Before Ian Fleming's secret agent 007 carved a lucrative niche in film, a daily comic strip ran in London's Daily Express
beginning in 1958. Unlike the films, the comics stuck rather closely to the source novels, or as closely as the censors would allow. This fourth collection of the adapted novels includes Goldfinger
, Thunderball
and three of the five short stories from For Your Eyes Only
and offers readers a glimpse into the tense world of Cold War-era espionage. Yet while Fleming's work is a rich foundation, the pacing of his stories is rendered choppy by the daily serialized format, and Gammidge's attempts at translating Fleming's taut suspense are flat. McLusky's art keeps the scripts' realistic tone and is well executed, yet it doesn't draw readers into the action; the effect resembles looking at still photographs of people in sharp late-1950s outfits with a bit of stiffly depicted violence thrown in for good measure. A curiosity for Fleming aficionados—there's an introduction by Shirley Eaton, who played Jill Masterson in Goldfinger
, and several background essays—this collection probably won't interest others. (Jan.)
