JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 6

"THUNDERBALL" | "ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE"
December 11th, 1961 - February 10th, 1962 | June 29th, 1964 - May 15th, 1965
Written by Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

THUNDERBALL has the peculiar distinction of being the only James Bond story developed by Ian Fleming himself with the intention that it would become a movie. In the 1950s, Fleming worked with producer Kevin McClory on a project to bring Bond to the silver screen. When the project fell by the wayside, Fleming went ahead and adapted the story they had come up with into a novel. Years later, when Bond finally did make it to the movies, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman adapted the novel THUNDERBALL into the fourth film in the series. So essentially, THUNDERBALL was a movie treatment adapted into a novel, which was then adapted into a screenplay!

As such, one might expect the original THUNDERBALL, adapted into this comic strip, to sync up fairly closely with the film -- and at least initially, that's true. Both versions open with Bond declared unfit for field duty by M, and sent to recuperate at a spa called Shrublands. There, he encounters a mystery man named Count Lippe, who tries to kill Bond when the agent shows too much interest in the Count's Tong tattoo. Bond reciprocates, giving Lippe a near-death experience, and then returns to work at MI6. Meanwhile, the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion -- SPECTRE -- holds a meeting to discuss their latest plot: stealing a NATO plane transporting two nuclear missiles. SPECTRE's agent on the inside, co-pilot Giuseppe Petacchi, kills the plane's crew and hijacks it, ditching it in the Atlantic ocean near the Bahamas after SPECTRE takes the bombs.

And then -- after twenty-eight days of strips dedicated the Shrublands opening, eighteen days of SPECTRE talkling about their plan, and twelve days of Petacchi carrying that plan out, the remainder of the THUNDERBALL storyline is resolved perfunctorily in six more days! Bond and Felix Leiter, suddenly in the Bahamas, find the plane. MI6 has deduced that SPECTRE is behind it. Bond leads an attack on the Disco Volante, a yacht owned by SPECTRE's Number One, Emilio Largo. He's injured in the fight and wakes up in a hospital, where Leiter tells him the bombs were recovered, but SPECTRE's leader, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, escaped. The end.

You may be wondering what on Earth happened. The answer is that occasional scourge of all serialized fiction, premature cancellation. According to Wikipedia:

"In 1962 the Daily Express abruptly cancelled their agreement with Ian Fleming when [newspaper publisher] Lord Beaverbrook and Fleming disputed the rights to the James Bond short story "The Living Daylights". Fleming had sold the rights to the Sunday Times, a rival newspaper — upsetting Beaverbrook into terminating his business relationship with Fleming. The dispute abruptly ended the comic strip adaptation of THUNDERBALL. Additional panels were added later for its syndication to other newspapers, and to expand and conclude the story. Beaverbrook and Fleming later settled their differences, and the comic strip serial would continue in 1964 with ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE."

So there you have it. It's a little annoying to me on a personal level, because THUNDERBALL my favorite Bond film. I know nearly eveyone gives that honor, at least insofar as the Sean Connery films go, to GOLDFINGER. But for me, it's been THUNDERBALL since I was a teenager, and THUNDERBALL it remains. I was looking forward to reading the comic strip's adaptation of the novel! The strip was shaping up for a really nice storyline, devoting a lot of time to the setup, leading me to expect a drawn out, faithful adaptaion.

(Though I will admit that THUNDERBALL in its original form, whether novel or any direct adaptation thereof, will always suffer a bit in my mind when compared with the movie, simply due to the original book's lack of SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe, portrayed onscreen by the stunning Luciana Paluzzi as the gold standard by which all Bond's "bad girls" must be judged.)

And so we move along to ON HER MAJESTY's SECRET SERVICE. As noted above, the comic strip was cancelled for over a year before it returned, but when it did, the original creative team -- writer Henry Gammidge and artist John McLusky -- remained intact. and as OHMSS opens, narration tell us that during the year-plus we haven't seen him, Bond has been scouring the world for Blofeld. Thus, this next story opens with Bond preparing to resign from the secret service over what he perceives as a waste of his talents. But first, he goes to the Casino Royale to blow off some steam. There, he meets a woman who infatuates him -- Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo. Soon after, Bond meets Tracy's father as well -- a Corsican gangster named Marc-Ange Draco. Draco explains to Bond that Tracy has a death wish following her husband leaving her and her child dying, but that she seems to genuinely love Bond. Thus, Draco wants Bond to marry Tracy.

Bond isn't necessarily against the idea, but first he wants to finish his mission to find Blofeld -- which, in the strip, sort of comes out of nowehere. at the start of this arc, Bond firmly believes Blofeld is dead, yet when he meets Draco, he casually asks the gangster if he can help locate the terrorist -- and Draco comes through, telling Bond that Blofeld is hiding out in Switzerland. This leads Bond on an undercover expedition to the villain's lair, where he uncoveres Blofeld's plot to poison the U.K.'s food supplies. Bond teams up with Draco to thwart Blofeld. The villain's organization is smashed, but Blofeld himself escapes. In the end, Bond and Tracy are married, but Blofeld assassinates Bond's new bride on their wedding day.

And here's where I make a startling confession: I've never actually watched ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. It's a key installment in the Bond saga, but when I was a kid, it was just "the one without Sean Connery or Roger Moore" and I had no interest in it. I've seen bits and pieces here and there over the years, but surely no more than maybe thirty minutes in total of the entire film. Someday I'll sit down and check it out, but I don't know when. Perhaps when AI and Deepfake technology reach the point where United Artists can replace George Lazenby with Sean Connery. Surely that will happen in my lifetime!

Anyway -- since I typically compare the comic strip novel adaptation to the film, and since in this case I haven't seen the film, I'll simply note that the strip version of OHMSS is excellent. It features Bond's return to the Casino Royale, his first face-to-face meeting with Blofeld (they did not cross paths in THUNDERBALL), and plenty of suspense and intrigue as 007 lurks about Blofeld's Piz Gloria retreat in Switzerland. It's also quite expansive; easily the longest of all the Bond newspaper arcs I've looked at. Thanks to that, it feels more developed than some of the others. Thus far, it may be the crowning achievement by the regular creative team of Henry Gammidge and John McLusky.

And speaking of those creators, next week we'll move along to their swan song in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, followed by the debut of their successors in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.