Dynamite's Bond comics and graphic novels

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  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    mtm wrote: »
    It's quite a big one to swallow, you'd think there would have to be an awful lot of shifting things around for that to happen.
    I thought it was Russian Superman-style alternative history thing for a second.

    I immediately thought of Secret Empire and the whole *spoiler* Captian America is an Agent of Hydra thing.

    But this seems more like temporary overlapping interests between Blofeld and Bond and not Bond straight up becoming a terrorist.


    As for the list of Dynamite comics:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(Dynamite_Entertainment)?wprov=sfla1



  • Written by Bond-newcomer Christos Gage with art by Luca Casalanguida (who drew James Bond: The Body and James Bond: Kill Chain), the story sees "Bond recruited into the terrorist organization by Ernst Stavro Blofeld to end an internal power struggle that could have apocalyptic consequences."

    The first issue of 'James Bond: Agent of SPECTRE' will be released in March 2021.

    This does sound good. As mentioned, it's slightly reminiscent of Role of Honour, but this sounds like a much clearer cut case of the hero and the villain needing to work hand-in-hand. Intriguing premise. This sounds like the kind of bold, formula-jarring change-up that would benefit the films in the not too distant future. Hope they translate the idea well to the page.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    mtm wrote: »
    It's quite a big one to swallow, you'd think there would have to be an awful lot of shifting things around for that to happen.
    I thought it was Russian Superman-style alternative history thing for a second.

    I immediately thought of Secret Empire and the whole *spoiler* Captian America is an Agent of Hydra thing.

    But this seems more like temporary overlapping interests between Blofeld and Bond and not Bond straight up becoming a terrorist.


    As for the list of Dynamite comics:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(Dynamite_Entertainment)?wprov=sfla1

    Blofeld: "Quid pro quo: You help me destroy my rival within SPECTRE, and I let you into the inner workings of the organization; if you think you can dismantle it from the inside... good luck to you."
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    mtm wrote: »
    It's quite a big one to swallow, you'd think there would have to be an awful lot of shifting things around for that to happen.
    I thought it was Russian Superman-style alternative history thing for a second.

    I immediately thought of Secret Empire and the whole *spoiler* Captian America is an Agent of Hydra thing.

    But this seems more like temporary overlapping interests between Blofeld and Bond and not Bond straight up becoming a terrorist.

    Yeah, which I can swallow, but it's hard to imagine a situation where Bond could be trusted at all by Blofeld because if he still works for MI6 then it's his job to do so, even if they have to align against a greater threat in the short term. And Bond could say he's left MI6, but would Blofeld ever fall for that?
    It'll be interesting how they make this one plausible.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    mtm wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    It's quite a big one to swallow, you'd think there would have to be an awful lot of shifting things around for that to happen.
    I thought it was Russian Superman-style alternative history thing for a second.

    I immediately thought of Secret Empire and the whole *spoiler* Captian America is an Agent of Hydra thing.

    But this seems more like temporary overlapping interests between Blofeld and Bond and not Bond straight up becoming a terrorist.

    Yeah, which I can swallow, but it's hard to imagine a situation where Bond could be trusted at all by Blofeld because if he still works for MI6 then it's his job to do so, even if they have to align against a greater threat in the short term. And Bond could say he's left MI6, but would Blofeld ever fall for that?
    It'll be interesting how they make this one plausible.

    My thoughts as well; my post above is one option I feel could be possible.
  • MaxCasinoMaxCasino United States
    Posts: 4,052
    My question is, who’s their common enemy? Goldfinger wasn’t killed off, and I think given that Dynamite Comics’ tendency to bring back famous characters, I think we could be looking for a shock.
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    mtm wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    It's quite a big one to swallow, you'd think there would have to be an awful lot of shifting things around for that to happen.
    I thought it was Russian Superman-style alternative history thing for a second.

    I immediately thought of Secret Empire and the whole *spoiler* Captian America is an Agent of Hydra thing.

    But this seems more like temporary overlapping interests between Blofeld and Bond and not Bond straight up becoming a terrorist.

    Yeah, which I can swallow, but it's hard to imagine a situation where Bond could be trusted at all by Blofeld because if he still works for MI6 then it's his job to do so, even if they have to align against a greater threat in the short term. And Bond could say he's left MI6, but would Blofeld ever fall for that?
    It'll be interesting how they make this one plausible.

    My thoughts as well; my post above is one option I feel could be possible.

    Yea, the most likely scenario I can come up with is basically this. Bond gets information on how to get at an important part of SPECTRE that Blofeld wants out of the way, so he goes after the hint and then the tension arises out of whether Bond can use this small foothold to get to Blofeld and the internal conflict between getting rid of high level terrorist operatives and playing into Blofeld's hands.

    I don't really want to see Bond comitting any real acts of terrorism or treason to 'prove himself' to Blofeld but constantly trying to figure out the game behind the game and how much danger he himself is in could be very good.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited December 2020 Posts: 14,861
    mtm wrote: »
    mtm wrote: »
    It's quite a big one to swallow, you'd think there would have to be an awful lot of shifting things around for that to happen.
    I thought it was Russian Superman-style alternative history thing for a second.

    I immediately thought of Secret Empire and the whole *spoiler* Captian America is an Agent of Hydra thing.

    But this seems more like temporary overlapping interests between Blofeld and Bond and not Bond straight up becoming a terrorist.

    Yeah, which I can swallow, but it's hard to imagine a situation where Bond could be trusted at all by Blofeld because if he still works for MI6 then it's his job to do so, even if they have to align against a greater threat in the short term. And Bond could say he's left MI6, but would Blofeld ever fall for that?
    It'll be interesting how they make this one plausible.

    My thoughts as well; my post above is one option I feel could be possible.

    Yea, the most likely scenario I can come up with is basically this. Bond gets information on how to get at an important part of SPECTRE that Blofeld wants out of the way, so he goes after the hint and then the tension arises out of whether Bond can use this small foothold to get to Blofeld and the internal conflict between getting rid of high level terrorist operatives and playing into Blofeld's hands.

    I don't really want to see Bond comitting any real acts of terrorism or treason to 'prove himself' to Blofeld but constantly trying to figure out the game behind the game and how much danger he himself is in could be very good.

    Yes that's interesting. I think as long as Blofeld is always totally aware that Bond is his foe at all times, as you say, then it could be an interesting dynamic.
  • Posts: 632
    March 2021, eh? Coincidence that it's a month before the alleged release of NTTD? I wonder if they've been sitting on this, waiting for the movie to come out.
  • Posts: 5,774
    From the next Previews (and the Diamond Comics website) :
    AGENT OF SPECTRE Part 1! There's a civil war brewing within SPECTRE. An upstart American member of the international criminal organization is attempting a coup, threatening to depose Ernst Stavro Blofeld. She's on guard against Blofeld's men, so to take her out, Blofeld recruits a wild card - James Bond! With Blofeld threatening the life of Bond's friend Felix Leiter as leverage, Bond agrees...but he has a plan to use this internal strife to bring SPECTRE down once and for all. Will he succeed, or is this a dark path from which even 007 can't return?

    https://previewsworld.com/Catalog/JAN210788

    I think this should calm your fears that Bond would act contrary to his beliefs.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    Ahhh Felix Leiter as leverage, that works. Sounds cool.
  • 00Heaven00Heaven Home
    Posts: 573
    Sounds interesting. Got Reflections of Death as a gift off my parents today :). Merry Christmas fellow comic-lovers.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    00Heaven wrote: »
    Sounds interesting. Got Reflections of Death as a gift off my parents today :). Merry Christmas fellow comic-lovers.

    Merry Christmas! Hope you enjoy it!
  • Just finished Reflections of Death, and I've got to say I really enjoyed it. Actually thought the format worked really well, though I've always been a fan of Bond short stories.

    Great to see Andy Diggle back involved too. Hammerhead and Kill Chain are two of my favourites of the Dynamite comics.

    It's half price on Amazon at the minute for Kindle, I believe, if anyone's tempted.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    Just finished Reflections of Death, and I've got to say I really enjoyed it. Actually thought the format worked really well, though I've always been a fan of Bond short stories.

    Great to see Andy Diggle back involved too. Hammerhead and Kill Chain are two of my favourites of the Dynamite comics.

    It's half price on Amazon at the minute for Kindle, I believe, if anyone's tempted.

    Nice! I'll have to finish it at some point.
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    edited January 2021 Posts: 1,351
    Been doing some re-reading and I have to say, Hammerhead is much better then I first thought! My initial assessment was that it is just too bland and by the numbers. I now feel like that is one of it's strengths. Not that it is bland, but it very satisfyingly hits a lot of Bond staples.
    Since my initial reading of Hammerhead, I have read some of the original novels for the first time, so originally I totally didn't get the Drax and Moonraker of it all. The only connection I saw was Victoria Hunt -> Elektra King and while that persists, the Draxian element makes me appreciate a villian I didn't like at first a lot more. But then Diggle twists the whole thing even further by making his Drax-figure not want to destroy Britain, because she is a crypto-Nazi, but to "make Britain great again" (ok, that one may be a bit on the nose, but still).
    Furthermore, Al-Fennec is a very good, classic roguish ally in the vein of Draco, Colombo and Kerim.
    The car chase not being a car chase, but Bond trying to evade his souped up spy car that has been taken over and tries to kill him is a very smart idea, I cannot believe hasn't been used before.
    Negatives:
    I still think, the book has some pacing issues. While the story is actually pretty bare bones, it feels rushed. But that may be due to reading the collection in one go and not issue by issue with a month in between each.
    The technology is a bit hand-wavy at times. The final solution Bond comes up with is in a way clever, from a story structure stand-point, but close to gibberish from a tech standpoint.
    And I always think "Batman" when seeing Casalanguida's Bond.
  • QsCatQsCat London
    Posts: 251
    Murdock wrote: »
    Good morning my golden retrievers. Looks like Dynamite has announced a new comic and this one will be a movie tie in. Well kind of. It looks to be set between Spectre and Bond 25.
    DWZU5Jel.jpg
    Dynamite wrote:
    Synopsis:
    "The death of a British agent sends James Bond to the mountains of Hokkaido where the last report his colleague made had come from, leading to the discovery of a small village the world has not heard of. As suspicions arise, Bond unearths a scheme that a global consternation was to come around and revive the old tribe of Shogunate using unorthodox means that oversee a supernatural existence in the heart of terror."

    Looks like a must have for sure.

    Hey guys. Was this cancelled?
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    I sure hope not; it looks cool.
  • NickTwentyTwoNickTwentyTwo Vancouver, BC, Canada
    Posts: 7,518
    Looks awesome! I’m getting Octopussy short story vibes... maybe he goes up into the mountains where Hannes was murdered for more information, finds an old man who was there when it happened, and is the target of some Spectre agents looking to put Bond down for good after the capture of Blofeld?
  • QsCatQsCat London
    edited January 2021 Posts: 251
    Holy crap, just did a random search and did find that this comic may actually be real! A reddit post said that, at a British cinema talk/Q&A that Danny Boyle gave early this weekend he teased that he and his screenwriter's work with Bond may extend beyond just doing Bond 25's script. He very cryptically said that they were working on "supplemental" material as well that would connect to their film script somehow, and after seeing this, this comic may indeed be that material. Maybe we'll find out that Dynamite had a talk with EON and had Boyle and Hodge team up with the comics writers to do a prequel comic set before Bond 25! Pretty unprecedented if true.

    Well the post I quoted was from 2018 and this post is too. It was probably cancelled, which is a shame. If anyone has any more info though...

    While I'm here, could anyone recommend some Bond comics/graphic novels? Which are best?

    I was interested in the Casino Royale GN which is supposed to be good. Not too keen on the artwork though..
    I do like the art style of ORIGIN though.
    How are Hammerhead and Blackbox?
    The Warren Ellis Collection?

    Thanks!
  • The two Ellis storylines are the best of what I’ve read thus far (only read Hammerhead & Black Box in addition). They’re a fun update to the Bond of the novels, though they’re a bit rushed in the climaxes. Hammerhead I found entirely unremarkable, but Black Box I enjoyed pretty well even if it’s not as good as the Ellis stuff — it’s more like the movies and has a cool henchman, but the dialogue can be pretty painfully on the nose at times. I’m curious about the graphic novel adaptations of the books as well.
  • QsCatQsCat London
    edited January 2021 Posts: 251
    The two Ellis storylines are the best of what I’ve read thus far (only read Hammerhead & Black Box in addition). They’re a fun update to the Bond of the novels, though they’re a bit rushed in the climaxes. Hammerhead I found entirely unremarkable, but Black Box I enjoyed pretty well even if it’s not as good as the Ellis stuff — it’s more like the movies and has a cool henchman, but the dialogue can be pretty painfully on the nose at times. I’m curious about the graphic novel adaptations of the books as well.

    Thanks, so maybe this might be a good place to start

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/James-Bond-Warren-Ellis-Collection/dp/1524115045/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FHMAXB2O2X3R&dchild=1&keywords=warren+ellis&qid=1611017787&sprefix=Warren+ellis,aps,218&sr=8-1

    I'll have a further look at the adaptations.. some will be better than others. I like the look of the illustrated Folios, but they're a bit too expensive at full price. If they had more illustrations I could be tempted, but they only have 6 or 7.

    I like your profile pic btw. I thought it was Dalton at first, but could it be from a comic?
    :-bd
  • The folio editions are amazing, but yeah I wouldn’t buy them *solely* for the illustrations. And my avatar is indeed Dalton, but from an unused Licence to Kill poster by the artist who did the poster for The Spy Who Loved Me:
    2lxi4bjhhsd41.jpg
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    QsCat wrote: »
    Holy crap, just did a random search and did find that this comic may actually be real! A reddit post said that, at a British cinema talk/Q&A that Danny Boyle gave early this weekend he teased that he and his screenwriter's work with Bond may extend beyond just doing Bond 25's script. He very cryptically said that they were working on "supplemental" material as well that would connect to their film script somehow, and after seeing this, this comic may indeed be that material. Maybe we'll find out that Dynamite had a talk with EON and had Boyle and Hodge team up with the comics writers to do a prequel comic set before Bond 25! Pretty unprecedented if true.

    Well the post I quoted was from 2018 and this post is too. It was probably cancelled, which is a shame. If anyone has any more info though...

    While I'm here, could anyone recommend some Bond comics/graphic novels? Which are best?

    I was interested in the Casino Royale GN which is supposed to be good. Not too keen on the artwork though..
    I do like the art style of ORIGIN though.
    How are Hammerhead and Blackbox?
    The Warren Ellis Collection?

    Thanks!

    I thought about doing a full rundown as I have recently re-read most of these, but I dont't really have the time right now.

    But as a kind of primer, if you (ir anyone else interested) didn't know this yet:

    There are basically three strands to the Dynamite comics:
    The "main line" which has a slightly futuristic setting. Mainly 6 issue arcs that are in the same universe but apart from featuring the same base characters we know from the Bond novels and films, I think there is yet to be an instance where one arc is absolutely necessary for the second to work, so I would say you can read these in any order you want. (A slight departure from this is "James Bond 007" by Greg Pak, where Vol.1 leads straight into Vol. 2, so that should be considered one 12 issue arc). The titling and numbering of these is all over the place.. There are also a handful of one shots in this universe that can also basically be read in any order and the Felix Leiter spin-off, which does take place later in the canon, but is in my opinion so divorced from the rest of the stories, that you can pick it up whenever.
    "Origins" is what it says on the tin: The origins of the James Bond character, with the twist that this is the literary Bond from the novels, not the other comics, meaning the stories take place during World War II. There are two 6 issue collections, although the story arcs run a bit different. I would have to look it up, but I think it is mostly two or three issues per mini-arc. These should be read in order.
    The "adaptations" are graphic novels that adapt the Fleming novels more or less word for word. So far, they have done Casino Royale and Live and Let Die.

    As for recommendations, a few pointers that maybe help in the decision making:
    The Warren Ellis stories are the first in this incarnation of James Bond stories and set the tone to a certain degree. As the recurring characters are all from the novels and honestly every writer writes them however they want, you do not have to start here. I have heard from a few people that they didn't like how gory these two are and I would agree that they have the most graphic depictions of violence in the series. If you are concerned about that but still interested in the story, maybe pick up Vargr #1 first and if you can stomach the pre-title sequence, you should be fine.
    From the other arcs:
    Hammerhead (Andy Diggle) has risen in my estimation on re-read. It is a quite standard Bond story, that ticks all the boxes you expect in interesting ways.
    Black Box (Benjamin Percy), I don't like Lobosco's art style at all, so that kind of keeps me away from it. The story has some interesting beats and a good henchman, but - as has already mentioned - is slightly on the nose at times and can feel rushed.
    Kill Chain (Andy Diggle) is probably my favourite. Even though it suffers the same pacing issues all of the comics do, due to the 6-issue limit, it manages to fit in a good twisting plot and has some great scenes, that I personally could see brought to the big screen immediatly. Doesn't have a great villian but tries to lay some ground work for future installments.
    The Body (Ales Kot) is quite devisive in this community. I think it is better than people give it credit, but it is very expertimental and absolutely isn't the place to start.
    007/The Oddest Job (Greg Pak) is one I personally do not like all that much. The author seems more interested in the (nominally) secondary character he created for this than in James Bond.
    The same problem befalls Big Things (Vita Ayala and Danny Lore), but to me the writing is on a slightly higher level, so I prefer this to The Oddest Job, but both are lower on the list.
    The Felix Leiter spin-off (James Robinson) is, I think, very good, but defenitely it's own thing. Let me put it like this: If you felt like Felix should have been a bit less cheery at the end of Licence to Kill after his wife was killed and he was mutilated by a shark, this is the version of Felix for you.
    The one shots are also probably not where one would start, but are all nice little stories that I feel can be picked up at any point. Truly the equivalent to the Fleming short stories in that they feel slightly inconsequential and with lower stakes, but still can give interesting insights into the characters here and there.
    Reflections of Death is like a short story collection with one overarching plot. I like it on the whole (some stories more than others) but it feels almost like a cap on the stories, we've had until now as this is the one place some previously introduced original charcters return. So also maybe later on the reading list.

    Origins, I like a lot (although it also has better and worse arcs) and would recommend you check out. I have never read "Young Bond" but I am pretty sure, that these are not compatible to that, even though they are in a similar chronology. These are also not all that "Bondian". Meaning while the character of James is being shown and developed presumably to where he would be at the beginning of CR, they don't shove in to many references to the novels or the movies and there isn't a whole lot of the Bond formula to be found. I personally think they are better for it .

    The adaptations: I think they are interesting and if you want a new or different way to experience Fleming's writing, this works well. I thought LALD was slightly better than CR just because there is a bit more to show in that one. If you don't like the art style, don't pick it up. Read the novel instead. There is literally nothing the Graphic Novels will give you other than artistic depictions of what is going on (and the one niggle I have with them is that there are a handful of instances where there is a bit of a picture/text dissonance. For example, Bond's diving suit is described - in text in a box in the Graphic Novel - as tight fitting to the skin, and the pictures show him in something more like the loose suit in FYEO. Not deal-braking, but kind of strange.)


    I have gone on much much much too long. But I hope this gives you an intro.

    tl;dr: Start with Vargr, just because it was first, but maybe take a look at that #1 to see if you are ok with the level of gore, before buying the whole collection. Then I like Kill Chain and Hammerhead the next best out of the main line. Origins is good and worth a read. The adaptations are interesting and super close to the novels - that can be a pro and con I guess.
  • QsCatQsCat London
    Posts: 251
    QsCat wrote: »
    Holy crap, just did a random search and did find that this comic may actually be real! A reddit post said that, at a British cinema talk/Q&A that Danny Boyle gave early this weekend he teased that he and his screenwriter's work with Bond may extend beyond just doing Bond 25's script. He very cryptically said that they were working on "supplemental" material as well that would connect to their film script somehow, and after seeing this, this comic may indeed be that material. Maybe we'll find out that Dynamite had a talk with EON and had Boyle and Hodge team up with the comics writers to do a prequel comic set before Bond 25! Pretty unprecedented if true.

    Well the post I quoted was from 2018 and this post is too. It was probably cancelled, which is a shame. If anyone has any more info though...

    While I'm here, could anyone recommend some Bond comics/graphic novels? Which are best?

    I was interested in the Casino Royale GN which is supposed to be good. Not too keen on the artwork though..
    I do like the art style of ORIGIN though.
    How are Hammerhead and Blackbox?
    The Warren Ellis Collection?

    Thanks!

    I thought about doing a full rundown as I have recently re-read most of these, but I dont't really have the time right now.

    But as a kind of primer, if you (ir anyone else interested) didn't know this yet:

    There are basically three strands to the Dynamite comics:
    The "main line" which has a slightly futuristic setting. Mainly 6 issue arcs that are in the same universe but apart from featuring the same base characters we know from the Bond novels and films, I think there is yet to be an instance where one arc is absolutely necessary for the second to work, so I would say you can read these in any order you want. (A slight departure from this is "James Bond 007" by Greg Pak, where Vol.1 leads straight into Vol. 2, so that should be considered one 12 issue arc). The titling and numbering of these is all over the place.. There are also a handful of one shots in this universe that can also basically be read in any order and the Felix Leiter spin-off, which does take place later in the canon, but is in my opinion so divorced from the rest of the stories, that you can pick it up whenever.
    "Origins" is what it says on the tin: The origins of the James Bond character, with the twist that this is the literary Bond from the novels, not the other comics, meaning the stories take place during World War II. There are two 6 issue collections, although the story arcs run a bit different. I would have to look it up, but I think it is mostly two or three issues per mini-arc. These should be read in order.
    The "adaptations" are graphic novels that adapt the Fleming novels more or less word for word. So far, they have done Casino Royale and Live and Let Die.

    As for recommendations, a few pointers that maybe help in the decision making:
    The Warren Ellis stories are the first in this incarnation of James Bond stories and set the tone to a certain degree. As the recurring characters are all from the novels and honestly every writer writes them however they want, you do not have to start here. I have heard from a few people that they didn't like how gory these two are and I would agree that they have the most graphic depictions of violence in the series. If you are concerned about that but still interested in the story, maybe pick up Vargr #1 first and if you can stomach the pre-title sequence, you should be fine.
    From the other arcs:
    Hammerhead (Andy Diggle) has risen in my estimation on re-read. It is a quite standard Bond story, that ticks all the boxes you expect in interesting ways.
    Black Box (Benjamin Percy), I don't like Lobosco's art style at all, so that kind of keeps me away from it. The story has some interesting beats and a good henchman, but - as has already mentioned - is slightly on the nose at times and can feel rushed.
    Kill Chain (Andy Diggle) is probably my favourite. Even though it suffers the same pacing issues all of the comics do, due to the 6-issue limit, it manages to fit in a good twisting plot and has some great scenes, that I personally could see brought to the big screen immediatly. Doesn't have a great villian but tries to lay some ground work for future installments.
    The Body (Ales Kot) is quite devisive in this community. I think it is better than people give it credit, but it is very expertimental and absolutely isn't the place to start.
    007/The Oddest Job (Greg Pak) is one I personally do not like all that much. The author seems more interested in the (nominally) secondary character he created for this than in James Bond.
    The same problem befalls Big Things (Vita Ayala and Danny Lore), but to me the writing is on a slightly higher level, so I prefer this to The Oddest Job, but both are lower on the list.
    The Felix Leiter spin-off (James Robinson) is, I think, very good, but defenitely it's own thing. Let me put it like this: If you felt like Felix should have been a bit less cheery at the end of Licence to Kill after his wife was killed and he was mutilated by a shark, this is the version of Felix for you.
    The one shots are also probably not where one would start, but are all nice little stories that I feel can be picked up at any point. Truly the equivalent to the Fleming short stories in that they feel slightly inconsequential and with lower stakes, but still can give interesting insights into the characters here and there.
    Reflections of Death is like a short story collection with one overarching plot. I like it on the whole (some stories more than others) but it feels almost like a cap on the stories, we've had until now as this is the one place some previously introduced original charcters return. So also maybe later on the reading list.

    Origins, I like a lot (although it also has better and worse arcs) and would recommend you check out. I have never read "Young Bond" but I am pretty sure, that these are not compatible to that, even though they are in a similar chronology. These are also not all that "Bondian". Meaning while the character of James is being shown and developed presumably to where he would be at the beginning of CR, they don't shove in to many references to the novels or the movies and there isn't a whole lot of the Bond formula to be found. I personally think they are better for it .

    The adaptations: I think they are interesting and if you want a new or different way to experience Fleming's writing, this works well. I thought LALD was slightly better than CR just because there is a bit more to show in that one. If you don't like the art style, don't pick it up. Read the novel instead. There is literally nothing the Graphic Novels will give you other than artistic depictions of what is going on (and the one niggle I have with them is that there are a handful of instances where there is a bit of a picture/text dissonance. For example, Bond's diving suit is described - in text in a box in the Graphic Novel - as tight fitting to the skin, and the pictures show him in something more like the loose suit in FYEO. Not deal-braking, but kind of strange.)


    I have gone on much much much too long. But I hope this gives you an intro.

    tl;dr: Start with Vargr, just because it was first, but maybe take a look at that #1 to see if you are ok with the level of gore, before buying the whole collection. Then I like Kill Chain and Hammerhead the next best out of the main line. Origins is good and worth a read. The adaptations are interesting and super close to the novels - that can be a pro and con I guess.

    Wow thanks for all the suggestions. I ordered the Warren Ellis collection last night- seems like a good starting point and it's a nice looking edition. Once I've read through the 12 issues in there, I'll revisit your post.
  • QsCatQsCat London
    edited January 2021 Posts: 251
    The folio editions are amazing, but yeah I wouldn’t buy them *solely* for the illustrations. And my avatar is indeed Dalton, but from an unused Licence to Kill poster by the artist who did the poster for The Spy Who Loved Me:
    2lxi4bjhhsd41.jpg
    Ah ok, very nice, thanks. I'd like to see posters like this in the future, rather than the usual photoshopped images..
    One reason I want to give the comics a go is because they have so much potential to show what could be/have been. There could be a comic of License Revoked and other films that never happened such as Lazenby's second. We can see alternative adaptations, more faithful to the books, with different casting and bolder styling.
  • Posts: 9,730
    QsCat wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    Good morning my golden retrievers. Looks like Dynamite has announced a new comic and this one will be a movie tie in. Well kind of. It looks to be set between Spectre and Bond 25.
    DWZU5Jel.jpg
    Dynamite wrote:
    Synopsis:
    "The death of a British agent sends James Bond to the mountains of Hokkaido where the last report his colleague made had come from, leading to the discovery of a small village the world has not heard of. As suspicions arise, Bond unearths a scheme that a global consternation was to come around and revive the old tribe of Shogunate using unorthodox means that oversee a supernatural existence in the heart of terror."

    Looks like a must have for sure.

    Hey guys. Was this cancelled?

    hopefully it gets released at somepoint
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