Dave Coates Dot Corn

James Bond's Comics Royale

I'm not entirely sure what James Bond is supposed to be. Is he a man of action or reaction? Does his salary come out of the national defense budget, or the super-secret national offense budget, split between agents and the yearly fiscal allotment for new battering rams? Every single one of the Bond movies begins and ends in a haze for me-- most likely due to viewing them after being immobilized by various winter holiday meals-- so all I can say for sure is that he treats women poorly, feels fine about killing people (bad people), tends to smirk, and that extended credits sequences involving naked, silhouetted women doing gymnastic routines on gun barrels will never, ever be a comfortable thing to watch in the same room as my parents. Other than that, I think he works for Statler and Waldorf, the old men in the balcony from The Muppet Show. Pretty sure I'm right about that. 

While rooting around in the archives earlier, looking for something about which to write this week, I was at first shaken by the discovery of hundreds of daily James Bond comic strips, then later, stirred into writing about some of the weird bits I found within them. 

Since I didn't have a ton of time to really dig through them, I started with the first batch, a fairly faithful retelling of the first Bond adventure, "Casino Royale." Well, the original novel's version of the story, at least. These originally ran in the British newspaper The Daily Express, starting in 1957. For a variety of reasons, UK newspapers have always been a bit more forward-thinking and sensational than the more staid dailies in our country, so try to keep that in mind when reading the story's kickoff below to keep spit-takes to a minimum:

The story progresses along the lines of the various movie adaptations ("Bond, go gamble!" "Hello, I'm a pretty lady," "Oh, no! Gambling went wrong!" "Ack! Bad guys!" etc). Below, more highlights. 

The story concludes pretty nicely, with the loose ends tied up as you'd expect. True to form, the last words you see promise that James Bond Will Return, though I like to read this to the tune of the popular Wings song, winding its way through the cruel city, continuity be danged: 

Bond comics rolled on and on in British papers from 1958 until 1983, and we've apparently been syndicating them to various outlets for years. I didn't have time to do a thorough examination of all of them, but I managed to pry up some highlights taken from stories adapted from other Fleming novels as well as what appear to be monstrously bizarre flights of fancy conjured by Patrick Nagel and the writing staff of Penthouse Forum. 

This mud bath thing goes on for, like, two full weeks. 

Besides sultry gun molls and international intrigue, another common trope seems to be "sleeve knives." 

I barely scratched the surface of our archives, and due to concerns over length, still had to cut nearly a dozen other strips I think are worth sharing. As such, next week, James Bond will return in: You Only Post Twice.