The James Bond comic strip originally ran from 1958 to 1983 with Ian Fleming’s suave spy appearing in a total of 52 story arcs which were serialised in British daily newspapers. The Bond strips have been reprinted several times with Titan Books currently producing oversized omnibus collections of Bond’s most thrilling and dangerous missions.

Of the seven stories collected in The James Bond Omnibus 002, ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ and ‘You Only Live Twice’ were adapted by Henry Gammidge and illustrated by John McLusky while ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, ‘The Living Daylights’, ‘Octopussy’, ‘The Hildebrand Rarity’ and ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ were adapted by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by Yaroslav Horak.

The majority, if not all, of the stories collected here will no doubt be familiar due to the film adaptations being bank holiday television staples: In ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ James Bond rails against his fruitless search for Blofeld while in ‘You Only Live Twice’ he is tasked with convincing the head of Japan’s secret service to provide information about an informant within the Soviet Union. ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ sees Bond head to Jamaica to try and assassinate Francisco Scaramanga, while ‘Octopussy’ involves a hunt for a World War Two veteran suspected in a murder plot involving a cache of Nazi gold and ‘The Living Daylights’ features a morose Bond sent to assist Agent 272 escape from East Berlin. ‘The Hildebrand Rarity’ was the only story that I was completely unfamiliar with and, peculiarly, involves Bond helping an American millionaire search for a rare pink and black fish. Finally, in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’, Bond is dispatched to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Soviet and British submarines.

In recent years comic strips have been eclipsed by comics and graphic novels when it comes to dramatic narrative so that the daily strips are now far more likely to contain bite-size humorous episodes and amusing vignettes than long-running tales of action and adventure. These James Bond strips therefore belong to a past era of comic storytelling where attention spans were longer, readers were impressively dedicated and well-plotted stories were shaken, not stirred. That’s not to suggest that The James Bond Omnibus 002 is only worthwhile for nostalgic musings, the stories are generally rip-roaring adventures that should still appeal to readers today and the black and white art is evocative of the 1960s aesthetic [when Bond was really at his prime] and often delightful.

There are, however, a couple of issues worth bearing in mind. It can take a while to get into the flow of reading these stories as, since every strip had to serve as a recap of previous strips as well as move the action along, there is a great deal of exposition, which can prove distracting and superfluous when presented in a collected edition. Additionally, some of the dialogue can be pretty cheesy [or “of its time” if you want to be polite] and the earnestness is sometime overbearing.

Having said all that, The James Bond Omnibus 002 is a fun, pulpy and action-packed read that doesn’t take itself overly seriously. The stories may be well-known, but reading them in a daily comic strip format introduces a new dimension to Bond and provides a bit of old-fashioned, if strangely commercially-aware, escapism.

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