Bibliophilia: Modesty Blaise

I’m a fairly recent discoverer of Modesty Blaise.

While she’s only a comic book heroine, I think I’m smitten. That cool aloofness, coupled with her smarts and resourcefulness, not to mention her butt-kicking skills make her one foxy lady.

British comics in the 1960’s were a thriving concern. Smash!, Lion, Valiant, Victor were some of the more famous ones. Appearing weekly, they usually featured a dozen different stories – military, sport, western, espionage, crime, sci-fi, historical, humour, etc. Something for all tastes, and there were comics to appeal to all age groups and genders. Many hundreds of pages were produced per week. The stories were usually three, four pages long, and moved at a break neck pace. Some were stories told within the confines of those few pages and sometimes they were a serial. One page to get out of the predicament the characters found themselves in last week, a page or two to move the story forward, and then a page to set up the next cliffhanger to keep the kids coming back for more. They were pretty much uniformly corny and completely over the top.

While Modesty Blaise arose from the same era, it was something else all together. While some of the stories and plots were escapist and fairly silly, they appealed to an older audience, and it was all imbued with a sense of style, personality, and charm. She is undoubtedly sexy, but she is also strong, independent, determined, and compassionate. It’s very reminiscent of Emma Peel of the Avengers, and a female version of The Saint, but I believe Modesty Blaise may well predate those two classics.

Rather than a weekly, it appeared daily as a three panel strip and never varied from that format. It ran from 1963 to 2001 in the London Evening Standard, and in other papers in syndication. Papers as far away as South Africa and Australia carried it, although its circulation in the US was erratic. (In part because of the occasional nude scenes, or more correctly a tasteful hint of nudity, which made it problematic for the religious zealots in the US. The violence was okay, a bare back suggesting boobies might be in the offing was not okay. Sigh.) Over 95 stories, more than 10,000 individual strips over almost 40 years. Quite a remarkable achievement. There was also a real continuity due to the fact that O’Donnell was the sole author the entire time.

In the Beginning, from 1966, tells her story. A young, nameless, feral orphan girl, remembering nothing from her past, a refugee from somewhere in war ravaged Europe. About the only thing she knows how to do is survive by any means necessary. In a displaced person (DP) camp in Kalyros, Greece she met an old man named Lob, a Jewish professor from Hungary. Not nearly as adept as her at the hard scrabble game of staying alive, she helped him and he in turn helped her. He tutored her and schooled her, and taught her several languages. He also gave her a name; Modesty. She gave herself a last name: Blaise, after the man who had tutored Merlin of Arthurian legends. And so, Modesty Blaise was born. They escaped the camp and traveled through Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa together. Lob died when Modesty was 17. Burying him in the desert, she moved on, once again alone, to the city of Tangiers.

There she worked the roulette table at a casino owned by a man named Henri Louche, who also ran a crime gang. When he was murdered by a rival gang, a 19-year-old Modesty took over his organization. She rallied Louche’s employees and built up the small time gang into a global syndicate called “The Network.”

Despite being an underground enterprise, their dealings were governed by a sense of morality. Stealing - industrial secrets from the Soviets, art from corrupt politicians, gems from drug lords, money from crooked lawyers - that was fair game. But vice was a definite taboo. Drugs and prostitution weren’t just something they refused to have anything to do with, but they weren’t above dealing with those that did by delivering them to the authorities or sending them to their graves.

While in Saigon on Network business, Modesty came across a man named Willie Garvin. A cockney and former Legionnaire, and in a bad way, she saw his potential, bribed his way out of jail and offered him a job. Inspired by her belief in him, he became her right-hand man in the Network and also her most trusted friend. Interestingly, theirs is a strictly platonic relationship and is based on mutual respect and shared interests. They are best friends, devoted to each other, but have never been and will never be lovers.

When they felt they had made enough money, the Network was dissolved, each member given a pension for their services. Modesty and Willie retired and moved to England; she to a a pent house overlooking Hyde Park, he to a pub outside London by the Thames, called The Treadmill.

Bored by their new lives among the idle rich, still quite young, and their thirst for adventure still strong, they wonder if retirement was the right move. Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a secret British agency, recruits them and gives them the opportunity to put their skills to good use, helping him solve problems of an “extra-legal” nature. This is where the story really begins.

Drawn in to a series of capers with all manner of nasty villains, ruthless opponents, and diabolical evil masterminds, using their finely-honed skills to best them all. The stories invariably took place in a small banana republic where a tyrannical junta had recently installed itself, the tiny eastern European kingdom taken over by a communist police state, the pocket sized emirate whose benevolent ruler, while visiting with Modesty in London, was informed that he was in the process of being overthrown by his cousin and the scheming chief of intelligence. (I wonder if anyone has ever added up all the Andorra and Lesotho like countries that have appeared as a staple of fiction.) The scenarios were usually improbable, the escapes were often impossible. But for pure escapist fun, it can’t be beat.

While Frank Hampson, the creator of Dan Dare was initially trialled (and I thought the few panels he did were great) O’Donnell chose to work with Jim Holdaway, who drew the daily strip for seven years until his sudden death in 1970. Enric Badia Romero very ably stepped up to take over midway through a story arc, and carried on until 1978. (What made that even more interesting is that he was in Spain and spoke no English, O’Donnell was in England and spoke no Spanish, but with the help of a very able translator it all worked without a hitch.) For less than a year (October 1978 until September 1979) John Burns took over, but fans were apparently not so enamored of his artwork. He was in turn replaced by Patrick Wright, whose turn was even shorter, until May 1980. Neville Colvin lasted until September 1986. After that Romero came back on board and remained right until the end in 2001.

Of all the artists, I think Holdaway was the best. As much as I liked Romero’s work, his males lacked much in the way of variety. All of his contributions I’ve read so far have been from the early seventies. All the men look like swarthy Marlboro men, and the fashions, given the time, are heinous. Certainly I liked the fashions that Holdaway drew in some of the earliest strips, mainly because the clothing in those days was a bit more reserved and elegant. By the time Romero took over, the prevailing fashions were considerably more garish. Wright’s style was in some ways more detailed, and yet also sparser. Both Holdaway and Romero made the panels very dark (I don’t think LetraTone had appeared yet), so his work looked positively washed out. Wright’s characters were more varied and their expressions also more nuanced.

Modesty Blaise has been reprinted in a number of formats over the years. Titan has more than a dozen and a half reprint volumes, with about three complete stories per volume, along with lots of background information and interviews, and introductions by O’Donnell for each story. Each book contains about fifteen months of strip. They have included all the Holdaway years, all of Romero’s first tenure, and all of John Burns’ and Pat Wright’s stints. With the 19th book, The Double Agent, they will have covered all of Neville Colvin’s years.

The Gabriel Set-Up (2004) ISBN 1-84023-658-2

Mister Sun (2004) ISBN 1-84023-721-X

Top Traitor (2004) ISBN 1-84023-684-1

The Black Pearl (2004) ISBN 1-84023-842-9

Bad Suki (2005) ISBN 1-84023-864-X

The Hell Makers (2005) ISBN 1-84023-865-8

The Green-Eyed Monster (2005) ISBN 1-84023-866-6

The Puppet Master (2006) ISBN 1-84023-867-4

The Gallows Bird (2006) ISBN 1-84023-868-2

Cry Wolf (2006) ISBN 1-84023-869-0; ISBN 978 1 84023 869 3

The Inca Trail (2007) ISBN 1-84576-417-X

Death Trap (2007) ISBN 1-84576-418-8

Yellowstone Booty (2008) ISBN 978 1 84576 419 7

Green Cobra (2008) ISBN 978 1 84576 420 3

The Lady Killers (2009) ISBN 978 1 84856 106 9

The Scarlet Maiden (2009) ISBN 978 1 84856 107 6

Death in Slow Motion (2010) ISBN 978 1 84856 108 3

Sweet Caroline (2010) ISBN 978 1 84856 673 6

The Double Agent (due 22 April 2011) ISBN 978 1 84856 674 3

Million Dollar Game (due 30 August 2011) ISBN 978 1 84856 675 0

Fourteen stand alone novels also appeared.

Modesty Blaise (1965)

Sabre-Tooth (1966)

I, Lucifer (1967)

A Taste for Death (1969)

The Impossible Virgin (1971)

Pieces of Modesty (1972) (6 short stories: A Better Day to Die - The Giggle-Wrecker - I Had a Date with Lady Janet - A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck - Salamander Four - The Soo Girl Charity)

The Silver Mistress (1973)

Last Day in Limbo (1976)

Dragon’s Claw (1978)

The Xanadu Talisman (1981)

The Night of Morningstar (1982)

Dead Man’s Handle (1985)

Cobra Trap (1996) (5 short stories: Bellman - The Dark Angels - Old Alex - The Girl With the Black Balloon - Cobra Trap)

There were also some movie and television adaptations, but they were pretty uniformly awful. A movie adaptation came out in 1966, which veered more towards campy comedy thriller. It was directed by Joseph Losey and starred Monica Vitti as Modesty, Terence Stamp as Willie Garvin, and Dirk Bogarde as nemesis Gabriel. O’Donnell wrote the first draft of the screenplay, but it was monkeyed with so much that the end result bore little resemblance to his vision.

In 1982, a one-hour pilot was made for a proposed Modesty Blaise television series, starring Ann Turkel as Modesty Blaise and Lewis Van Bergen as Willie Garvin. The film aired on the ABC Network to positive reviews, but no series resulted. This was a slightly more serious version of the stories than the movie. In this pilot the setting is moved from London to Hollywood, and both Willie and Tarrant are portrayed as Americans.

A direct-to-video film titled My Name is Modesty (which was released under the label “Quentin Tarantino presents ...”) was released in 2004. The film was directed by Scott Spiegel and starred Alexandra Staden as Modesty Blaise.

Quentin Tarantino has been very vocal about wanting to direct a Modesty Blaise movie for many years. (My Name is Modesty was sponsored by Tarantino by being released under the label “Quentin Tarantino presents ...”, and in Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega is seen reading a copy of Modesty Blaise.) The great Neil Gaiman even wrote a script treatment based upon O’Donnell’s novel, I, Lucifer. Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lopez have both expressed interest in playing the role of Modesty. (Carrie Anne Moss, might make a good Modesty; she looks right, she’s got that cool demeanour Modesty has.) To date, nothing has come of these plans. O’Donnell, who died in May 2010, was so disappointed by all the efforts to film his stories, that he’s gone on record that he wanted no more movies to be made of his character. Pity. An interesting character that the right person, group of persons, could do justice to.