Shaken Not Stirred: The James Bond Newspaper Strips

In 1957, five years before United Artists' Dr. No hit the screens, the London Daily Express approached writer Ian Fleming with offers to publish a serial strip based on his world famous secret agent, James Bond. Fleming was initially reluctant to accept the very generous offer due to concerns over the quality of the writing, not wanting to see his new creation cheapen in value while he was still planning more novels. Even though he had worked as a journalist for the Express, he desired to keep his secret agent, as secret as possible for the time being. Fleming wrote at the time: "The Express are desperately anxious to turn James Bond into a strip cartoon. I have grave doubts about the desirability of this... Unless the standard of these books is maintained they will lose their point and I think there I am in grave danger that inflation will spoil not only the readership but also become something of a death-watch beetle inside the author. A tendency to write still further down might result. The author would see this happening, and disgust with the operation might creep in."

With the assurances of Express editor, Edward Pickering, that it would be the "Rolls Royce" of strips, and that Fleming would have final approval over all the material, the author finally agreed to sell the rights. The first novel, Casino Royle, was published in July 1958, adapted by Express staff writer Anthony Hearne and illustrated by John McLusky. During the planning of the feature, Fleming commissioned his own artist's impression of James Bond as a guide to how he saw his hero. Having seen the portrait, McLusky found it too "outdated" and "prewar" and created Bond with a more aggressive masculine look. He based the character on a number of film actors such as Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, and others with a fine chiseled look. There is a difference of opinion as to who helped create the face of Bond. It's been said that McLusky's drawing of Bond may well have been responsible for Sean Connery being cast as 007. Even though Dr. No was filmed years after the first strip appeared, there still was an uncanny resemblance to the Scottish actor. One rumor is that after a performance, Connery was sitting in his dressing room with a fellow actor who was reading the Express and remarked that Sean should one day play Bond since he looked remarkably like the character. Others believe Connery's agent saw the dailies and encouraged him to tryout for the role, and made Sean up for the audition "to look like the drawings McLusky created." Another view is that McLusky just changed his concept of Bond to fit the likeness of Connery once the films became so popular.
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Whatever the case, the public must have liked the face of Bond because of the immediate success and increased sales of the London Daily Express. McLusky's clean style coupled with the loyal adaptations of the novels helped fuel the early beginnings of Bond-mania. Fleming's worries over the simplification of the narrative turned out not to be the problem he thought it might be. The stories were told as clearly and simply as possible, trying to avoid any confusion for the reader since they often lasted close to a year in length, which was customary of a newspaper daily format. Even without Ian Fleming's detailed-filled prose, the tales still managed to be extremely entertaining and held up surprisingly well, in their strip incarnations.

John McLusky began his art career illustrating for the British Royal Air Force during and after the second World War. He also worked on other various projects like Laurel and Hardy, The Keystone Kops, The Pink Panther and numerous Thames children's television programs. His artistic style emphasized simplicity and readability, and even though the Bond characters could appear rather stiff at times, they were always clearly identifiable. This was something of a necessity, since one always needed to identify the characters, even though they may not have been seen for several months. Like most strip cartoonists, McLusky had a collection of reference material to help him produce that meticulous attention to detail required in a daily feature. Every day his two young sons would help critique the Bond panels up until being submitted to the publisher. Once when McLusky needed a quick reference for a Luger pistol, one boy loaned his toy Luger gun. The next day in the finished drawing Bond was holding a weapon with a little popup hatch for a roll of paper caps. Fortunately, his two loyal proofreaders, not to embarrass 007, suggested a return to the drawing board to whiteout this minute mistake.

For the next six years, McLusky and Gammidge worked their way, fairly chronologically, through Fleming's Bond novels and short stories, and in doing so, helped lay the visual groundwork for the upcoming films. Only taking a break in 1962, when episodes of Thunderball were stopped due to Fleming publishing The Living Daylights in the rival Sunday Times. This angered Lord Beaverbrook, owner of the Express, who immediately dropped Thunderball in the middle of its storyline. Fleming also had his own legal problems with co-writer Kevin McClory, who contributed ideas to Thunderball. After a lengthy settlement and reinstatement with the Express in 1964, the daily feature started up again, with the adaptation of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

After completing thirteen Bond thrillers, our "Licensed to Kill" agent got a fresh start with a new creative team on the the last Fleming novel. Writer Jim Lawrence's stylish scripts burned up the page as artist Yaroslav Horak dramatic illustrative style brought a new hardness to the feature. Horak's crisp line and beautifully textured black and white designs were always equally matched by Lawrence's rich and imaginative prose. James Bond now became more ruthless, and more complex than his readers had ever seen before. This fresh approach in gritty realism made the villains more savage, women more beautiful, and Bond a lot tougher. The new look for 007 also lost his striking resemblance to the Scottish actor and further dissociated him from the famous film persona.

Yaroslav "Larry" Horak began his career in portrait painting, but soon switched to illustration for the larger Australian magazine publishers. His successful comic series The Mask, ran afoul with Victoria's State censors, but was soon followed by his daily outback adventure strip Mike Steel for Sydney's, The Woman's Day. A quick talent for animation and storyboards also kept Horak busy on many different projects. When given the Bond strip in 1965, Horak's adaptation of The Man with the Golden Gun was highly praised in the direction he approached the series. The syndicate was so pleased with their new creative team that Lawrence was given permission by the Fleming Trust to produce new original stories for Horak to draw. Overall they worked on thirty-three thrilling Bond tales for the Daily Express and other various syndicates in Europe..

A total of fifty one Bond stories were produced. As well as the above mentioned creators there was one story, Doomcrack, illustrated by artist Harry North. When the Bond series finally ended in 1983, it had spanned four decades, with a total output of more than 6500 individual strips. A number of the original Horak and McLusky stories have been reprinted by Titan Books and there is a separate McLusky's version of The Illustrated James Bond, 007. There was also a series of Scandinavian James Bond comic books reprinting some Horak dailies and also providing some new original stories. Unfortunately, these are the only appearances of the Bond strips since they originally ran in the London Daily Express, Sunday Express, and Daily Star. These adventures are almost completely unavailable and largely unknown for the millions of Bond fans. Hopefully, these spy stories with there lasting and intriguing appeal will one day be fully appreciated by Fleming's fans worldwide.

National Cartoonist Society Profile: Hank Ketcham

The National Cartoonist Society is not a guild or union, although they have joined forces from time to time to fight for member's rights, and regularly use their artistic talents to help worthwhile causes. Membership is limited to established professional cartoonists, with a few small exceptions of outstanding persons in affiliated fields. The primary purposes of the NCS are to advance the ideals and standards of professional cartooning in its many forms. To promote and foster a social, cultural and intellectual interchange among professional cartoonists of all types. And to stimulate and encourage interest in and acceptance of the art of cartooning by aspiring cartoonists, students and the general public. Here is another short biography of past NCS member, Hank Ketcham, that sadly passed away in June 2001, thought his world famous strip, based on his first son, still survives today, the wonderful Dennis the Menace.

 

 

Born - schooled in Seattle. Introduced to exciting world of Andy Panda and Pinocchio at Walt Disney. Served full hitch in Washington, DC Navy During World War II - editing, drawing and writing. Became a "Wednesday regular" New York City freelancer. Moved west to Carmel where the Menace was created. Awarded the silver Billy de Beck trophy in 1953. Toured USSR in '59, searching for cartoon exchange program, but soon discovered Switzerland and remained a Geneva resident for eighteen glorious years, returning to the beach of pebbles with Rolande and two ragamuffins in 1977, where we've been living happily ever since. Now it's on to the wondrous world of Matisse and Picasso...!

 

 

National Cartoonist Society Profile: Gil Kane

The National Cartoonist Society was created in 1946 when groups of professional cartoonists got together to entertain our troops. They soon found out that they enjoyed each other's company so much they decided to get together on a regular basis. Today, the NCS is the world's largest professional cartoon related group with over five hundred of the world's major cartoonists, working in all branches of the profession, including newspaper comic strips and panels, comic books, editorial cartoons, animation, gag cartoons, greeting cards, advertising, and magazine and book illustration, just to name a few. Past and present members have contributed to their NCS profiles of there many artistic achievements, and I thought I would start out with a Marvel and DC fan favorite, the late great Gil Kane who passed away in 2000. Winner of the Silver Plaque Award in 1977 for best story strip, Star Hawks, here is Gil's review in his own words.

Born in Riga, Latvia, on April 6,1925...Came to U.S.A. at age three. My creative attitudes shaped in part by the romantic fantasies prevalent in films...comics...pulp literature...big band jazz...etc. Started as a pro at sixteen...Service in the Pacific during World War II. For a while I worked with director Garason Kanin when he was involved in T.V...I created drawings which staged the action and composition for every foot of film. Published a magazine and developed and published an experimental paperback series with a character named Blackmark for Bantam books. At one point or another I've drawn virtually every major adventure strip character from Batman to Flash Gordon.

Have a wife Elaine, and three great kids, Scott, Beverly, Eric. We live in hilltop house in Wilton, Conn. Recently won NCS award for my work in comic books. My interests range...Theater, Ballet, Psychology, Literature, and I've just gotten into serious music. Ran NCS shoptalks, and am on Professional committee.

Neal Adams' Continuity Comics

Back in late 1984 Neal Adams created his independent comic publishing company, Continuity Comics, which only lasted until 1993 when the books were canceled during his infamous Rise of Magic cross-over series. His line dealt mainly with serious super-hero titles like, Armor, Crazyman, Megalith, ToyBoy, The Revengers, Cyberad, Hybrids, Shaman, Earth 4, and other characters that were all developed by Adams, not to mention his space exploring rabbit, Bucky O’Hare. But a hand full of these titles did achieve some small success, enough so, that three of his creations, Samuree, Knighthawk, and Valeria the She-Bat ended up being published by Acclaim’s Windjammer line. A few years earlier, Adams had developed Ms. Mystic for Pacific Comics, which was an attractive strip he drew, but none of his characters in their later Continuity incarnations lasted over twelve issues or so. The first problem was Adams’ publishing schedule on the titles were always dreadfully late, on average one to twenty-four weeks, and I believe a book or two went even a year without an issue! That alone would kill any comic company’s orders by the combined frustration of retailers and collectors going crazy just to get their issues. Second, there was almost no plot based stories, wooden dialogue, and very shaky character development, which added up to some pretty mediocre comics overall. Third, Adams as well as the other publishers like Marvel and DC at the time were caught up in the new comic speculators buying habits for those wild “variant covers” that bombarded the comic stands. Tyvex and die-cut covers were all the rage, as well as glow-in-the-dark, optic illusion, hologram, multiple image covers, pull-out posters, thermal images appearing from the heat of your hand, chrome or gold plated covers, sticker clues to complete pages inside, and of course bagged comics with trading cards, were just a few of the many gimmicks that were being promoted.


But for all the negative talk I’ve heard about these comics and their creator, one small factor remained in my mind and is the only redeeming factor for my money - the great artwork. Now, I always enjoyed Adams’ unique style (thought it seemed to be based much on Stan Drake to me) and fondly remember as a child drooling over Adams’ Batman covers in those plastic 3-packs DC produced in the early seventies. But I was surprised to see how a style that appears complex can be reproduced by so many people. Maybe his style is not so unique after all if any number of artists can create his look, and is that even a good thing to do in the first place?

I recently picked up an almost complete set of Continuity Comics and was shocked by the number of artists and inkers who could "ape" Adams' look, perhaps maybe as well as their mentor in Continuity’s "house style". Some artists are better at it than others, but I like Dan Barry, Vicente Alcazar, Mike Deodato Jr., Trevor Von Eedon, Ernesto Infante, Clark Hawbaker, Mark Texiera, Dave Hoover, Richard Bennett, Terry Shoemaker, Malcolm Davis, André Coates, Tom Grindberg, Bart Sears, Esteban Maroto, Michael Netzer, and Sal Velluto. That’s just seventeen guys, and I stopped counting , who have a good “feel” for Adams’ style, and some of these artists I’ve never even heard of. And there is even more wonderful artists that I have not listed. How did that happen? If you can draw like Neal Adams shouldn't you be able to work for Marvel, DC, or any other company today? But how could you not look like Neal’s work if you have a swipe file from all his prior works, to well, SWIPE from, which makes it look correct since they’re his poses. And to top if off, Adams did lay-outs and inked many, if not all, the faces and touched up most pages to give them his seal of approval. Other artists that I enjoyed, but worked rather in “Adams” spirit than a literal line rendering were Brian Apthorpe, Mark Beachum, Aron Weisenfeld, Walter McDaniels, Kevin Nowlan, and Michael Golden. A shorter list by far, however that may be a good thing, to illustrate a little different and stand out in this comic company.?

Perhaps is was the crisp work of the inkers who helped save the day, making all these pages work, like the talented Rudy Nebres, Ian Akin, Brian Garvey, Alberto Saichan, André Klasik, Del Barras, Art Nichols, Bill Sienkiewicz, Romeo Tanghal, and John Nyberg. Some wonderful artists themselves in their own right, combined with quite a pool of talent from all the creators mentioned above. At least the production values on the books were always very good, being printed in Canada on high quality paper stock. And over all these tales, Adams constructed the plots and left the writing chores up to the much overworked, Peter Stone.

Now, as mentioned, the stories were pretty thin all around and in the cross-over series Deathwatch 2000 they got down right “preachy” with Adams’ villains using attacks based on global warming from chlorofloro-carbons to destroy the ozone layer, or used overpopulation, pollution, radiation sickness, and manipulated mankind’s other self-inflicted destruction. Whatever that might be? Zany situations were really going on when you combined weird stellar characters, mix in some BEM aliens, a dash of robots and a pinch of hardware, and finally a huge gun toting talking dragon! But even with all that insanity, for some crazy reason I still found these books enjoyable. Looking to the letter pages and a couple web sites, maybe I wasn’t the only one that liked these titles. Armor appeared always to be hands-down the most popular of the heroes, but was still unable to “jump ship” to Windjammer. Perhaps some day these character will be resurrected so we can see how Neal Adams’ vision for Continuity Comics would have finally ended.