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And besides, where does it state that it's after Golden Gun? I don't even see it as that universe, it's another timeline. Well it must be, as I can't see Flemings Bond acting like that. I would never happen, it feels completely wrong for me.
And still, that's beside the point. A character can never lose it's fundamental personality. If Batman would suddenly start killing, the fans would revolt (oh wait, that happened with BvS...). Fleming never intended for Bond to be a brutal killing machine, then you can never, under any circumstances, portay him like that. You can change his motivation to become more persistent, more determined etc., but that's never shown in the Vargr story either.
In the comic, they never make references to the past, thankfully, but numerous times both the publisher's senior editor, Joseph Rybandt, as well as Ellis himself did state that the timeline is the same as Fleming's adventures, which have occurred, only moved up from their Cold War period to an adjustment that'd suit the modern setting. Say, if VARGR is set in 2016, You Only Live Twice and Blofeld's death happened around 2008. Dates are just my assumptions. But, they did say it was happening that way. Ellis also said that he is a continuation writer that picks up from Fleming's concept, ignoring Gardner and the rest. His Bond certainly wasn't a reboot with a Year One (even though, a period piece Year One story is in the works that takes place in the original Fleming timeline... Well... long before the events of Casino Royale, serving as prequels to Fleming's novels).
It depends on which part of "fundamentalism" you're referring to. Some aspects can deeply change and even be overlooked. And to tell you the truth, the original Batman had no problem with killing. In fact, the earlier Batman comics read like pulp fiction, making him much of a brutal and sinister man. It wasn't until after mid-40s they converted him into a "monk" and took away the guns he had. And in Batman v Superman it was heavily understandable why was he a killer. Because he understood that ideology does not work. Just ask The Punisher. In VARGR, Bond is just that. Doesn't care about whoever stands in his way. He's not a complete Fleming's Bond rip-off. He's far more red-blooded than we'd assume, and I certainly have no problem with that. It's Warren Ellis at his best... Well, until Eidolon happened, far better than VARGR.
And yes, you can think along the lines of Fleming in a modern day thriller. A secret agent would never go barging in killing everyone he sees, it's stupid and clumsy. "Don't use more violence than the situation demands" is the normal modern day motto for any law enforcer, so why shouldn't Bond also follow that?
And why would Bond even consider using those bullets that completely mutilates the enemy? That's just causing more suffering than is needed. It becomes a gory, blood-fest, and I never enjoy that anytime, Bond or not.
This is just not my Bond, not the kind of Bond I want to read about.
Batmans motivations in BvS are never shown, I don't understand it at all. He acts illogical and out of character. The interesting dynamic with Batman is that his ideology is his burden and motivation at the same time: stopping crime, but can never kill. If he kills he becomes the same as the man who killed his parents, and that must never happen. That is the interesting dynamic which makes Batman tick for me.
Fleming's Bond in his respective novels was always in remorse, regret and doubt. For a secret agent in the 21st century, that doesn't work. His Bond was more of a hard boiled detective caught up in the spy game than he was a secret agent that we've seen with Sean Connery and onward. This Bond in the comics isn't violent for the sake of it, and he does come to be rung as crazy at times, but he isn't a serial killer psychopath. I didn't find that to be anywhere of all the panels I looked at. He just has no respect for the rival's life who threatens global and national security. Nowhere being clumsy. In this business, it's "kill or be killed".
I think the bullet and the choice of it don't really fall upon Bond's shoulders. That's Boothroyd you should blame who's quite the gun enthusiast. Unlike the current film series' MI-6, here all the Secret Service staff are relics and are ready to do whatever means necessary to protect their fence or accomplish their objectives. Even Moneypenny has a gun around she constantly cleans to have it ready in case M is to be protected from an outsider (See issues #1 and #9, respectively). That kind of bullet was given to Bond because he was walking into a high-grade-artillery-equipped battleship crawling around mercenaries that is decommissioned. Not to mention, those who are dangerously armed with killer prosthetics. Even Fleming's Bond would have taken the matter as seriously as this Bond would have.
Now, I understand this kind of portrait is not for everyone. And it has deployed many fans for that reason. But, I'm enjoying it as far as we go. It's definitely my kind of Bond. The one who stops at nothing.
Batman's motivations weren't explained vocally, but Jason Todd's costume with Joker's handwriting "The Jokes Are On You, Batman!" was written with yellow spray made it quite clear. Indicating to the fact that the Death In The Family story has already happened, and Batman has gone berserk afterwards in the vein of The Dark Knight Returns. Sure, he still doesn't directly kill in that comics, but if the knife hits the gut, everyone get to have a final straw. It appears in this case Batman has already had it.
I am one of the few existing around that actually encourages Batman to kill. Because if you constantly put an enemy in jail or an asylum (with Lord knows how many losses amidst), then have them escape, them put them back again, with the cycle looping around, is no different from having a virus hovering around your property and letting the infection grow bigger. If it were me, I'd simply kill the virus with no regrets, knowing it endangers me and those around me. That's how I see it.
I feel the need to make Batman clarifications, and it's kind of a must. The Batman in BvS isn't anything like The Dark Knight Returns Batman. That Batman gave up the second Jason died as he put the blame on his own shoulders and vowed to never bring that hell on another person/kid again, while this Batman just cares about nothing regarding humanity anymore and kills everyone that so much as looks at him wrong. He acts nothing like Batman in any way, beyond his fighting style. Adding to that, he thinks anybody who poses a 1% chance of doing harm (which is everyone) should die for certain. Now that's berserk.
And I'll always be with Batman on the no-killing side. People use the excuse that Joker being alive means danger to innocents each time he escapes, but if Batman crosses that line he not only disgraces the laws he fights to safeguard, but also acts disloyal to Gordon and the entire GCPD, in addition to all in his Batman family he is a role model to. If Batman suddenly decided to kill his enemies, Gordon and Gotham's police would then have to mount a hunt for his head, and because he killed, he would have to go into hiding as armed cops chase after him, which would leave the city vulnerable to attack as they are all distracted. The cost of Batman killing both personally to him and societally in the scope of the larger Gotham City just doesn't make sense, just as it's wrong for a cop to take up arms and kill a perp who has been a repeat criminal. We have rules and regulations for a reason, and such a momentous choice (to kill) shouldn't be placed on any one man's shoulders, especially Batman.
However, there is something Batman could do. Say he is after to take Joker's life, he can actually hold himself from taking further lives. The man is determined to do anything, even when he had to battle his addiction to Venom he had to lock himself in the Batcave for quite sometime. I don't think crossing the line would be a problem if he develops a thought of a plan to execute. It's just me, perhaps. But, when necessary, I do believe he should take a life. That is when I'm complying to the "No Killing Rule".
This is one of the examples I'm referring to.
Not everything is for everyone, I guess. It's one of the reasons I like The Shadow a lot better than Batman, which at first, he was a complete xerox of, right down to the Colt M1911s. The Case of The Criminal Syndicate is one of my favourite Batman stories just because for that reason when he points out that the man he kicked off the ledge to a tank full of acid, "deserved it".
I actually liken the comparison I made two paragraphs before to John Drake of Danger Man. A spy who prohibits himself from carrying a gun and killing. He's the Batman of the secret agents. Always finds a way to apprehend the villains, and only kills as a last of the last resorts. I believe Batman, at least, should be like that. Do things that are justified.
Coming back to Bond, I wouldn't wish him to resort to "not killing" just because it's "an awful thing". He's a government gun. Of course he should kill and do whatever means necessary to accomplish his mission. I am sure there are many who will agree with me on that case.
Coming back to Bond, he kills when necessary because it's part of his job. License to kill & all that. Various versions of Bond approach the task differently. Roger Moore's Bond would probably be aghast if he could look through the years/dimensions/whatever else separates them and see Daniel Craig's Bond racking up the body count. Is one Bond more "valid" than the other? I think not. I may enjoy one more than the other, you may have exactly the opposite assessment. They're both still Bond. So is Fleming's and so is Warren Ellis's.
+1
And yes, @ClarkDevlin, the blood splattering is a big problem with me. It is an aesthetics I don't associate with Bond and cannot accept. I just don't like it. "My Bond" doesn't brutaly kill anyone, without a juste cause.
Of course it would work in the 21st century, why wouldn't it? These days the difference between good and evil is so gray, while in Flemings days it was more black and white. A man with remorse, regret and doubt is normal, it's probable, it's even extremely likely that a man that has to kill deals with those emotions, no matter what era we're in. I would actually say that those emotions where far more unusal back in the 50s/60s. I suspect that in the post-WW2 era it was much more easy for a British agent to justify their causes. The russians and communists were the "bad guys", and you could kill them without hesistating becasue they were "commies". Nowadays the threat feels more hidden, and with that a feeling of uncertainty.
I don't understand why an agent in the 21st century can't have emotions. I think Flemings Bond would fit perfectly in todays world (minus the racisty stuff and all that....). Doesn't Craig deal with those exact emotions in his respective movies?
1-First kill: Unnamed thug who appears to have assassinated 008.
2-Second kill (overall): The Lebanese crime clan and his thugs. Justified. Why? Survival. He actually ended the man's pain fair and square, no way the latter would have survived after such wounds. I am sure all the Bond shootouts aren't that different in the films, either. Had they been R-Rated, all these fictitious blood spattering would have been added.
3-Third kill: Bryan Masters. The psychopathic prosthetically-equipped maniac sent by Slaven Kurjak to kill Bond as he also killed the MI-6 staff. Bond did whatever he found necessary. Both interrogated the man with the syringe with the intention of having him give up the information he has, and disabled his foe.
4-Fourth kill: Dharma Reach. After a struggle on the docks, he kicks her off the ledge into the water where her prosthetics explode. Bond did much worse before in both literary and cinematic form.
5-Fifth kill (overall): The guards on the Norwegian docks. That's called disabling enemy eyes while sneaking around.
6-Sixth kill (overall): The HNoMS Vargr mercenaries, who are as psychotically insane as Masters and Reach were, and dare I say with heavier artillery in their possession. Bond couldn't have won a fistfight with them, and dare I say he didn't have much time to pick on them one by one. So, he did the right thing and cleared his way out with whatever he found in his possession.
7-Seventh kill: An injured Slaven Kurjak. What's the point of keeping him alive, knowing he'll lie his way into going down the same path as he was before? Men like Bond are hired to put men like Kurjak down. Elliot Carver was no different. And that's just one example.
So, in analysis of all this "psychopathic killing" criteria, I don't see much of a drift headed away from the regularity of whatever James Bond is.
I'm afraid you lost me there. I wasn't commenting on who the enemy was and what was in the past, never was either the communists or the Russians were the subject of discussion. We were speaking of it as a threat, and it was merely a subsidiary of the topic we had. Fleming's Bond had different methods that don't work now. Just as before Fleming's Bond, the era of Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming's operational system of the spy agency and its agents were different. The spy game is not the same as it was 30 years ago. It's not George Smileys out there anymore, it's the Jason Bournes and Jack Reachers. Combatant systems are way more different as spies are no longer relying on Judo chops or Roundhouse Kung Fu kicks. It's Krav Maga they employ as their martial arts primarily. They don't use old guns. Just as they don't use old strategies to spare the life of an enemy.
Doubt is always there. It has to be. Bond is the kind of person, however, who kills first asks questions later. I believe that's a common knowledge. He doesn't spare a villain's life (save for Dominic Greene, and that's because he tauntingly had different perspective in mind for him. He didn't kill him, but didn't save him either, knowing he'll die in the desert), I don't remember such an event anyway, only in Carte Blanche (which is panned by many fans) where he's a bit too over-sensitive who refuses to shoot a thug to death even though it imposes as a danger to him. In 21st century, a spy acts more in the vein of what Chris Ryan and Andy McNab introduced in the 90s in their respective books (Try Bravo Two Zero), and definitely doesn't employ a more diplomatic approach to converse with the opposition. The enemy nowadays, which by the way are no longer nations but corporations and organizations, is more blood-thirsty and radical than they were in Fleming's days after WWII. You don't know which way they'd come so you don't have a moment to waste to question yourself whether you should pull the trigger or not. Safety first. Or die... They know the consequences.
Clearly emotions were definitely not part of the subject. Whether Bond cries over or grieves someone's death is not pointed out. Remorse and regret are different things. If Bond has to regret what he does and sees killing as a bad thing, he would have quit his job a long time ago. He wouldn't have become a spy, at all. He doesn't glorify it nor enjoys it, but he doesn't feel bad about it, either. It's his job, as I said before, he's a government gun. A blunt instrument.
Your only problem with it is the display of the red colour that represent blood which is all over the place during the action sequences. That's what I understood. Had they not included that one single element, yet kept the action sequences, shootout and everything else the same, I don't think I would have heard all this complaint that overshadows other excuses to extend your disdain of one element that ruined the experience for you.
Bond doesn't spare bad guys' life, but he never makes anyone suffer. If I see panels with people suffering, even bad guys, I feel that Bond has done wrong. It's an important part for me: Bond can't do wrong. Well... of course he can do wrong, all people do from time to time, but you have to show his emotions if he does. I get the feeling that this Bond is a happy-go-lucky guy who enjoys killing.
Bond kills, of course he does, it's his job, but because he doesn't enjoy killing he doesn't want to cause suffering. Even if it's a horrible, evil villain Bond doesn't torture, doesn't prolong anyones suffering. In the Helsinki sequence, why does Bond cut off the thugs foot and fingers with a shovel? It's a way too brutal act for "my Bond" to do. He could without a doubt have solved the situation far more cleanly and effectively.
I often refer to "my Bond", because all people tend to see Bond differently. We know so little about his background and who he is. He's almost like a blank sheet where you, as a reader or viewer, fill in the blanks. That is what makes Bond so damn interesting, that's why I think Bond works so well for so many people. You take the character as you want to see it. I think I even reflect my own values a bit in "my Bond". That is also why this discussion is so interesting, when you realize that other people see Bond in other ways. As it should be!
Bond would never mutilate anyone, not even a bad guy who killed a fellow agent, and especially not the kind of lowlife thug that man seems to be. Bond is larger than that, he can never resort to the criminal methods of brutality and unnecessary violence he's supposed to work against. He should always aim for the clean kills, the smart ways to get rid of someone. Especially in the Helsinki sequence I feel he doesn't do that, which is against the Bond character I have in my mind.
There's nothing there to show what happened was un-Bondian. One panel shows the bucket, having been thrown by Bond, hit the thug in the chest, then the next panel shows Bond jumping through the air with the shovel at the ready, then in the next panel after that, we see the gun and the thugs fingers fall through the air. There is no evidence to suggest that it was mutilation. For all we know, Bond aimed for the aim, but given how unwieldy the shovel was, took off the fingers by accident. With the other guy ready to drop Bond at the first opportunity, the chance of a clean kill might not be on the table. That sequence was well within what I would accept/expect from Bond.
Try it at least... Bond used the shovel as a weapon to stop the bad guy from retrieving his gun. He didn't completely sever the guy's leg ...he did however chop off his fingers and shoot him in the head. Much different :D
Being serious I do recommend the comic especially the follow up Eidolon. The violence is a bit over the top but Ellis I believe is trying to portray the violence and realism of Bond's job.
Bond has been violent in novels and increasingly so in film.
What's missing in Ellis's Bond are more of those quiet moments to stop and let Bond be Bond... such as a nice meal.
Hammerhead is expected to be more campy but better than the stripped gritty Ellis intros.
Don't write off the comics yet. I'm my opinion this is the best thing we have in Bond now.
I won't give up on them yet, I'm stubborn and extremely curious where Ellis takes Bond next. Comics is a fairly new media for me, but I will continue to explore it.
Also good to see this series gaining more attention and debate. We've been hashing out SP longer now than it took to film the thing.
By the way, any word on when the Eidolon volume will be released? I'd rather read the whole story collected than the single issues.
Like I said, this third reason doesn't hold true for the Bond titles. They'll sell enough to be collected, that's pretty much a given here. Not the same for most other comics. Also, the single issues PAY THE RENT for the artist & writer during the several months' time it takes for the work to actually get done. These are concerns for me because I've worked in the comics biz. You don't have to think this way, I do.
I agree with you. I purchased to support but also I wanted to do my part to see the series continue.
But honestly I couldn't have waited anyway. I need my Bond fix.
By the way, @Kronsteen, since you're not quite familiar with the comics, and seeing that I know now where you're coming from with your expressions of disdain towards VARGR, I do propose you to read one of the old Bond comics which is outright Fleming and definitely not violent. In fact the art itself has this "old timey ancient" feeling which I am more than sure you'll enjoy. It's called Permission To Die. My second favourite James Bond comic book after Serpent's Tooth (that, you won't like, too sci-fi).
Here's an excerpt. Click here.
That far off? My oh my...
Thank you very much @ClarkDevlin! I'll see if I can get hold of it!
I've read some of the older comics that were published here in Sweden. There was a regular comic book called "James Bond Agent 007" that existed here between 1965 and 1996(!), 111 issues. You might have heard about it. Basically it's the comics published as newspaper strips in Daily Express (58-83) collected into full issues. For some reason I've just read some of them, and they're not really my thing. I prefer the more modern way of drawing comics, a bit faster, a bit more interesting in way of visuals. Older comics tends to feel a bit stiff to me. So Permission To Die is definately worth looking into!
I know what you mean about those old comics, which were actually the comic strips as you mentioned, some of them coloured, and dare I say rather blatantly (remember Bond wearing an orange tuxedo? Haha!), with the earlier versions based on Fleming's works up until the publishers decided to go on a new route. The thing is, they are fully coloured (or I may have confused it with the Indian re-issued prints?) but nowhere near as sophisticated as a real comic book company would do. Far from it. Permission To Die is beautifully coloured and constructed, you won't have problems with it and its pacing at all. Definitely not stiff, and the action sequences are fascinating you'd feel you're actually watching a true successor to From Russia With Love in the first two issues.
The thing is, I also would have recommended you A Silent Armageddon, but sadly, that comic book was never completed, despite how exciting the story had gotten (and left us with a cliffhanger) and beautiful the artwork is inside. They certainly got the Fleming spirit in it with an updated tone.
Now, before Eidolon's issue-per-issue installment runs its course, there's another comic book coming ahead, Hammerhead which has less of that violent tone, definitely toned down despite the previews showing some blood and all that. The characterization of Bond, as well is more in the vein of what you want, according to the official synopsis, where he's more human less robot, who develops his doubts in everything he's believed in so far.
Mostly did distribution and promotion. Wrote only a few short published scripts. No artwork, sorry but I'm not that sort of an artist. These days I'm in a different field entirely but I worked in the comics biz for 15 years and got to rub elbows with a few big names. I do have a little more awareness of the business side of comics than some others may have, that's all...