Review by C.J. Bunce
Octopussy and The Living Daylights was the 14th and final book of Ian Fleming’s James Bond works. Published posthumously in 1966, the stories would take on new lives in movies, the first starring Roger Moore, the second starring Timothy Dalton. Before both of those films, Bond fans in England would see both stories played out in newspaper comic strips. Titan Books has re-issued the comic strips in giant collected editions reprinting the strips at their original scale, first with its Dr. No (1958-60) collection, then in its Spectre edition (reviewed here), and next in its Goldfinger (1960-66) edition (reviewed here). The Living Daylights story was captured in the Goldfinger collection, and Titan has just released its next edition in the series, Octopussy–The Complete Ian Fleming’s James Bond–The Classic Comic Strip Collection 1966-69.
This fourth book in the series leads off with Fleming favorites Octopussy and The Hildebrand Rarity, and it also includes two new stories featuring Bond from the newspaper strip series writer Jim Lawrence: The Harpies and River of Death. Artist Yaroslav Horak’s work reflects the style of the era, and his characters have the look of Neal Adams’ comic book art from the 1960s. And how many stories in comics from the 1960s and 1970s had to include the obligatory harpy story?
A common theme through these four stories is the use of animals in Bond tales. Octopussy is obvious, with its titular character: Major Smythe’s pet octopus that he subjects to experiments. In The Hildebrand Rarity, antagonist Milton Krest collects endangered sea life. Jezebel the pet stoat is a feature of The Harpies, and a monkey, bats, a jaguar and Dr. Cat all factor in to the plot of River of Death. As M mentions to Bond in River of Death, “Very interesting indeed, James… it’s the third odd case in five months involving an animal.” That sort of sounds like a comment someone would have made in the office reading all these stories in a row back in the 1960s.
