Someone at Dynamite Comics has been reading my dream journal, because today they’ve announced Warren Ellis will be writing their upcoming James Bond comic, set to debut in November along with the new film, SPECTRE.
It’s been a long time since Bond has appeared in comics, the last being an adaptation of Goldeneye. (Before that he fought dinosaurs in a contender for the greatest comic of all time.)
Dynamite is taking the character in a significantly more serious direction.
The first six-issue story arc in the James Bond 007 comic book series will be entitled “VARGR.” James Bond returns to London after a mission of vengeance in Helsinki, to take up the workload of a fallen 00 agent… but something evil is moving through the back streets of the city, and sinister plans are being laid for Bond in Berlin.
Ellis said of the new series, “Ian Fleming’s James Bond is an icon, and it’s a delight to tell visual narratives with the original, brutal, damaged Bond of the books”
He’s also spoken about 007 at length in the past.
The books are notably less spectacular and far more low-key than the films. Dr No was a crazed guano millionaire and had no nuclear missiles, spaceship-eaters or any of the good stuff we associate with Bond Villains. Tiger Tanaka’s great test of Bond was making him compose a naff haiku. It’s often quite bland stuff, great long travelogues and pages describing banquets and furniture. In the guts of it, though, is Bond as a scarred man with clear psychological damage, often on the edge of being removed from service by M on mental health grounds. It’s made stridently obvious that being on the 00 detail of the Secret Service is a job that fucks you up.
He is England’s blunt instrument of international assault — the spiteful, vicious bastard of a faded empire that still wants the world to do as it’s bloody well told.
Most importantly; he beats people up and makes stuff explode.
From 2011 –
In Casino Royale, James Bond is the Bond girl. Look at the way they even show him emerging from the ocean like Ursula Andress. Sexual torture, too, if less creepy-glam than being stripped and painted gold. Vesper Lynd is Bond: never not in control, never without a plan, seducing to further her goals. She has to die so Bond can become her.
Ellis will be joined by Jason Masters on art. Masters is known for his Bat-family work.
Then there was that time he drew Warren Ellis’ version of Moon Knight.
