JAMES BOND 007 MAGAZINE | 007 MAGAZINE ARCHIVE FEATURES

It wasn’t until June 1964, after the death of Lord Beaverbrook, that James Bond returned to his weekday strip in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE. The newsagents’ billboards heralded his return, while John McLusky was back with pen and ink. The 15-month enforced sabbatical from Bond worked wonders for the artist. He returned for the twelfth Bond novel with a fresh and exciting look, and this story, together with the following YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE rank as McLusky’s Bond masterworks; with superb visualisations of the story, and extraordinarily detailed backgrounds, these strips were Fleming’s novels brought to life! Alas, with the completion of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE in 1966, both John McLusky and Henry Gammidge parted company with the James Bond strip.

The James Bond comic strip was also syndicated worldwide, and many newspapers chose to run the stories in a different order to their UK counterparts. Foreign newspapers translated the English text into their own language and also reformatted some panels as well as removing references to earlier stories.

LEFT: The Daily Express heralded the return of James Bond with copies of this poster outside newsagents the length and breadth of the British Isles and was not seen again in the public domain until published in 007 MAGAZINE. [Rollover image] The image of James Bond used on the 1964 poster is taken from panel #530 of the FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE strip which appeared in the Express in 1960.

ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE ran in the Daily Express for an amazing 46 weeks in 1964/65 and was the longest comic strip adaptation of the series. YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE ran for 34 weeks and came to an end as Sean Connery's fourth 007 film, Thunderball went on general release. The added length allowed both stories to be fully fleshed-out by Henry Gammidge, enabling John McLusky to create some superbly detailed strips that perfectly capture the essence of Fleming's stories. By now, ‘Bondmania’ was at its height and McLusky's 007 began to look more like Sean Connery as the story progressed. The ultimate in-joke occurs in panel #468 (below) of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE as McLusky illustrates a montage of James Bond book covers - one of which is the Dr. No film tie-in with Connery clearly visible!