Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dynamite, entertainment, ian fleming, james bond, jason masters, Vargr, warren ellis

New James Bond Comic Feels Like An Ian Fleming Novel

I grew up with the James Bond movies. Roger Moore was already the star when I saw my first one, but I went back and saw the Sean Connery and George Lazenby films and happily continued on through Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and now Daniel Craig. If not for attending Blizzcon this weekend I would have been over seeing Spectre already. When Craig took on the role there was a lot of talk about how he was more violent and thuggish than the previous actors and fit the character created in the Ian Fleming novels better. Having gone back and read a few including the original, Casino Royale, there is some truth in that.

With in the first few pages of the new Dynamite series subtitled Vargr, Warren Ellis gives us a James Bond that feels like he comes out of the novel pages more than from the big screen. We're eight pages in before we get our first dialogue and a page later we get our first kill. The scene relies heavily on Jason Masters art and it works well. The scene is visceral in it's pace and action. We're more focused on the man being chased rather than the one doing the chasing… but with the way he seems to be almost toying with the mouse, the cat becomes an imposing figure even before we know for sure who he is. When it is revealed to be Bond, we also find out what is likely to be a major key to the story… OO8 has been killed.

The rest of the issue is mainly set up. We see Bond at MI6 and meet Moneypenny, M and Q whose relationships with Bond are pretty much what we expected. M thinks he's a blunt object used to hit things with, Q has little time for him and his choice of weapon and Moneypenny is flirty but unobtainable… or is that the other way around with those two. But the Q scene may be setting up something big for later on, the fact that even Double O agents have to turn their weapons in when in country. I'm sure having an unarmed James Bond won't turn up as a bad thing later… right? This set up doesn't come across subtly but I'm not sure how it could. Bond would never be happy being unarmed so this tweak becomes obvious and unless it's a red herring or a long play set up… it was a necessary evil to get it out of the way quickly.

Ellis' Bond is violent, sarcastic, bad with authority and gets the job done. Very much the character Ian Fleming created over sixty years ago. The first issue is light on plot, setting up our heroes current situation, a hint at the villain, he latest mission and a potential gotcha for later. It's everything you'd expect from a Bond story and it's obvious that Ellis is not going to rush to hook readers. It's more of a "you know you want this, follow the bread crumbs" and that is exactly how a James Bond series should start. This feel like a classic James Bond novel.

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