September continues with espionage and spies and whatnot. On tap at the Dojo are reviews of all of the James Bond novels and short stories by Ian Fleming and all the movie adaptations made from those stories. We got 'em all -- Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan (maybe not Pierce), Daniel Craig, and even David Niven and Barry Nelson. (Who? Just wait.) I'll be reviewing in order of the novel publication so that means the movie reviews will be all over the place. This should be fun.
Interspersed with all that...ahem...Bondage, we have Sarge Steel. Sarge was created by the chaps at Charlton Comics to be a hard-nosed detective, but when the winds shifted towards espionage he joined up as did much of the rest of the culture. Vintage revised reviews are forthcoming of all his Charlton Comics appearances, in his own comics and beyond.
If I have time, I might wrap up this two-month cavalcade of spies with some juicy parodies of the form. But time will tell.
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And you can't rule out just a dash of Neal Adams to boot.
So, strap on your jet belt and get ready to Bond --James Bond.
Rip Off
Did you ever watch the short-lived Planet Of The Apes TV series starring Roddy McDowell, Ron Harper, James Naughton and Mark Lenard? September 13th will be exactly 50 years since the first episode was broadcast on American TV while here in the UK the POTA TV series began a month later on October 13th and then on October 19th Marvel UK's POTA weekly was launched. I owe a huge debt to the POTA TV series because I was a huge fan from the very first episode and that's why I started buying the POTA weekly which introduced me to Marvel comics!
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed I have. There's a review of it somewhere in the dense forest of his blog. POTA was your road to Marvel while mine was the Grantray-Lawrence cartoon adaptations for TV. A depressing number of things are fifty years old lately. Sigh.
DeleteAn excellent cartoon series indeed. Doug Wildey's designs helped set it apart from the crowd.
DeleteThese'll be great. Always liked the Sarge Steel books. Am a big spy fan, too. I just re-read Diamonds Are Forever (an old Signet version, of course!) and was surprised at how well-written it was.
ReplyDeleteI'm plowing through them now, just wrapped The Spy Who Loved Me. Fleming is a skillful writer.
Deletei have a dark horse to add to your spy list: before SHIELD comics , ACG had the eyepatched _John Force, Magic Agent_ comic, about a government secret agent with telepathic powers he received ( I think ) from a supernatural coin. Later on, Warren Ellis seemed to be combining Nick Fury and Dr. Strange in "Combat Magician" Bill Gravel for the extremely disgusting Strange Kiss comics, but he may have also been exposed to John Force.
ReplyDeleteI have never read the John Force comics, though I am aware of them. Thanks for the reminder.
DeleteSince you worked in a mention of Neal Adams here, you may get a chortle out of an Adams swipe that another fan pointed out to me. That's assuming my dates are correct.
ReplyDeletehttps://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2024/09/curiosities-what-neal-adams-did-was.html
Neal got there first. His dramatic rendering of Ra's al Ghul made quite the impact.
DeleteSince you put GET SMART in your subjects, he must be near the top of the list for consideration amongst the parodies.
ReplyDeleteSadly Get Smart might well get squeezed out this month. I have my collection ready to go, but we'll have to see how it goes.
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