become full agents, they grow closer still.
Then comes their first mission. Jennifer and Dan are assigned to work under Master Control, infiltrating a government lab in the small country of Bruckenstein, which recently stole important genetics research from the US. (Said research is, in fact, Jennifer’s high school science project, now threatening to empower a rogue nation.) Along with their associate Agent D, Jennifer, Dan, and Master Control move in. But something’s wrong. There’s a traitor in their midst who could doom the mission – maybe more than one traitor.
Complete in two volumes, Amazing Agent Jennifer provides backstory for the agent known as Control in the ongoing series Amazing Agent Luna. Written as a prequel, Amazing Agent Jennifer does contain some spoilers for Luna, especially if you read the notes at the end of volume two of Jennifer. These two volumes provide interesting background for some of the events in Luna, like details of the reasons for Jennifer/Control’s strained relationship with her parents. They also include character profiles and author’s notes.
The art is sleek and clean, well-represented by the covers of the volumes. This series has a different artist than Amazing Agent Luna, and the style is more serious, with fewer humorous moments. Characters who appear in both series, such as Jennifer/Control and Count von Brucken, seem more elegant and dangerous in Amazing Agent Jennifer. This could equally be said of the two series’ respective plots. The threats in Jennifer are more threatening and the losses much sharper. (I say that without having yet read all of Luna, but with a pretty good grasp of the tone of that series.)
The dialogue is authentic, with each character having a clear personality. Action-packed and with striking emotional moments (but no gory violence and no sexual content beyond a kiss and some cleavagetastic outfits), Amazing Agent Jennifer will appeal to those who enjoy secret agent stories and value a powerful heroine more than a conventional happy ending.
Amazing Agent Jennifer, vol. 1-2
by Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir
Art by Kriss Sison
Volume 1 ISBN: 9781934876855
Volume 2 ISBN: 9781935934097
Seven Seas Entertainment, 2011-2012
Publisher Age Rating: All Ages
