The James Bond Omnibus Volume 001
Stories by Ian Fleming, adapted by Anthony Hern, Peter O’Donnell & Harry Gammidge. Art by John McLusky
Titan Books
Before the films were made, Ian Fleming’s most famous creation featured in a long running daily newspaper strip and it’s 11 of these complete Bond tales, published from 1953 to 1961 that fill this first James Bond Omnibus. On the plus side, it’s a very nicely designed package, softcover with a hardback style and feel. And at 304 pages for just over a tenner it’s certainly excellent value, if you’re into this sort of thing you may well love it.
But it seems I’m not and despite really looking forward to this it just doesn’t work for me. Within a few pages of cracking it open I was feeling rather stupidly let down by this. Let down because I was rather hoping for the same thrill I get from reading Fleming’s Bond in prose – and it just doesn’t deliver that. And stupidly let-down because I shouldn’t have really expected much more from the reprints of a daily serialisation from newspapers – 3 or 4 panels at a time – how on earth can you expect a decent narrative through that?
The daily newspaper strip format, that has given me great joy in the form of Schulz, Watterson, Breathed and more, just doesn’t feel right for the longer form of adventure stories. Feel free to shoot me down over this, and I’m the first to admit that I haven’t read anything like enough to make that staggeringly naive generalisation, but I just can’t see how a good ongoing adventure narrative over 100+ daily strips can possibly work – the endless stop, start nature of the thing just renders it an unsatisfying experience. Or maybe it’s just these James Bond strips and I should venture back further into some of the classics?
(The first four strips of Casino Royale: Beautiful art from John McLusky but already suffering from the fractured, stuttering narative demanded of the daily newspaper strip: Start. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop. From The James Bond Omnibus)
Enough negativity, time to find something good to say. John McLusky’s art is never what you’d call dynamic, more a series of posed snapshots of the story – but with a story so stoccato and episodic that’s all you could expect. But there are moments, quite a few of them really when you realise that McLusky is real old school talent. An assured, beautiful line and a Bond you can believe. His art, when you just look at the panels as art in and of themselves is quite lovely. But when you’re trying to read it as a story the lack of any flow through the panels just becomes too wearing.
With these James Bond strips I was really looking forward to something nice, a good comic adaptation of Fleming’s novels with all the thrills, the dark characterisation, the sumptuous details I love in the Fleming books, but I found none of that here and the stories just became a series of dull, lifeless plot points. There’s just no flow here at all, overused captions recap and spell out the plot every page or so and when the captions disappear the speech balloons do exactly the same thing – everything works to completely break any natural flow through the pages.
I just didn’t get this Bond adaptation, couldn’t get into it and found myself opening it up to read another of the stories feeling a sense of dread obligation rather than enjoyment. Not what I was hoping for at all. I think I shall stick to the books and the films from here on in.
October 22nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I think one just needs to get into a different mode of reading with newspaper strip collections. After all, they weren’t intended to be read as collections anyway; just as short memorable daily episodes. However I do understand your comments about these early Bond strips. I think you’d find that if you tried the ones from a year or two later they’d flow better.
I’m surprised that Titan have released this Omnibus just after they’d completed their Bond strip albums, but it is a cheap way to obtain the early stories.
I’d recommend the Modesty Blaise albums too.
October 22nd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
I think that 007 strip and all of the films about james bond,the best one is Casino Royale…
October 22nd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I know what you mean abut a different mode of reading with newspaper strips and I deliberately read it in very small chunks to get into that different mode of reading. But even then it didn’t work for me. I’ll revisit possibly with Omnibus Volume 2 to see if they do flow better.
However, like Lew says – if this is your sort of thing, then the Omnibus format is very nice and incredibly good value.