It's time again for another Weekly Comics Hype. I'm doing these alphabetically, but occasionally skipping around a bit, and today I'd like to recommend a really amazing newspaper strip about one of the most dangerous people on the planet, the merciless, brilliant Modesty Blaise by Peter O'Donnell.
Modesty Blaise was created by O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway for the London Evening Standard in 1963, and a series of novels and short stories was published from 1966-1996. There were two feature films made and a television pilot, none of them especially good.
Modesty is a very rich amateur often called on by the British secret service for very deadly missions. She and her right-hand man, Willie Garvin, have retired from the control of an international criminal cartel that was based in Tangiers and have a life of bored luxury to look forward to, until a Sir Gerald Tarrant gives them the opportunity to put their skills to good use.
What follows is a downright sensational adventure strip. Perhaps it's easy to downplay its content since it isn't the most unique of formats in the first place, but Modesty Blaise is done with a really individual style, with an effortless sense of cool. The stories are completely unpredictable, with brilliant twists which complicate matters far more than you can see coming. There's a really stunning moment when a criminal sends a messager to Modesty, who loses her temper and kills the woman. Then she realizes that she now has no way to respond to the message or contact the other criminals before a deadline expires.
Uniquely for adventure fiction, Peter O'Donnell, who retired the strip in 2001, was Modesty's sole writer, giving the strip a continuity that perhaps no other has ever had. It was drawn for seven years by Jim Holdaway, who passed away in 1970. Most of the remaining years were drawn by Enrique Romero, apart from a period from 1978-86 when he was off drawing the science fiction strip Axa, and the artists were Neville Colvin, Pat Wright and John M. Burns, who won an Eagle Award this past weekend for Outstanding Achievement in British comics and can currently be seen painting Nikolai Dante for 2000 AD.
Modesty Blaise has been reprinted in a number of formats over the years, and in fact the monthly magazine Comic Revue features a couple of pages of Modesty every issue. But your best bet is with a lovely series of books from Titan which reprint about three complete stories per volume, along with lots of background information and interviews, and introductions by O'Donnell for each story. Each book contains about fifteen months of strip.
At present, nine volumes of Modesty Blaise are available from Titan Books. Your local comic shop would enjoy your custom; new books ship on Wednesdays, so why not stop in after work?
Modesty Blaise was created by O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway for the London Evening Standard in 1963, and a series of novels and short stories was published from 1966-1996. There were two feature films made and a television pilot, none of them especially good.
Modesty is a very rich amateur often called on by the British secret service for very deadly missions. She and her right-hand man, Willie Garvin, have retired from the control of an international criminal cartel that was based in Tangiers and have a life of bored luxury to look forward to, until a Sir Gerald Tarrant gives them the opportunity to put their skills to good use.
What follows is a downright sensational adventure strip. Perhaps it's easy to downplay its content since it isn't the most unique of formats in the first place, but Modesty Blaise is done with a really individual style, with an effortless sense of cool. The stories are completely unpredictable, with brilliant twists which complicate matters far more than you can see coming. There's a really stunning moment when a criminal sends a messager to Modesty, who loses her temper and kills the woman. Then she realizes that she now has no way to respond to the message or contact the other criminals before a deadline expires.
Uniquely for adventure fiction, Peter O'Donnell, who retired the strip in 2001, was Modesty's sole writer, giving the strip a continuity that perhaps no other has ever had. It was drawn for seven years by Jim Holdaway, who passed away in 1970. Most of the remaining years were drawn by Enrique Romero, apart from a period from 1978-86 when he was off drawing the science fiction strip Axa, and the artists were Neville Colvin, Pat Wright and John M. Burns, who won an Eagle Award this past weekend for Outstanding Achievement in British comics and can currently be seen painting Nikolai Dante for 2000 AD.
Modesty Blaise has been reprinted in a number of formats over the years, and in fact the monthly magazine Comic Revue features a couple of pages of Modesty every issue. But your best bet is with a lovely series of books from Titan which reprint about three complete stories per volume, along with lots of background information and interviews, and introductions by O'Donnell for each story. Each book contains about fifteen months of strip.
At present, nine volumes of Modesty Blaise are available from Titan Books. Your local comic shop would enjoy your custom; new books ship on Wednesdays, so why not stop in after work?