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I remember Vargr, the first of these Dynamite Bond titles. I remember being truly amazed by both the story, its energy and rhythm, and the impressive artwork. Then again, Warren Ellis is the genius behind Image's title Infection, a personal favorite of mine. You need a guy like Ellis to do a Bond book.
The problem is that lots of people know Bond but few can write a good Bond story. It's so easy to lapse into pastiche and do "that Bond thing" that people seem to think is what many readers expect to get. Sadly, few can write a compelling story that can be squeezed into a 5-issue limited series without building towards a big climax and then letting us down by quickly wrapping things up in the last twelve panels. And the additional confidence that a Bond story writes itself -- colorful characters that need no introduction, tropes that most people are aware of -- results in a creative complacency that I have seen in some of the more recent Dynamite titles. I have been underwhelmed by the art (and I'm sensitive to that), the stories and characters, and so on. VARGR and EIDOLON remain unmatched in my opinion.
Something related to the plot of the story perhaps?
Dynamite presents Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 in X Title Here.
It's a shame that Warren Ellis got in trouble, and Dynamite Comics did too. They could have produced at least one more Bond adventure together. I read Agent of Spectre last week, a good afternoon read.
When Dynamite collects a storyline for a graphic novel, they will name it something. Unofficially, one of the James Bond 007 storylines is known among fans as The Oddjob Epic, or Oddjob.
It is.
And yes, Agent Of Spectre isn't bad.
Who is doing the art?
It's called Your Cold, Cold Heart. But comic books normally have the name of the overall title on the front. Spider Man stories have names but they have Spider Man written on the cover.
These recent dynamite books seemed to forgot it, they've just made Bond, an ordinary operator,not a Military Spy.
Even Kill Chain also focused on making Bond just an ordinary spy.
I want Bond dealing with the Soviets, Corrupt Military Forces, and etc.
That's who he is, at least for me, because again, he's Commander Bond, a spy of the World War 2, he's not just an ordinary spy.
I'll have to look into this Warren Ellis controversy, don't know anything about it. But yes, the one my mind keeps going back to is Eidolon; personally I think Jason Masters did such an excellent job at depicting Bond.
Indeed, Masters delivered excellent material. Another name that made me really excited when Dynamite started all this; another name that got lost down the road.
I know it's because they aren't really in continuity with each other, but they could just keep the numbering going. It would be way easier to talk about these and tell people about them if I could say "James Bond #49-54" or "Collected Vol. #9" instead of "James Bond Vol. 3 #1-6. The Ayala/Lore run. It's called Big Things, but some vendors don't have it listed as that. Sometimes it's called James Bond (2019). And it's not actually the third arc, it's more like the ninth, but those all have different titles. Well, some do."
Edit: Or commit to putting the arc title front and centre, like they did in the middle there with stuff like "James Bond: Kill Chain". We all know that as Kill Chain and it's easy to find it that way. For some reason they have reverted to just calling it "James Bond" "007" or "James Bond 007" at first and then throw in an arc title later. I don't even recall what the retroactive title of the first half of the PKJ run is. Myrmidon? And then the story is a straight continuation, but they call it "007: For King and Country #1". It's a mess and they can do better.
I feel like Agent of SPECTRE's main problem was its length. The writer (I forgot his mame) only had 5 issues to develop his story, which isn't that much. Philip Kennedy Johnson really has this privilege to tell his story with two miniseries, something that really makes the difference with his predecessors and allows him to tell, in my opinion, one of the strongest stories of the Dynamite era.
That's what I keep saying. The number of issues is important to consider. A long run has the risk of losing track of its own details, slowing down, getting confusing, and losing the interest of readers. A short run has the risk of not making a lot of interesting things happen. It really takes a talented author to make appropriate use of the the number of pages given.
Agent of Spectre was good. It had all the right pieces together to make it work. If there were more issues for a storyline (or just one big graphic novel), it would have worked better. I liked that it referenced Eidolon, it should have referenced Felix Leiter, as his spinoff ended with Spectre being a threat.
Not to be a downer, but I'm kind of getting tired of Bond authors saying "we're doing Fleming's version of Bond." Most of them don't really seem like Fleming, and are more interested in the movies hanging over their heads. Only Fleming could write truly as Fleming.
Also Ennis tends to write, um..."questionable" scenes in his stories.
No "rule" really, just a marketing mandate. In the comic book marketplace, #1 issues sell better than the same issue marked as #27 (or whatever number is appropriate.) So: since the publishers want to sell more copies of any given comic, they just keep going back to #1. JAMES BOND 007 Volume CCLVI #1 should (theoretically, in the comic book world) substantially outsell JB007 #256... so that's the way they're going to do it. You want a recipe for frustration? Try compiling a bunch of unsold floppy issues into a complete storyline. You'll be able to get your hands on plenty of #1s for JB007: A New Way of Dying (just making up a title here, don't go looking for it because it doesn't exist).... and a fair amount of #s 2-3... then far fewer of #4-5 and hardly any #6s. Why? Because that's the way comic book store ordering patterns go. They're just guessing when it comes to ordering issues 1-3, then going with some level of experience on further issues... and expecting a certain level of fall-off for the final issue of any given mini-series. Which means that your quest to compile a complete storyline of unsold floppies is doomed to failure. And welcome to the reality that comic book stores face day-in and day-out.
It looks like they've made the release of these new issues (#5 and #6) too strict?
Not Bond related, but interesting titles, honestly.
Met PKJ at NY Comic Con yesterday. He didn't have any Bond material for sale/to sign but was nice to chat with. He's active U.S. Army! Said he just never sleeps, gets so much work done. I also couldn't find a Dynamite Comics booth/store anywhere at the Con, which was surprising. Zero Bond presence.
Thank you for the info. That’s awesome that you got to meet PKJ, I’m excited to read his Superman stories!
Okay, I was going to let it pass, but I can't. I just can't.
The art for the new comic features the structural formula of a molecule. Well, it's utter BS. Ring structures like these can exist with carbon atoms (C), but not with oxygen atoms (O), and certainly not when they are linked with hydrogen atoms (H) that bond twice. And if this were a rind with C atoms, no O atoms, and no H atoms that bond twice, it'd be benzene, a substance hardly worth mentioning on the cover of a James Bond comic.
Would it hurt them to check with someone who knows a thing or two about chemistry?
I get it: it's a comic, roll with it, Dimi! But many films and comics do what they can to acknowledge biology and physics, so why not chemistry?
This reminds me of Bond's insulting remark in Moonraker: "It's the chemical formula of a plant!" Yes, THAT's what I find problematic about Moonraker...
Anyway, just another case of "bad chemistry" in popular culture for my students to have a good time with. ;-)
I'm happy you said this. In my fantasies I produce Bond films and I wanted to make an adaption of Eidolon (with some changes for the screenplay). I also wanted to make it a trilogy, and thought Agent of Spectre might be a cool story to include in there somewhere (still haven't read it though, looking for a hardcover copy). I'm glad you think it fits alongside Eidolon enough to be included in a novel with it; more excited to read it now! I'll have to re-read Leiter as well.