Wednesday, April 4, 2012

RAYMOND BENSON U.S. paperbacks

I've been looking back at the John Gardner Bond books a lot lately, so I thought it was time to throw a little Raymond Benson into the mix. I'll kick off with his U.S. paperbacks because this one of my favorite sets. I love the uniformity of the design and the location specific backgrounds. These paperbacks were released by Jove, who after a one book break with Cold Fall, returned to their "James Bond in" series design (with the lightning bolt underline) with Benson.


Of course, Raymond Benson also produced three novelizations during his run as continuation novelist. Those paperbacks, released by Triangle, can be see below.


And as long on we're on the subject of Benson U.S. paperbacks, here's a bonus. Below are three prototype covers for Tomorrow Never Dies (using the Cold Fall series art), Zero Minus Ten, and Die Another Day. One thing I like about the DAD cover is that it uses a tagline that was never used for the film: "He's never been cooler." (Taglines pretty much vanished from Bond film marketing after GoldenEye.) And while books with these covers were never actually produced, you'll still see this artwork on listings at Amazon.com, etc.


Publication:
Tomorrow Never Dies – Triangle, November 1997.
Zero Minus Ten – Jove, July 1998.
The Facts of Death - Jove, August 1999.
The World Is Not Enough - Triangle, October 6, 1999.
High Time To Kill - Jove, June 5, 2000.
Doubleshot - Jove, June 5, 2001.
Never Dream of Dying - Jove, April 30, 2002.
Die Another Day - Triangle, November 5, 2002.
The Man With The Red Tattoo – Jove, April 28, 2003.

5 comments:

  1. I thought Zero Minus ten was a great Bond novel - the others less so. A nice set of designs - I hadn't seen these before.

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    1. Ah, cool, I'm always happy to know that I'm showing someone something new. :)

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  2. eBay and Amazon often lists a cover for the TWINE novelisation that uses the photo from the TND cover/poster. It isnt the US or UK release. I don't know if any books were actually printed with this cover. I think it's for the audiobook only.

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    1. That was the UK hardcover, which is why I didn't put it here.

      I actually have that full dust jacket wrapped around a TWINE hardcover first. Wasn't sold with that jacket, but these jackets were produced as proofs of some kind.

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  3. Those silhouettes sure got a decent run. You can see the NEVER DREAM OF DYING and MAN WITH THE RED TATTOO image in the ICEBREAKER ad in the next post.

    These really are the natural evolution from the Gardner US first. Would have made nice hardcovers. Just replace the "first time in paperback" with "IAN FLEMING'S MASTER SPY".

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