Modesty Blaise: Sabre-Tooth II

Modesty Blaise has a much better attitude to men she has had sex with than James Bond has to women he has had sex with.

Sabre-Tooth shows us how much work would be involved in assembling a secret army. The conspirators can recruit mercenaries and can train and prepare them at a secret hideout in the hills but they cannot conceal from Intelligence organizations that large numbers of cutthroat boys have gone out of circulation.

Lucille, the girl adopted by Modesty's partner, Willie, is introduced in this novel. Modesty, Willie and the reader should have foreseen that Modesty and Willie would be blackmailed through her. Was Lucille introduced as a character just for this purpose?

Peter O'Donnell equals or excels Fleming and Forsythe for apparently authentic technical and background details.

Modesty Blaise: Sabre-Tooth

The first collected volume of Modesty Blaise comic strips waits faithfully for me to pay for it at First Age Comics, Lancaster. Meanwhile, I have collected the second Modesty Blaise novel, Sabre-Tooth, from Waterstones Bookshop. I have a common problem with both books: big and awkward sizes. The collection has large format pages to accommodate quantities of newspaper comic strips. This print-on-order edition of the novel is large print.

In the novel, Modesty must prevent an invasion of Kuwait: highly topical. This book does not seem to retain the villain of the first novel, Gabriel. I discuss the novels on this blog because they are based on the comic strips and written by the same author, Peter O'Donnell.

Alice: The Acrostic

Since the republic of letters, and of pictures, is one, let us discuss poetry on Comics Appreciation: "...the acrostic poem that concludes Through The Looking Glass" is beautifully reproduced on the graphically illustrated page 64 of Bryan Talbot's Alice In Sunderland: An Entertainment (London, 2007).

The poem is about nostalgia:

"A boat beneath a sunny sky,
"Lingering onward dreamily
"In an evening of July -"

and the passage of time:

"Long has paled that sunny sky:
"Echoes fade and memories die:
"Autumn frosts have slain July."

But something endures, in memory:

"Still she haunts me..."

- and in imagination:

                              "...phantomwise,
"Alice moving under skies
"Never seen by waking eyes."

- and in future generations:

"Children yet, the tale to hear..."

Each generation experiences the summer:

"Dreaming as the days go by..."

 - and successive summers:

"Dreaming as the summers die..."

- and always remembers:

"Ever drifting down the stream -
"Lingering in the golden gleam -"

In the third last line and despite the theme of transience, the word "Ever..." is used. Finally, life ends:

"Life, what is it but a dream?"

To Lewis Carroll, a clergyman, life was a dream from which we wake whereas many of us think that it is followed by a dreamless sleep. (Plato in the Phaedo: "Eternity is a single night.") Carroll reversed the metaphor in another Alice poem:

"We are but older children, dear,
"Who fret to find our bedtime near."

Alice In Sunderland And Voice Of The Fire: A Fourth Parallel

In Bryan Talbot's Alice In Sunderland, the author, dreaming, sits in the otherwise empty Sunderland Empire Theatre while the author not only speaks from the stage but also interacts with the author writing the script, drawing the strip and walking through the city's history, speaking the words in speech balloons and captions.

In the concluding chapter of Alan Moore's Voice Of The Fire, when the author comes on stage:

"...the Help menu [is] lettered up on the proscenium arch. The cursor winks, a visible slow handclap in the black, deserted auditorium."
-Alan Moore, Voice Of The Fire (London, 1996), p. 292.

Depiction, narration and action/acting are the three story-telling media. Talbot compares his sequential art with drama and Moore likewise compares his prose with it.

Alice In Sunderland And Voice Of The Fire

Three Parallels

(i) Alice In Sunderland, a graphic documentary by Bryan Talbot, surveys the history of the North East of England. Voice Of The Fire, a prose novel by Alan Moore, spans the history of the site of Northampton with chapters set in successive periods from 4000 BC to 1995 AD.

(ii) Both works incorporate the author writing the work.

In Alice... (London, 2007), p. 55, panel 5:

caption: ...right now I'm writing the script, typing these words.
picture: Talbot typing; the words on the screen.

In Voice... (London, 1996), p. 293:

"The author types the words 'the author types the words.'"

(iii) Both authors are best known for their works of graphic fiction.

One Autograph

My copy of Voice... is signed:

"To Paul,
"From the septic navel of the nation,
"With very best wishes -
"Alan Moore."

I will miss the Kendal Comics Art Festival (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) this year but should try to get Mr Talbot's autograph on Alice... next year.

Some English History

Copied from Poul Anderson Appreciation today.

Rereading Poul Anderson's works has slowed down because I have:

worked my way through most of the Technic History;
been reading Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise for the first time;
begun rereading Bryan Talbot's Alice In Sunderland.

Since I have met Bryan Talbot a few times and saw Poul Anderson at a couple of World SF Cons, that leaves Peter O'Donnell as the only one of these three writers with whom I have had no personal or visual contact.

Talbot's Alice... summarizes a lot of English history and thus covers some familiar Andersonian territory. Talbot mentions Romans, Vikings and Normans but, so far, has skipped over Harald Hardrada. He reminds us that it was the Venerable Bede, the father of English history, who invented the BC/AD calender.

Does anyone out there know which Poul Anderson book this cover illustration is for?

Modesty Blaise: The First Novel

I used to say that the best team in comics was Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth but Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin seem to be as good in a different way, although I have so far read about them only in the first novel.

In this novel, the man whom Gabriel needs for a crucial job breaks his leg so Gabriel gets Willie to do the job. I expected to be told that Modesty and Willie had caused the broken leg. Or were they counting on Gabriel to co-opt them for the disposal of the stolen jewels in any case?

The underwater activity was reminiscent of Fleming's Thunderball and Modesty watching the theft as Gabriel's prisoner was reminiscent of the film, You Only Live Twice. When Hagan asks why Modesty has returned to such dangerous work, Willie replies:

"'It's one way of knowing you are alive...'"
-Peter O'Donnell, Modesty Blaise (London, 2014), p. 122.

That is reminiscent of James Bond's imperfect haiku:

"You only live twice,
"Once when you are born
"And once when you look death in the face."

Willie's wisdom is also displayed in this passage:

"Willie Garvin's long-held view was that in these soft and secure days life was held a lot too sacred, and that the high importance attached to it was no part of natural law. In the natural order of things, life had always been cheap. You came and you went and it didn't much matter. Only cruelty disturbed him." (p. 213)

That last sentence matters. Our morality is not part of the natural order but it remains our morality.

Blaise And Bond

Is Modesty Blaise a female James Bond? No, she is an independent character - although they would make an interesting team. Modesty ran an international criminal organization called "The Network," retired young and rich and then agreed to help the Secret Service mainly because she preferred an active retirement.

I have only just started to read Modesty Blaise but my previous discussions of Bond are here, here, here and here.

Modesty Blaise

Peter O'Donnell based his first Modesty Blaise novel on his screenplay which he had based on his comic strip. See here. I am reading the first novel and consider it appropriate to discuss it on Comics Appreciation. It is excellent as a work of prose fiction and I look forward to following it with the first comic strip, The Gabriel Set-Up.

O'Donnel's equivalent of M, Sir Gerald Tarrant, unintentionally comments on another comics character when, discussing archery, he says:

"'It's a great sport, I understand. But rather impractical, surely? You can't carry a bow and arrows around with you.'"
-Peter O'Donnell, Modesty Blaise (London, 2014), p. 69.

Modesty's side-kick, Willie Garvin, is her Q, with an explosive tie pin, a lipstick case that fires tear-gas etc. Gabriel and his henchmen, and woman, are an impressive casts of villains.