James Bond: The Man With the Golden Gun

Rating:
Summary: Great Bond adventures far different from the movies
Review: How influential were the Bond comic strips? Desmond Lewellyn (Q) was on record saying he never read the Flemming novels, but was quite a fan of the Daily Mail strip.Clearly the casting of Sean Connery had to be inspired by the image of Bond in the original run of the comic strip, which began in 1958, four years before the film Dr. No.

These stories were published in 1966 , nearly 10 years before the Roger Moore film version, and 20 yrs before the Timothy Dalton movie. These are not the gadget driven romps that the films have become, this is solid, cold war action. The plots and characters share names with the film versions, but their charcterizations and motivations are far different, and surprisingly more complex.

This JB is the classic Ian Flemming Bond,adapted by Jim Lawrence, with beautiful art from Yaroslav Horak, that carrys on the tradition of excellence established by the strips first core team of Henry Gammidge & John McClusky. Titan Books has produced a solid collection , that begs for more volumes to follow.