Summer of '83

This summer sees two important James Bond 40th anniversaries. The first is the anniversary of the Roger Moore Bond film Octopussy, released in June 1983. I loved Octopussy when I saw it that summer and I still love it today. It will always be one of my favorite James Bond films. Remember when Bond movies provided fun and fantasy? Long live Octopussy!

Unfortunately, we never got a proper tie-in edition of Fleming's Octopussy and this was before the resumption of the novelizations (with the exception of these). As with For Your Eyes Only, the closest we came was a Marvel comic book adaptation written by Steve Moore with art by Paul Neary. The FYEO adaptation was published as two standalone comics, a paperback book, and a magazine. For Octopussy we just got the magazine. But you can bet I snapped it up and still have it. 

But there was another Bond release that summer that had me just as excited. John Gardner's third 007 novel Icebreaker was released by Putnam in April in the U.S. and July in the UK. Boy, was this a different James Bond from the movies! I admit at the time I didn't fully appreciate Icebreaker as it felt a little too different, not just from the films, but from Gardner's first two books that stuck closer to the Bond formula. But from day one I loved the title and idea of a largely snowbound 007 adventure set in the Arctic Circle. With subsequent re-reads, Icebreaker has become my favorite Gardner book and one of my favorite continuation novels in general. Long live Icebreaker!

Happy 40th Anniversaries to Octopussy and Icebreaker. For me these were both All Time Highs.

The curious YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE tie-ins

For those who collect James Bond tie-in editions (copies of the Fleming originals reprinted with artwork or an acknowledgment of the corresponding film), here's one you may not be aware of. In 1967 the UK publisher PAN released a tie-in paperback edition for Sean Connery's You Only Live Twice with only a movie-themed dust-jacket wrapped around their regular first edition paperback. What's odd is they also released a version with this same movie cover art as their "second edition". I'm not sure which came first, but I would suspect the dust-jacketed version is the harder to find. Happily I stumped upon one at some point.

You Only Live Twice also received untypical treatment in the U.S. Up to this point, Signet had produced nice tie-in editions with original cover art. But for You Only Live Twice they simply applied a sticker to the cover of their current in-print edition. I'm wondering if this was purely an economic decision as they made have had a large stock of the paperback on hand. But one wonders how Eon would have felt about this, especially as Signet has produced unique tie-in editions for Charle's K. Feldman's competing Casino Royale.

You can see all the tie-in paperback editions in the two posts below:

UK JAMES BOND movie tie-in editions

U.S. JAMES BOND movie tie-in editions

The first JAMES BOND novelization turns 40

It was 40 years ago that the great James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me was released to theaters. Along with the film came the very first James Bond novelization. James Bond, the Spy Who Loved Me (so titled to differentiate it from the Fleming novel) was penned by screenwriter Christopher Wood and is generally considered as the best of all the Bond novelizations. Some even compare it favorably to Fleming!

In the UK, James Bond , the Spy Who Loved Me was released in hardcover by the original Bond publisher Jonathan Cape, which make it seem all the more like a "legit" Bond novel.

UK hardcover.

The novelization also saw release in paperback in the U.S. and UK with covers more in line with what one expects from a movie novelization.

U.S. paperback

UK paperback

THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS at 30

Today marks the 30th anniversary of The Living Daylights, Timothy Dalton's first film as James Bond. I attended the Royal World Premiere 30 years ago tonight, and it was an unforgettable experience.

Because it was an Ian Fleming short story, we never got a novelization of The Living Daylights. But this German paperback shows us what one might have looked like. This is a reprint of Ian Fleming's Octopussy that used Daylights poster art and sports the title Der Hauch des Todes (The Breath of Death), which is what the movie was titled in Germany.

I recently sold most of Bond foreign editions. But I held this one back to remember The Most Dangerous Bond...Ever.

Check out Birth Movies Death for an excellent overview of The Living Daylights at 30.

The "real" JAMES BOND

Yesterday Sir Roger Moore died at age 89. Bond fans have been pouring out their grief and also sharing their memories of the man who made more official James Bond movies than any other actor.

As I posted yesterday, Roger Moore was my James Bond. In fact, the very first image I ever saw of James Bond was this 1974 Signet tie-in edition of Ian Fleming's The Man With The Golden Gun. When I finally saw my first James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever (the ABC television premiere), I remember feeling confused and a little disappointed that the man in the movie was not the sleek, cool guy from this book cover -- the "real" James Bond.

Roger Moore has graced many book covers as the quintessential representation of James Bond. In 1990, a full set of the Ian Fleming novels were released in Turkey, all sporting original Roger Moore artwork. In 1985 a set of four Find Your Fate novels were published with terrific Roger covers. He's also shown up on many of the John Gardner novels.

And of all the tributes and articles about Roger yesterday, this piece by A.O. Scott in the New York Times really resonated with me personally, and very much nailed why I consider Roger Moore my Bond and, yes, maybe even the "best" Bond.

Roger Moore Was the Best Bond Because He Was the Gen X Bond

CASINO ROYALE (the movie) turns 10

Today marks the tenth anniversary of Daniel Craig's debut as James Bond in Casino Royale. The film was an adaptation of Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel. A great book and a great film. Below is a trade paperback from Penguin which re-released the book with movie poster art.

For the record, the Bond book that year was Charlie Higson's Blood Fever, which many consider the best of the Young Bond novels. So this was a good year for Bond!

For more tie-in editions CLICK HERE.

The James Bond MOVIE COMIC adaptations

Today I take a look back at the intermittent history of James Bond comic film adaptations.

Showcase's Doctor No.

Doctor No (1962)
The first American comic book to feature James Bond was originally drawn for the British Classics Illustrated series. It was reprinted in the U.S. as part of DC’s Showcase series to tie-in with the first James Bond film. The story was censored, deleting all racial skin color and dialogue thought to be demeaning. The 32-page comic follows the movie script and most of the characters are drawn to resemble their screen counterparts. It was also published in Greek and Swedish editions.

For Your Eyes Only (1981)
After a mysteriously long absence, 007 returned to U.S. comic books in an adaptation of the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only starring Roger Moore. Marvel Comics published FYEO in three versions: a two issue comic book, a magazine, and a mass market paperback which Marvel called an “illustrated book.”

Marvel's For You Eyes Only individual issues.

Marvel's For You Eyes Only magazine.

Mass market "illustrated book."

Octopussy (1983)
Marvel once again adapted the new Bond film Octopussy into a comic book, but this time it was only available in magazine form. The artwork by Paul Neary and layouts by Rita Cilia are excellent, maybe the best of all the Bond adaptations. It was also adapted in Scandinavia with original artwork, so Octopussy is unique for having two comic adaptations.

Marvel's Octopussy.

Scandinavian Octopussy with original art.

Never Say Never Again (1984)
Argentinean publisher Editora Columba, who published several original Spanish-language James Bond film adaptations in various D'artagnan comic magazines during the ‘60s and ‘70s, adapted the unofficial Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again starring Sean Connery in 1984.

A View To A Kill (1985)
The 15th James Bond film and the last to star Roger Moore was adapted as a comic in Scandinavia and Germany where it appeared as a trade magazine edition.

Scandinavian A View To A Kill.

The Living Daylights (1987)
The Bond film that introduced Timothy Dalton was also adapted in Scandinavia. A nice bonus here is that it features the “flying carpet” sequence cut from the final film.

Swedish The Living Daylights.

Licence To Kill (1989)
Eclipse brought Bond comics back to the U.S. with an adaptation of Licence To Kill by Permission To Die author Mike Grell. Published in a magazine size hardback and paperback, it’s been said that Timothy Dalton would not allow his likeness to be used, so a more generic Bond was used.

Eclipses Licence To Kill hardcover and paperback.

GoldenEye (1996)
Topps adaptation of the 1995 Bond film GoldenEye, which introduced Pierce Brosnan as 007, was originally meant to be in 3 parts, but only issue #1 ever appeared. A lengthy delay in getting approval for the racy illustration on the cover of issue #2 led to the series being cancelled prematurely. Topps was reportedly going to launch an ongoing series of original 007 adventures following publication of GoldenEye, but this also never materialized. GoldenEye marked the end, at least to date, of the James Bond film comic adaptations.

GoldenEye 00 Convention Special and issue #1.

The cancelled GoldenEye issues #2 and #3 covers.

Discover where SPECTRE began

Vintage Books has released THE SPECTRE TRILOGY, a new paperback that collects the Ian Fleming novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice. The book also includes an introduction by Bond film producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, which would appear to make this the official literary tie-in with the latest Bond film (IFP stopped doing novelizations after Die Another Day).

You can purchase THE SPECTRE TRILOGY at Amazon.co.uk (UK) and Amazon.com (U.S.).

SPECTRE: The Complete Comic Strip Collection

Here's another literary tie-in with the new James Bond film. James Bond: Spectre: The Complete Comic Strip Collection will be released by Titan Books in the UK on October 23 and in the U.S. on November 24. The book will include a forward by SPECTRE screenwriter John Logan. Notice how the cover art uses a similar background color as the SPECTRE poster?

The daring James Bond is back, this time in a lavishly put together collection celebrating the iconic SPECTRE storylines. Featuring Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, You Only Live Twice and The Spy Who Loved Me. These fully restored and thrilling stories are based on the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels.

Wait, The Spy Who Loved Me a SPECTRE story? Well, yes. The criminal organization was written into the original Daily Express comic strip from which these Titan collections are composed.

SPECTRE also played a large role in the Daily Express continuation Bond strips throughout the 1970s with the organization being run by a female Blofeld know as "Madame Spectra."

Pre-order James Bond: Spectre: The Complete Comic Strip Collection on Amazon.com (U.S.) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).

Vintage to release THE SPECTRE TRILOGY in October

In what looks to be a gentle tie-in with the new James Bond film, SPECTRE, Vintage books will release The SPECTRE Trilogy on October 1st. The book collects the Ian Fleming novels, Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice.

These three novels had previously been collected and published under the title The Blofeld Trilogy in 2009.

You can pre-order The SPECTRE Trilogy now at Amazon.co.uk (UK) and Amazon.com (U.S.).

When Bond went LIVE AT FIVE

Check out this artwork for Raymond Benson's short story Live At Five. The story appeared in TV Guide in November 1999 as part of a special issue showcasing The World Is Not Enough (recall that Raymond wrote the novelization for that film). I love how it evokes the classic Signet series artwork with Fleming's name running down the edge.

Live At Five is a unique Bond short story in that it's a "flashback" adventure set in the year 1985 (a year without a Gardner novel, which may or may not have been intentional on Raymond's part). In it, Bond travels to Chicago to help a Russian ice-skater defect with the help of a television news reporter, Janet Davis. In my CBn Interview with Raymond, he recalled:

"The idea for the plot had to do with a Russian defector, an ice skater. In order for that to make any sense, the story had to take place prior to 1989, before the fall of the Soviet Union. Simple as that. So I framed the bulk of the story within the context of Bond remembering the events of that time prior to meeting the girl again in the present. The story has a nice twist, I think, when the identity of the girl is revealed."

Live At Five was included in the 2011 anthology collection of Raymond's Bond work, Choice of Weapons.

SPECTRE teaser reveals "Young Bond"

We all knew the new Bond movie SPECTRE tied-in with Fleming in that it brings back the classic criminal organization featured in Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. But from what we can see in the newly released teaser trailer, it looks like the film also contains a nod -- in a fashion -- to the popular Young Bond book series.

In the screen cap below we see a photo of a young James with, presumably, Hannes Oberhauser, his climbing and skiing instructor whom Bond referred to as "something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one." So, technically, this is the first onscreen depiction of "Young Bond." But who is the mysterious other boy? Hmmm...

While Bond's schooling and skiing days in Switzerland occur after the Young Bond series (so far), Hannes Oberhauser appeared in Charlie Higson's last Young Bond novel, By Royal Command. The trailer also shows us a quick shot of a "Temporary Transfer of Guardianship" form signed by Charmain Bond, James' aunt, who is a regular character in the Young Bond series.

Of course, both Oberhauser and Charmian originated in Fleming (in name only, never as characters), so this is isn't really a nod to the Young Bond series per se, but it is fun to look at it this way.

You can check out the awesome SPECTRE teaser at www.007.com. The film will be released on November 6, 2015.

Ahead of his time

For some reason I've been feeling nostalgic for late '80s Timothy Dalton era James Bond lately, so I thought I'd scan and share this German edition of John Gardner's novelization of Licence To Kill (1989). This has always been one of my favorite paperbacks. Not only is it unique in that it's packed with color photos from the film, but this edition uses the final UK poster art on the cover. Most editions of LTK used the advanced poster art.

But what I find especially appealing about this cover is they've replaced Bond's clothes. Instead of the all black belted thingy from the UK campaign (which was weird even by '80s standards), they've put him in a traditional tuxedo, but with the bow-tie undone. This was also used in the French campaign. I remember thinking at the time that this was an excellent way to show Dalton as a more rough and ready 007, and I went out of my way to find any publicity material that used this version of the art, including this German novelization.

Of course, the concept of Bond with his bow-tie undone or no bow-tie at all would be used on posters for Die Another Day (2002), Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace (2008), and Skyfall (2012), so this can be seen as yet another example of how Dalton's 007 was ahead of his time.

Which MOONRAKER?

Here's a badly battered French paperback edition of Christopher Wood's novelization of the 1979 James Bond film, Moonraker. What I like about this unglamorous edition is it doesn't at all tip one off to the fact that it's a novelization. The cover looks like any "girl and gun" series art that you'd find on the original Fleming paperbacks at the time. Even inside there's no reference to the film. In 1979 you could easily buy this book thinking it was the original novel. Maybe that was the idea. Kind of fun.

Christopher Wood's two novelizations were recently released as eBooks. Click here for more info and cover art.

UPDATE: Thanks to our friend Kevin Collette, you can see HERE that Fleuve Noir did publish the Fleming books with this series art, except for Fleming's Moonraker. This was published as stand-in for that title, so one would definitely be fooled into buying this as part of the "original" series. Wild.

Litterature Populaire

These covers will make your head explode

Roger Moore on the cover of Ian Fleming James Bond novels famous for being movies with Sean Connery. Ka-boom! Head explosion. But this alternate reality is exactly what we have with this terrific set of Turkish Ian Fleming 007 novels from TAY. Believe it or not, some of these carry a 1990 publication date (see update).

Casino Royale and Live and Let Die.
Thanks to Bazeer Flumore and The Figure Collector.

Moonranker and Diamonds Are Forever.

From Russia With Love and Doctor No.

Goldfinger and For Your Eyes Only.

Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Love Twice.

The Man With The Golden Gun and Octopussy.

By the way, that Octopussy cover is one of the only editions of the book anywhere to use artwork from the 1983 movie, so that's kinda cool. Also interesting that For Your Eyes Only uses the Triad Granada artwork from the 1981 UK tie-in edition, and how well it matches.

Oh, and the backs of these editions all feature a classic image of Sean Connery as 007. Ka-boom!

UPDATE: According to the excellent website The Figure Collector, these were originally published between 1983 and 1984. Thanks to Dan Gale for the tip.

EVERYTHING OR NOTHING released on DVD and streaming

The 50th Anniversary James Bond documentary Everything or Nothing is released today in the UK on DVD. This is an excellent, documentary about the making of the James Bond books (see what I did there?) with lots of Ian Fleming info and film footage of the author. It also features an interview with Lucy Fleming.

While the doc is not (yet?) available on DVD in the U.S., you can steam it from Netflix and Amazon. Amazon Prime members can stream it for free (that's how I watched it).

• Purchase the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.
• Watch it via streaming on Amazon.com.

Don't miss this one. It's the Skyfall of Bond docs!

Chris Moore's little known novelizations of OCTOPUSSY and A VIEW TO A KILL

Pop quiz, hot-shot! Name two novelizations of Roger Moore James Bond films written by an author named Chris?

If you answered The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker by Christopher Wood...okay, you're not wrong. But did you know another Chris -- Chris Moore -- wrote novelizations of Octopussy and A View To A Kill!?

These were Dutch novelizations written in the '80s and released with their respective films. They were never published in English. Both books are profusely illustrated with color photos from the films. While Octopussy is somewhat slight at 95 pages, A View To A Kill is a nice trade paperback coming in at 175 pages.

I've long had a copy of Octopussy, but I've never been able to score a copy of A View To A Kill. But now Edwin de Jonge, a reader from The Netherlands, has hooked me up with that elusive second Moore novelization.

So now I can share with you images these two largely unknown James Bond novelizations. Enjoy.

Thank you again, Edwin!

BOND ON SET: FILMING SKYFALL released

Bond on Set: Filming Skyfall has been released by DK Books. The book is a collection of candid behind the scenes photographs from the set of the latest Bond film by official photographer Greg Williams.

Previous "Bond on Set" books have covered Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

The photos are terrific, but I miss "making of" books that actually tell the story of the filming (you know, with words). Licence To Kill, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World Is Not Enough all had nicely informative official "making of" books. And, of course, the unofficial The Making of On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Charles Helfenstein is the greatest of all the Bond "making of" books, IMO.

But if you crave behind the scenes pics, then this is a must buy.

Purchase Bond on Set: Filming Skyfall from Amazon.com (U.S.) and Amazon.co.uk (UK).

Related: IFP confirms no Skyfall novelization (dang it).

JAMES BOND POSTER BOOK pulled from Amazon (update)

Here's a wild bit of news. It appears that DK has pulled their new book James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters from Amazon. The listing now says the book in "under review." So what happened?

Well, Graham Rye, editor of OO7 Magazine, posted on the CBn forums that he sent an email to DK "containing 55 separate comments concerning the errors and text omissions in the book." Graham says they "now intend to reprint it in a corrected version."

I sent an email to DK several weeks back seeing if I could get a review copy of this book, but never heard back. I took the plunge and purchased it this week. While the book does indeed contain errors and omissions typical of official publications (no Tomorrow Never Dies U.S. advance one-sheet, the poster listed as the Never Say Never Again U.S. one-sheet is clearly not), it's still a very nicely put together book with some sensational concept artwork. Certainly it is a vast improvement over the last official poster book.

It baffles me why DK didn't run a proof by any one of several readily accessible James Bond experts and collectors who could have easily flagged these problems before they became, well, this BIG problem.

What does this mean for those of us who already purchased the book? That I would like to know.

Check out this thread at the CBn Forums where the book is being discussed. Also feel free to add any new info in the Comments below.

UPDATE: Looks like the book is again available for purchase on Amazon. No word from DK about what happened or whether there will be a corrected edition. Weird.

UPDATE 2: According to Graham Rye, the book was pulled because someone complained that the book was not what it purported to be in its Amazon listing. The customer who complained to Amazon believed the book was a portfolio of pull-out posters you could hang on the wall. So...no corrected edition, etc.