JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 5

"FROM A VIEW TO A KILL" | "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY"
June 26th, 1961 - December 9th, 1961
Written by Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

So. There was a movie made in 1985 -- Roger Moore's final outing as James Bond -- called A VIEW TO A KILL. The title is one word shy of a short story written by Ian Fleming and released in 1960 -- and that's literally the only similarity between the two. A VIEW TO A KILL is a horrible movie about Christopher Walken trying to blow up Silicon Valley while a near-fossilized James Bond (57-year-old [!] Roger Moore) tries to stop him. "From a View to a Kill" is a tale which pushes Bond, as was the case in MOONRAKER, into the role of detective, and he's sent to France to investigate the murder of a dispatch rider ferrying important documents from the headquarters of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) to the country's British Secret Service outpost.

Bond spends makes time with a secret service agent named Mary Ann Russell while investigating the grounds around the base and the path traveled by the rider, eventually learning that he was killed by a Russian agent masquerading as a fellow dispatcher. Bond thwarts the Russians as expected, and the tale comes to an end.

There's a lot of jousting in this story between MI6 and SHAPE, which is kind of fun to see -- basically the entire reason M sends Bond on this mission is to show up SHAPE by having his agent solve the mystery after they've given up. I confess that I've never quite understood the title of this story -- the movie version actually makes a bit more sense to me despite its corny shoehorning into the script -- but now that I've actually read it, I think the idea is that Bond is sitting on a Paris street, enjoying a meal and admiring the view, when he's summoned into action and winds up eventually killing some guys.

That's the best I can come up with, anyway.

Next up is "For Your Eyes Only", a strip adapted from the short story of the same name. As we saw last week, "Riscio" was transplanted into the movie version of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY as part of the story, while the other part consists of the material from this tale (along with some original material to help weave the two stories together, of course). "For Your Eyes Only" begins in Jamaica with the murder of the Havelocks, an elderly couple who are close friends of M. Learning that the Havelocks were killed by Cuban hitmen out to buy up land in Jamaica for an ex-Nazi named von Hammerstein, M asks Bond to avenge the couple as a personal favor -- a non-sanctioned assassination mission against von Hammerstein and the Cubans.

Bond locates von Hammerstein's estate in Vermont, where he poses as a hunter to get close to the house. But his mission is interrupted by the arrival of the Havelocks' daughter, Judy, out to kill the former Nazi herself with a bow and arrow. Despite his better judgment, Bond allows Judy to take the kill-shot while he dispatches the Cubans. Following the quadruple assassination, Bond and Judy leave for Bond's motel.

Let me just say, Ian Fleming sure loved Jamaica! He had a home there, of course -- the famous Goldeneye estate where he wrote all the Bond novels and stories -- but it's interesting to see how often he used the island in those same stories. In the films, Jamaica is the primary setting of DOCTOR NO and also factors into LIVE AND LET DIE, while in the books/strips, in addition to those two outings, we see it here as well -- and it's entirely possible there's more Jamaica yet to come as we move along (I have it on good authority that at the very least, it will factor into THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN).

I noted it previously, but it bears repeating that the Bond of the source material does much less globe-trotting than his cinematic counterpart. This Bond spends almost all his time (thus far) in and around England, the United States, and the Carribbean -- all places Fleming himself frequented, so it makes sense he'd confine much of the action there; write what you know, after all... but it's just interesting to realize that the Bond who travels all over the world is more an invention of the films.

Anyway, to keep with our tradition of examining the broad differences between source material and film: besides the fact that this story is, as noted above, threaded into a larger narrative for the big-screen FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, it's notable that, while the basic idea remains the same -- Havelocks are killed, their daughter seeks revenge and shoots the killer -- in the film, the murder is not part of a simple land-grab scheme, but rather a much broader plot for world domination (as usual). And the Havelocks' daughter is given Greek heritage and renamed from Judy to Milena. She still kills her parents' murderer, but in this case von Hammerstein doesn't factor into the film, so Milena offs the actual triggerman, Gonzales instead -- with a crossbow bolt rather than a bow and arrow.

From there, the movie sends Bond off to Italy on the trail of Gonzales' employer, thus linking "For Your Eyes Only" with "Riscio". It's really a nice bit of fusion on the filmmakers' part -- I watched FOR YOUR EYES ONLY several times over the years, and even as I gradually came to understand the three-act structure employed by most movies, it never occurred to me that the film's first two acts had been born as entirely separate and unrelated short stories. It wasn't until very recently that I learned the truth.

On its own, "For Your Eyes Only" is a nice entry into the Bond canon. Our hero going off on a personal mission of vengeance for the normally unflappable M is a really cool idea, and Fleming and strip writer Henry Gammidge do a great job of selling the unspoken respect Bond and M have for one another. There's no one else M would trust with this sort of task, and Bond would never refuse to carry out such a personal favor for his superior. He even notes numerous times during the story that he hates to kill someone he's never met face-to-face -- the implication being that he'll do it for M, but not for anybody else.

Next week, we'll leave the short stories behind and return to adaptations of full-length Bond novels with THUNDERBALL and the longest stripped storyline to date, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.