The Many Lives of James Bond

by Mark Edlitz

  Dad took Fleming’s description and then made more of a man out of the character. He saw Bond as a rugged, handsome fella and developed this his own way, which Fleming liked.

  John McLusky’s portrait of James Bond.

  ILLUSTRATION USED WITH PERMISSION OF GRAHAM MCCLUSKY

  Ian Fleming commissioned an unknown artist to illustrate James Bond. Your father’s Bond was quite different from the original interpretation, which had angular features.

  I have the actual artist’s impression, which Fleming commissioned; it looks very “Sherlock Holmes” or “Sexton Blake” [the British detective] rather “po-faced” [serious]. Dad’s version is perhaps more like the way Fleming would have liked to be, had Fleming been the spy he always wanted to be. Dad decided that Bond should be more rugged and good looking.

  What was a typical workday for your father?

  He always started early and didn’t allow any distractions. He worked from a studio in our garden. We lived in the middle of the countryside and it was the perfect surroundings, being so quiet. He took breaks and meals and then a long walk after work. A strict routine.

  In terms of nuts and bolts, what was the process of drawing a Bond comic strip?

  Dad would receive a plain typed script from the writer, in stages. Perhaps just half a page at a time. He would then interpret the story and develop it into three or four frames. This happened every day. He would sketch in pencil, straight onto the board and work the sketches in a fluid manner until he saw what he wanted. Then he would “ink in” the lines, add body and texture, shadows and tone, using Zip Tone—a plastic dot screen film with various tonal qualities, ideal for the printing process. He would then touch out errors and loose ends with a thick white ink. This was before White-Out or Tippex. Then he would wrap the board and send it by train to the parcels office in London, from which the Daily Express would collect it each day. No pressure then.

  The average strip contains three or four panels. How long did it take him to draw them?

  One per day.

  What did his studio look like?

  The studio was built from the ruins of three old cottages, which were at the far end of our garden. The only salvageable parts were the brick chimney gables. A studio was built on the upper level with some stone stairs leading up. Inside it was wood paneled in a light pine, with lots of huge windows and skylights. He had a desk, a drawing board, and some other furniture. There were lots of paints and inks, pencils, etcetera, and pictures on the walls. It was a relaxed and perfect environment.

  John McLusky.

  PERSONAL COLLECTION OF GRAHAM MCLUSKY

  What are your most vivid memories of your dad working?

  He used to wear a green transparent eyeshade and worked with such concentration. He didn’t want disturbances but would always welcome his kids into the studio, as we were always curious.

  What insights did he give you about his approach to drawing Bond?

  I’m not sure if he ever did. The process of drawing Bond on a daily basis didn’t allow much time to think. He had to put down his first thoughts, which in most cases were perfect. He did, however, do the most meticulous research, using references he compiled. For instance, for Casino Royale, he took the family to France, took many photos of the French buildings, a casino, people etcetera, etcetera. He even had a Walther PPK and a firearms license so that he could draw Bond’s gun properly.

  Did your father have any contact with Ian Fleming?

  I don’t know if Dad met Fleming but I do have a letter from Fleming’s secretary stating that Mr. Fleming is pleased with Dad’s interpretation and was happy to proceed [with the strip and with McLusky as the illustrator].

  What are the hallmarks of a John McLusky Bond strip? How would you characterize his drawings?

  Meticulous detail in every way. Slick, with each panel a work of art.

  In 1966, the Daily Express hired Yaroslav Horak to draw Bond. Do you know why?

  I really don’t know why but I think that the newspaper wanted a change. I don’t think dad was happy about it at all, but he never really spoke about it.

  About fifteen years later, your dad drew five more original Bond stories from 1981 to 1983. What did it mean to him to return to Bond?

  I remember Dad was finding it rather awkward as Bond became a more violent man and Dad disagreed somewhat with the way it was going. However, some of Dad’s later work became some of the slickest he ever did. His drawings were always full of life.

  There are about 311 panels in the From Russia with Love strip. Drawing a strip seems like demanding work. What toll did it take on your father?

  One a day. It was relentless. He had to take regular exercise, walks, and get his mind off it regularly, too. He was a clever fella and had a wonderful mind and a fabulous sense of humor. He was used to drawing boards, bad posture [from being hunched over his drawing table for extended periods], and getting on with things.

  What became of his original artwork?

  My brother and I have some of it.

  Did drawing Bond hold a special place in your father’s heart or was it just another job?

  I think that over the years it became quite consuming and Dad got to know Bond very well. It was a job indeed and it was his way of supporting his family.

  What place does John McLusky have in the Bond legacy?

  I think it was giving a great deal of pleasure to a huge number of Daily Express readers. However, the fact is that Dad developed the face of Bond. No other face existed and that’s the man we all grew up with. [Four] years after the first strip cartoon, the first film was made. The man chosen to play Bond looked uncannily like the image Dad developed beforehand. Also, note the resemblance of parts of the film to some of Dad’s panels. They were used as the storyboard.

  WRITING AND ILLUSTRATING BOND GRAPHIC NOVELS

  MIKE GRELL

  Mike Grell adapted the film Licence to Kill for the comic book (with writer Richard Ashford and artists Chuck Austen, Tom Yeates, and Stan Woch), and he wrote and illustrated the original three-part sprawling graphic novel Permission to Die (1989–1991). Bond’s assignment in Permission to Die is to extract an eccentric physicist’s niece from behind the Iron Curtain, in exchange for the scientist’s plans for an advanced, low-cost satellite launch system.

  How did you adapt Licence to Kill into a comic book?

  I was given the shooting script and a ton of on-set photographs. I was responsible for constructing a story out of that. If you know anything about how hard it is to adapt a novel into a screenplay, then you know there’s so much that has to be thrown out. Compound that with trying to cram a two-hour-plus film into forty-odd pages of comic book. It’s difficult. There’s a lot that gets lost by the wayside. Also, the script I was working from didn’t contain all the material from the finished film. For instance, a prominent sequence, which featured Wayne Newton and his religious group, was not in the working script that I was given.

  Anything else?

  The other thing that was missing from the adaptation was the scene in which they’re fighting in the factory. James Bond and Dario, one of the villains played by Benicio Del Toro, are fighting in the factory that’s grinding so much cocaine into powder that there’s white dust in the air the entire time. Those guys would have overdosed.

  The Bond in the comic book doesn’t look like Timothy Dalton. I understand that you weren’t permitted to portray Dalton and you were instructed to create a composite Bond.7

  I think it was based on the universal image of Bond that people kind of had in their mind. By the time it got translated from layouts into the finished form, the rendering became quite similar to the depiction in the newspaper strip. And it’s different by far from what I had portrayed that same year in Permission to Die. For what it’s worth, the reason that I didn’t illustrate Licence to Kill was because I was already working on Permission to Die.

  How did you get the job to write Permission to Die?

  I was the hot
ticket at the time. I had just had a massive success with Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters (1987), and I was well known for my series Jon Sable Freelance (1983–1988), which has certain aspects of international intrigue and kind of James Bond–type action. It was a combination of the two that did it.

  Did they suggest certain story elements?

  No, it was all mine.

  How did you craft that story?

  Simple. Take your basic elements of James Bond: exotic locations, beautiful girls, dastardly villains, and a plot that could either destroy or possibly save the world. I threw in a twist—you think the scientist is creating a technology to save the world but his ultimate goal is to destroy it.

  I picked up Permission to Die basically more or less where On Our Majesty’s Secret Service left off. I incorporated some of the elements that were current at the time. In the John Gardner novels, Bond had been given a new gun, the ASP 9 millimeter, which is a great gun. But it’s not likely to be the type of weapon that a spy would use. But the Walther was popular for its concealability. The ASP was a larger caliber, and graphically it’s a beautiful gun to draw. At that time, we didn’t have compact 9 millimeters like we do today, and it was a handmade custom type gun. It was a modification of a Smith & Wesson. I added all those elements.

  The story itself contains a number of elements from the movies. There are references to Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice. I referred to the death of Tracy, Bond’s wife, and set him in the time and emotional state that he would’ve been after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I didn’t refute everything that had gone on after that. But I didn’t refer to Licence to Kill at all.

  The only restriction that I was given was that I was not allowed to use characters that had been created specifically for the films. Anything that Fleming had created was pretty much carte blanche. But I couldn’t use Q, for instance, so I used Major Boothroyd. That didn’t hinder me.

  You had Bond driving his famous Aston Martin.

  Right. At the time, Bond’s car in the novel was a Saab, which is ridiculous. John Gardner put him in a Saab [for several of his Bond novels, including License Renewed (1981), For Special Services (1982), Icebreaker (1983), Nobody Lives Forever (1986), Never Send Flowers (1993), and SeaFire (1994)],8 but I went back to the Aston Martin DB5 because nothing else says Bond like the Aston Martin.

  How long did it take to write the treatment for the three comic books?

  The treatment probably took somewhere between two and four weeks. That’s my average working speed. Then it went through several passes back and forth between me, Eclipse [the publishers] and Glidrose Publications [the rights holder, which has subsequently changed its name to Ian Fleming Publications].

  How do you write your treatments?

  I write my story treatments the same way you would write a screen treatment, which is everything is written present tense. Bond leaps from the car, rolls to the ground, and comes up firing. It has complete information, background information, and everything that goes in the scenes—the background of the story, information about the characters. Then I do a complete finished script.

  How many pages is a finished script for something like this?

  It runs on average of one page of script to one-and-a-half pages per finished page of artwork.

  Sounds like a hefty document.

  It is a fairly hefty document. I write sparsely, but I also know that I have to show the editor exactly what I’m going to do. In this case, I had to get approval from a lot of different parties, including Glidrose.

  What feedback did they give you?

  I learned that people outside the comic industry who are doing a cold read don’t necessarily understand that the scene descriptions are not going to wind up in print. [Laughs.] It’s just to establish the visual.

  I also learned that there are language differences between English and American [English]. The funniest example was this scene where, in order to get Bond away from a casino, where they’re under the watchful eye of the bad guys, this beautiful girl [Mary Chase] spills her foo-foo drink all over Bond’s suit, and drags him into the

  Mike Grell’s portrait of James Bond for the graphic novel Permission to Die.

  COURTESY OF MIKE GRELL

  men’s room to get him cleaned up. The accident is just her ploy to get Bond alone. In the bathroom, she bends over to check under the doors of the stalls to make sure that there’s nobody there. In my scene description, I wrote: “She bends over. Bond eyes her fanny appreciatively.” But the people at Glidrose had a fit. They pointed out that that was unacceptable because, in England, the word fanny refers to a particular part of the female anatomy, which is why they don’t call it a fanny pack. They call it a belt pack. Even though the word fanny was never going to appear in the book, to get the script approved, I had to eliminate it. [The finished comic shows Bond admiring Mary Chase’s derrière without any written characterization.]

  Any notes about how you handled the character of Bond?

  Actually, no. They pretty much left me alone. I had read all the Bond books, all the Bond stories, including Colonel Sun [by Kingsley Amis]. I had read everything that Fleming ever wrote, multiple times, and I was something of an expert on Bond myself. I also had Raymond Benson’s The James Bond Bedside Companion (1984).

  It’s a fantastic resource.

  Yeah, Raymond Benson’s James Bond Bedside Companion is on my nightstand. It was literally my bedside companion. Even before I was ever associated with James Bond, I had two copies. I kept one on my nightstand and one in my studio.

  To add authenticity, I made contact with the British embassy, and it was cooperative. A gentleman there gave me a lot of background information that I used in little bits and pieces. For instance, as a cartoonist, there are a lot of things that you have to know. When somebody writes: “The setting is New York City, a squad car comes rolling down the street,” you have to know that. When I wrote the scene that involved police cars, I had to find out. They’re white in the middle with a red stripe all around them. Because they look like two pieces of white bread with jelly in the middle, they are colloquially called a jelly sandwich. Today, the information is readily available on the internet. But, in those days, you had to be more resourceful.

  It has to be a formidable task to plot a Bond story.

  The only really daunting part for me was making sure that I lived up to the audience’s expectations of who and what James Bond is. I wanted to provide all the dramatic and romantic and high-action elements, the high-tech goodies and wonderful toys that Bond has at his disposal but ultimately strip it down as the best James Bond stories do. Even though he’s got all these gadgets at his disposal, ultimately it comes down to the man.

  Fancy tools don’t do you any good if there isn’t just a hell of a person behind it to wield those weapons and those gadgets. That was foremost in my mind. I wanted to include all the elements in that story that I wanted to see in a James Bond story. The basic plot is that there is a scientist [Erik Widziadlo] who is working on a new system that could possibly be a weapon. Or it could possibly be for the betterment of mankind. And the only kicker is that he’s a refugee from behind the Iron Curtain, and he has left his niece [Edáine Gayla] behind, and Widziadlo wants her brought out before he’ll turn over his information to the secret service. The first two issues have to do with Bond fulfilling that mission.

  It harkens back to From Russia with Love. I wrote a similar scene in a gypsy camp—just because in the movie, it was such a cool bit, right? I’ve got Bond in a knife fight with a gypsy, challenging him for the beautiful girl. I’ve got the beautiful girl fighting for Bond. I’ve got the shoot ’em up, bang-bang action. I added a clever little helicopter that ran on hydrogen peroxide–powered motors, the same way that the jetpack works. They were actually selling it through Sharper Image. But it was something that could be transported in for short flights, and that was the whole point of it.

  Then
I have the pursuit where Bond and Edáine Gayla are running from the deadly killer who is after them. Now, the killer has already proven that he can kill from a great long distance, and he’s basically just a presence in the background whom you never get to know any more than you got to know the Red Grant character in From Russia with Love. The killer is more of an entity than a person. Then after Bond finally succeeds in delivering the girl, he comes to find out in the last issue that all is not as was expected in the first place. The first twist is that Edáine Gayla is not the scientist’s niece; she’s his lover. The second twist is that Erik Widziadlo’s invention is not for the betterment of mankind; instead, he intends to shake up the world to make everyone wake up to the dangers that exist.

  I based Dr. Erik Widziadlo on Captain Nemo [and his look and penchant for playing the piano] are based on the Phantom of the Opera. Widziadlo wears a mask that covers half of his face. He’s an elegant-looking gentleman who lives in an underground cavern, which overlooks a huge lake in northern Idaho. He has a submarine system that’s bringing in all of his supplies, and he’s building a full-size operational model of a smaller rocket system that was being developed at the University of Washington at the time, which, using a tube, enables you to fire projectiles of an oxygen-methane mixture into space. As the projectile goes forward, sealed off by various membranes, it sucks the combustible material in at the front and ignites it out the back. It’s reusable and it’s economical.

  Most interestingly of all, the launch system has absolutely no weapons value, because it has to be built on a permanent location, like on the side of a mountain, which means you could aim it only up into space and not at another country. You can’t reposition it. There were launchers being built back in the day that could throw projectiles more than one hundred miles. This was designed to put projectiles into orbit. It would have only peaceful application. Well, that’s not exactly what he has in mind. Instead, he’s planning not to launch a projectile into orbit; he’s going to launch a nuclear device, and his target is Victoria, British Columbia, which is on Vancouver Island, on the northwest coast. In his mind, targeting Victoria would limit the number of casualties, because despite being the capital of British Columbia, it is not a particularly large city. But it would send a hell of a message. This guy’s intent is to wake up the world and end the Cold War. The Cold War was still going on when I drew the story and turned it in.