BOND’S BACK... IN THE
LONG BEFORE the opening bars of the James Bond theme tune became one of cinema’s most instantly familiar signatures, 007 was for your eyes only if you were an Express reader. The comic strip that first appeared in our newspapers more closely resembled his creator Ian Fleming’s original dark and brooding vision of him than many of the later films. That image would also be seen as the inspiration behind the eventual choice of Sean Connery to portray him on screen.
From today, that much loved comic strip is back home where it belongs.
Yet when the Daily Express first approached Fleming in 1957 about transforming his hero in such a way, the author was initially reluctant to grant his permission.
“I have grave doubts about the desirability of this,” he said. “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 deathwatch 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.”
Fleming’s fears proved unfounded. Beginning in 1958 with the adaptation of his first novel, Casino Royale, the quality of the strip proved such a success that it would remain in the Daily Express until 1983.
As well as adapting all Fleming’s 007 novels and some of the short stories, the strip later featured novels about the world’s most famous secret agent written by the author Kingsley Amis, under the pen-name Robert Markham.
It remains fondly remembered by the most fervent fans and sought after by collectors of Bond memorabilia.
The strip also influenced the most recent incarnation of 007 – Daniel Craig. Academy Awardnominated writer John Logan, who co-wrote the pre-no Time to Die Bond films Skyfall and Spectre, recalled in his introduction to the collected 007 comic strips “the angular and brutally handsome James Bond of the
Daily Express comic series”. He says: “Based on the original Ian Fleming novels and not the films, these comics provide a unique pre-connery take on 007.
“He is much more like Ian Fleming’s original creation: deeply human, a bit world-weary, tough to the point of nastiness and yet impossible to resist.there is barely a tuxedo or martini in sight.
“Ian Fleming’s Bond is a working stiff.a man doing a demanding job at which he excels.
“He’s not about the gadgets, or the quips, or even the girls. He’s about getting the job done for
England, and for himself.” Fleming imagined Bond resembling the great American songwriter, singer and actor Hoagy Carmichael, and commissioned an artist to sketch out that impression. But the illustrator assigned to the strip, John Mclusky, regarded Fleming’s version as “outdated” and “pre-war” in appearance.
HE DREW instead a much more rugged and chiseljawed Bond. Mclusky’s son Graham (who is now a leading theatre lighting designer) later recalled: “My father said once, when he had submitted the first drawings of Bond, he had no idea how much of an impact they would make when blown up to enormous proportions and spread all over London on big hoardings.
“This was the start of a long and interesting relationship with 007.
“I can remember my father having to virtually lock himself away for hours on end in his studio to produce the volume of work necessary to keep Bond appearing daily in the newspaper.” And asked whether his father’s illustration was responsible for Connery later landing the screen role, Graham Mclusky commented: “You cannot get over the uncanny resemblance, can you?”
He also recounted the celebrated story of an unnamed actor one day flicking through a copy of the Daily Express while relaxing backstage during a theatre production, and coming across the comic strip.
After catching sight of the profile of the fellow thespian sitting next to him, the actor told his neighbour that if the cartoons
were ever turned into a film he should audition for the title role on his looks alone. The person to whom the observation was addressed was the then unknown Sean Connery.
The character of James Bond had come to Fleming chiefly as a result of his wartime experiences, yet undoubtedly owed much too to how the author saw himself.
The scion of a wealthy banking family, Fleming was only eight when his father was killed on the Western Front during the First World War (Winston Churchill wrote his obituary in The Times).
He was educated at Eton, but removed a term early because his housemaster disapproved of his attitude, his womanising and, for good measure, the car he drove and hair oil he wore.
His subsequent enrolment at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, proved even briefer, after he contracted a sexually transmitted disease.
There followed a period as a journalist working for the Reuters agency, including a stint in Moscow during which time he was once astonished to receive a personally signed apology from Stalin for not being able to attend an interview that Fleming had sought. Less surprisingly, he then went into banking. But, when war broke out again in 1939, Fleming was recruited by naval intelligence.
While there he masterminded Operation Goldeneye, an Allied plan to maintain communications with British-owned Gibraltar and conduct sabotage operations were Spain to join – or be invaded by – Nazi Germany.
LEMING’S plan was ultimately never required, but was commemorated when he named his Jamaican holiday retreat built on the edge of a cliff after it (he bought the land after attending a wartime intelligence summit on the island). It was where Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, published in 1953, and all the other 007 stories until his death 11 years later, aged 56.
The original manuscript was typed by his red-haired secretary, on whom Miss Moneypenny was at least partially based.
He copied his character’s name from a real-life American ornithologist, a copy of whose Birds Of The West Indies the enthusiastic twitcher Fleming owned. “I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened. I wanted him to be a blunt instrument,” he later explained.
“When I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought, ‘By God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard’.”
He regarded Bond as “a compound of all the secret
agents and commando types I met during the war” – not least his idolised elder brother Peter, who operated behind enemy lines in occupied Greece and Norway. Fleming also gave his agent the rank of lieutenant-commander – which the author also held when he left the services.
Now Bond is reporting for duty once more, in the comic strips that made him a favourite with millions of newspaper readers.
“We are thrilled they are going to be in the Express once again,” says Simon Ward, publishing manager at Ian Fleming Publications.
Fleming himself, who was once left shaken rather than stirred at that prospect, would surely agree.
For more details on Ian Fleming’s books and the cartoon collections, see ianfleming.com and titanbooks.com/8745-james -bond-spectre-complete-comicstrip-collection
‘I thought By God,
James Bond is the dullest name
I’ve ever heard’
Images: JAMES BOND and 007 are the registered trade marks of DANJAQ LLC, used under licence by Ian Fleming Publications Limited. All rights reserved.
Cartoon strips: CASINO ROYALE © IAN FLEMING PUBLICATIONS LTD 1953/THE JAMES BOND STRIP © EXPRESS NEWSPAPERS LTD 1987.
Ian Fleming quotes from The Man With The Golden Typewriter edited by Fergus Fleming published by Bloomsbury.
Casino Royal Illustrated by John Mclusky.