The Golden Circle isn’t the only Kingsman sequel out this year. Image has announced that it will publish the followup to Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’s 2012 spyfi series. Although it’s a new creative team and a new adventure, it will still focus on Eggsy’s struggle to reconcile his place in the class-dominated world of superspydom.
Fully revealed through Entertainment Weekly today after Millar himself teased the project back in April, Kingsman: The Red Diamond will be a six-part series from writer Rob Williams and artist Simon Fraser. Completely separate from The Golden Circle and a continuation of Millar and Gibbon’s story in the original Kingsman (also being republished with its movie adaptation subtitle ahead of Red Diamond), the miniseries will see protagonist Eggsy struggle to find his place in the world after the events of the original comic, torn between his high-rolling life as a debonair superspy and his upbringing as council estate-bound working class Londoner.
Like any sequel, the challenge is that the character just finished going on a journey and became a hero by the end. When we meet Eggsy here, everything seems great. He’s the debonair secret agent, he’s dating a beautiful woman, he’s got an amazing car, it seems like he’s got it made. The journey for him is learning that you can’t leave your past behind. He is still the same guy, every inch the child of council houses of Peckham where he grew up, as much as he is the debonair spy. That’s the stuff that’s fun in terms of the class divide stuff and his journey. In terms of the actual plotline, there is obviously a megalomaniacal villain. He’s got a fantastic base, which may or may not be right at the bottom of the ocean. He also has a henchman with a hunchback, so he’s a “hunchman.” It’s a case of Eggsy not just having to save the day and save the world, he’s got to find out who he is, really. I think he’s adrift at the start of this story, and he has to find himself again.
Williams raises an interesting point about tackling the challenge of what to do with a character who, story-wise, pretty much already completed his heroic arc already. But honestly, we’re just happy to be getting a double dose of Kingsman on the big screen and in comic books again this year.
Kingsman: The Red Diamond is set to begin September 6th.