JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 4

"GOLDFINGER" | "RISCIO"
October 3rd, 1960 - June 2th, 1961
Written by Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

GOLDFINGER, probably the most beloved and best-known James Bond film, is an interesting exercise in adaptation from the source material. Assuming, as usual, that the newspaper strip is a fairly faithful recreation of the novel, then the bigscreen version of GOLDFINGER follows the story almost precisely up to around the halfway point, at which it veers in a different (but superficially similar) direction.

But before we get there, first the commonalities: both the original and the movie begin with Bond in Miami following a mission, where he gets involved in determining how millionaire Auric Goldfinger has been cheating at cards. This seems to be something Bond likes to do in his spare time, as MOONRAKER began under similar circumstances. And there's another nice continuity touch here, as Bond is recognized in Miami by another player from the card table in CASINO ROYALE, which is how he's pulled into the Goldfinger situation. It's something the movie version could never have pulled off, since the prior adventure never happened in that continuity.

Bond returns to the U.K. after showing up Goldfinger, and, in a moment of total coincidence, is assigned by M to shadow the magnate and determine how he's been smuggling gold across Europe. MI6 believes Goldfinger to be the treasurer of SMERSH (a connection absent from the film, wherein the villain is affiliated with no organization other than his own), and busting his operation should cripple the Soviet agency. Bond plays a round of golf against Goldfinger in England, then shadows him to his factory in Switzerland, where he's captured, along with a young woman named Tilly Masterson who is after Goldfinger for revenge over her sister -- a girl Bond had dallied with in Miami and who Goldfinger had murdered for her indiscretion.

As noted above, up to this point, GOLDFINGER the film follows the story of GOLDFINGER the book almost identically, save for some smaller changes and only one larger departure, as Bond spends an evening dining and spying as a guest at Goldfinger's estate in England.

But here is where the big departures begin. In the original story, Bond and Tilly join Goldfinger as his aides in a plot to knock over Fort Knox. They travel to New York with the villain, where he convinces several of the United States' top criminal organizations to join him in this enterprise. The plan calls for Goldinger's team to poison the entire Fort Knox area via their water supply, then move in, posing as physicians, to break into the vault and steal the gold. Bond gets word to his friend Felix Leiter, who arranges a trap. In the final battle, Tilly is killed and Goldfinger escapes with his henchman, Oddjob.

Compare this with the movie, and it seems the producers made a wise choice in departing from Fleming's orignal, somewhat silly idea. Poison an entire city and waltz in, posing as doctors? Why wouldn't the government send more soldiers in to shore things up until the cause of the poisoning is discovered? The movie goes the poison route as well, but abandons the idea that the U.S. would allow a bunch of random doctors into the area to investigate; instead Goldfinger and his men simply storm the vault immediately after the poison takes effect (it's distributed as gas rather than water in the film). Tilly, long dead since about the halfway point of the movie, doesn't feature in the finale. Bond kills Oddjob in a one-on-one fight, and Goldfinger still gets away.

Then the stories of both versions reconvene, more or less, with a finale that sees Bond fight Goldfinger on a plane, killing him and escaping to freedom with Goldfinger's pilot, Pussy Galore.

Speaking of whom, the comic strip version of GOLDFINGER manages to do away with one of the more problematic aspects of both Ian Fleming's book and the movie -- in both those versions, Pussy is a lesbian, but she turns to the side of the angels (i.e., she becomes a good guy and magically turns heterosexual) after Bond seduces her. But I assume homosexuality was avoided in the comic strip due to the mores of the time, which means this unfortunate plot point is excised entirely from the proceedings -- while this version of the character still comes across gay and still defects to Bond's side, the overt "straightening" of her orientation is glossed over.

We next move on to "Riscio", adapted from a short story by Ian Fleming. This tale has the odd distinction of being one of the very few Bond stories which has never seen its name used as the title of a movie, the others being "The Hildebrand Rarity", "007 in New York", and "The Property of a Lady" -- though that third title is spoken as dialogue in the film version of OCTOPUSSY, which adapts portions of the story into its narrative.

Similarly, "Riscio" is also partially adapted into a larger Bond film -- in this case it's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, which sees much of the story weaved into its main plot. Specifically, "Riscio" is concerned with Bond stopping the influx of heroin from Italy into Britain. In Italy, he meets with a CIA informant named Kristatos, who fingers a smuggler called Colombo as the drug-runner. Bond goes after Colombo but is surprised to learn the smuggler has a heart of gold -- and is not the villain he seeks. It is Kristatos himself who has been funneling drugs into the U.K., and Colombo has been working against him. Bond teams up with the smuggler and eventually defeats Kristatos. Pretty much all of this material sees its way into FOR YOUR EYES ONLY as a way to advance the film's longer storyline. As we'll see next week, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY the movie is basically a combination of the short stories "For Your Eyes Only" and "Riscio" mushed together.

I noted last week that the artwork in the first collection of Bond strips was reproduced very poorly, and I hoped that was simply a one-off issue, perhaps due to the age of the source material. Fortunately, this does appear to be the case -- while "Goldfinger" is still a little lackluster, "Riscio" looks great -- the reproduction is sharp and clear, and I find myself looking at John McLusky's artwork with greater appreciation. It's all much closer to the original artwork that can be found around the web.

I know we just skipped a week last Friday, but guess what: we're observing one more off-week next Friday as I'll be out of town for Comic-Con -- and then on the 27th, we'll check out adaptations of two more short stories: "From a View to a Kill" and the afore-mentioned "For Your Eyes Only".