AN UNINTENTIONAL GEEK MASHUP

Regular readers of this blog have seen me go on at length about my love of Modesty Blaise and her adventures, so here's an unexpected gem that I stumbled upon earlier today while doing research: I haven't seen the Modesty Blaise origin movie, MY NAME IS MODESTY (2004), in ages, well before GAME OF THRONES happened, so looking back on it now I'm surprised and delighted to share with you...MODESTY BLAISE VERSUS JAIME LANNISTER!!! I swear to god!!!



Yep, that's Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays everyone's favorite sister-fucking badassed knight, the one and only Jaime Lannister, on GAME OF THRONES, getting his ass handed to him by Alexandra Staden as a rather frail-looking Modesty Blaise. Looking at this footage, he would have made a very good Willie Garvin. In fact, before remembering that I'd seen the film and recognizing him thanks to his presence on GAME OF THRONES, for a moment I thought he was Willie, but Willie is sadly not in the movie. (It recaps Modesty's origin up to a certain point in her career, at which time she had not yet met her righthand man/soul mate.) That said, I have to wonder how well he'd pull off the Cockney accent...

THE SILVER MISTRESS (1973)

A group of professional scumbags fake the death of Sir Gerald Tarrant and hold him hostage, subjecting the ageing intelligence administrator to brutal torture at the hands of the sadistic Mister Sexton, a martial artist of the first order who knows how to work human pressure points to excruciating advantage. If you've read this far you know what this series is about, so do you think Modesty and Willie are going to to tolerate that bullshit?

THE SILVER MISTRESS is a tough book to critique because it's not so much a proper novel as it is a short story stretched to novel-length, and therein lies the problem. The basic plot is quite good, but there was really no need to pad it out into what amounts to a lot of slow-moving hoo-haa leading to the action not really getting underway until the book's nearly halfway over. Sure, there's the usual rich characterizations and the first full appearance by Willie's steady girlfriend, the charming and one-legged Lady Janet Gillam (previously seen briefly in the short story "I Had A Date With Lady Janet" in the PIECES OF MODESTY collection), but Henry Quinn, a former airline pilot, tested my patience by being rude and obnoxious to an annoying degree and to no great effect, and once his role as a concussed witness to Tarrant's kidnapping is over there's really no need for him to be in the story. There's much made of two "outsiders" to Modesty and Willie's (and to no small degree Tarrant's) danger-fraught world being allowed to accompany them on a mission, something I had an extremely hard time believing Modesty and Willie would ever allow to happen, and of the two only Lady Janet really adds anything to the proceedings. Sure, there's some business about Quinn getting over a severely traumatic event and butching up when push comes to shove, but frankly I just didn't care about the guy.

The only real bright spot in all of this over-extended mishegoss is Mister Sexton, hands-down the most formidable physical threat ever faced by Modesty and Willie, even moreso than Willie's own personal demon, the diabolical Simon Delicta (from book four in the series, A TASTE FOR DEATH). He's a master of hand-to-hand combat whose skills render both of our heroes unconscious in seconds when he first encounters them and, being aware of their considerable reputations as all-around badasses, he decides to keep them alive so he can finally have opponents worthy of his talents. When Modesty does finally throw down against this asshole it's the one bit where the book pays off, their savage battle allowing the story to reach a thrilling climax set in a cold, dank cavern in which Modesty strips nude, coats herself from head to toe with axle grease, and hands Sexton his ass in a fight that I doubt even Willie could have won.

As Modesty Blaise books go I'd have to rate this as middling — except for Sexton — and it's also the first entry where I really noticed O'Donnell's formula. The entries I've read previously all work from a set template, but they each had something going on that allowed me to ignore the beat-for-beat setup and enjoy the books nonetheless, but THE SILVER MISTRESS wears its by-the numbers construction on its sleeve. It makes me wonder if this is where O'Donnell began to weary of the series, or if he was having trouble coming up with the tense and exciting yarns that he seemed to spin with such deceptive ease.

THE IMPOSSIBLE VIRGIN (1971)

While making an emergency stopover in Rwanda, Modesty Blaise meets Giles Pennyfeather, a slightly dotty medical practitioner with an almost uncanny knack for healing his patients under the most dire of conditions. During her time with Pennyfeather, Modesty serves as his nurse — and later much more — and they soon find themselves accosted by two vicious thugs, Adrian Chance and Jacko Muktar, who seek to shake down the doctor for any information he may have gleaned from Novikov, a Soviet defector with a lucrative secret. The problem is Novikov died after escaping grueling torture at the hands of Chance, and Pennyfeather may have inadvertently overheard him babble the one bit of information vital to the plans of the thugs' master, a diminutive and icily evil international criminal named Brunel. Of course Modesty kicks Chance and Jacko's asses like a motherfucker, humiliating them mercilessly, but lets them live after stranding them miles from civilization, a huge error in judgement that comes back to kick her ass — along with the collective ass of Pennyfeather and her right-hand man, Willie Garvin — in a way that makes most of her previous brushes with death or worse pale by comparison...

That's just the setup for a majorly harrowing adventure, a story that puts both Modesty and Willie to some serious tests of all of their many skills, and even if you're a fan of the series and know for a fact that Willie is the co-lead in every book in this series, there's a sequence that will have you on the edge of your seat and believing along with Modesty that Willie has been taken out of the picture once and for all; I mean, what else could you possibly think if you witnessed your best friend engage in savage combat, while strapped to a steel chair no less, and escaping from a straight jacket as he gets thrown out of a plane flying at three thousand feet, sans parachute? I won't say anymore, but Willie's missing for about the next third of the book, and when he shows up in the nick of time, his explanation of how he cheated death is so ludicrous and over-the-top that you have believe every hilarious word of Willie's account.

And speaking of hilarity, there's a great bit in which Modesty and Willie decide to steal some vital stolen documents from Brunel because their sale would lead to the inevitable sacking of their pal Sir Gerald Tarrant from his position in the secret service, and they just can't let that happen (plus Modesty wants to give the papers to Sir Gerald as a surprise birthday present). After days of intense scrutiny of the defenses in and around Brunel's London home our heroes determine there's absolutely no way to break in without tripping all manner of alarms and getting shot in the process at the very least, even given their world class talents, so they come up with a plan both brilliant in its simplicity and downright sidesplitting in its audacity. I won't tell you how they pull it off, but it's so simple that you'd never think of it, and when it happens you'll smack yourself in the head for not thinking of something so obvious.

Simply put, the heroes are in top form, the villains are among the most heinous human vermin ever to (dis)grace the prose page, and the supporting characters, Pennyfeather and the cruelly abused albino Lisa, are worthy of books in and of themselves. And, no, I'm not going to tell you what the title refers to. RECOMMENDED

THE NIGHT OF MORNINGSTAR (1982)

In which Modesty and Willie take on "The Watchmen,"a bunch of ultra-murderous terrorist assholes whose objectives don't make a whole hell of a lot of sense and plan to, among other heinous acts, blow up the Golden Gate Bridge and assassinate the U.S. President (where are these guys now that we really need them?). As Modesty Blaise books go this is one of the weaker entries, but it's still worth reading and the mayhem-filled set-to on an oil rig is like something out of a James Bond movie (I mean that in a good way, reminiscing about the finale to YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE).

DRAGON'S CLAW (1978)

This time around, Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin run afoul of a bizarre assortment of art thieves whose crimes seem to have no discernible motive and also involve the kidnapping of notables within the art field. Modesty becomes involved when she rescues Luke Fletcher from a slow death in a small boat, hundreds of miles from any chance of being found. Fletcher's a famous up-and-coming painter who disappeared the previous year, leading the world at large to believe he had drowned, but now he turns up amnesiac and with his forearms riddled with marks left by hypodermic needles. The rescue puts our heroes square in the sights of the aforementioned criminals, and from there we're off to the races.

Or not.

DRAGON'S CLAW is simply a cataloging/rehash of every element previously seen in the Modesty Blaise series that makes me wonder if author Peter O'Donnell's heart was really into it. The book is nearly three hundred and twenty pages long and it uses up the first two hundred of those in a turgid and utterly predictable setup that gets Modesty and Willie to the bad guys' island lair, after which it picks up considerably but by then it's too little too late. And, adding insult to injury, the plot is pretty much a far-less-effective redo of a previous series entry, namely THE SILVER MISTRESS (1973), a book two installments preceding this one. It's one thing to try and fool your readers with a thinly disguised rewrite, but it's another to do it so soon in the series' progression. DRAGON'S CLAW is quite a letdown and definitely doesn't warrant revisiting, ranking just below THE NIGHT OF MORNINGSTAR as the most perfunctory and weakest of the series, in my own humble estimation.

WHAT I DONE BEEN READIN': PIECES OF MODESTY (1972)

According to the Wikipedia, this collection of short stories was originally intended to be issued as an edition featuring illustrations by original MODESTY BLAISE cartoonist Jim Holdaway, but Holdaway died in 1970 and the stories lay fallow until finally published in 1972. Holdaway did, however, provide the art before his untimely demise, and the illustrations have seen print in various magazines (I, alas, don't have any of them). Also, elements from some of these stories later found their way into the daily comic strip, a fact that doesn't surprise me since much of this material reads like something much more out of a comic than what's usually found in the fully fleshed-out novels. And those stories are:

"A Better Day to Die"-Modesty has a clash of ideologies with a fanatically pacifistic priest, a man who soon comes to see that while violence may not be "right" per se, it is occasionally necessary. Features a gang rape of a Catholic schoolgirl by a quartet of alleged revolutionaries that, while occurring more or less offscreen, is not only distasteful but also sees the young victim contemplating how her violation has moved her into womanhood and "increased her cachet." All of this happens while Modesty's about fifty feet away, but seeing that she's surrounded by armed villains there's nothing she can do without getting herself or the rest of a busload of schoolgirls shot or worse, so she, the priest, and the other girls have to listen to the poor victim's terrified and anguished screams, which only adds to the awfulness of it.

"The Giggle-Wrecker"-A very slight tale in which Modesty and Willie must get a defecting and arrogant germ warfare specialist out of East Berlin, distinguished by a truly ingenious and hilariously silly solution to their problem, and a fairly decent twist thrown in at the end for good measure.

"I Had a Date with Lady Janet"-unique in the annals of Modesty Blaise, this is the only story O'Donnell ever wrote from Willie Garvin's point of view. It's a pretty standard first person recounting of Willie canceling a hot date so he can rescue Modesty from a revenge-bent bad guy and his murderous henchmen, made interesting only by the fact that it all comes straight from Willie's mouth in his familiar turn of phrase.

"A Perfect Night to Break Your Neck"-Always a welcome addition to any Modesty Blaise story, this one sees the return of Steve and Dinah Collier and their involvement in assisting the thwarting a bunch of modern-day pirates who prey upon wealthy yacht-partiers. Cowardly Stephen's strategy for bluffing a knife-wielding professional killer is a classic bit of business that's worth the price of admission, especially if you're already familiar with the character.

"Salamander Four"-Proof that Modesty can't help but be a magnet for trouble, even when posing nude for a sculptor in Finland. And, hoo-boy, does our girl do her part to help the artist past a bit of creative block...

"The Soo Girl Charity"-What starts out as a humorous revenge heist — an obnoxious financier plays a game of grab-ass with Modesty while she's on the street collecting money for a mental health charity and leaves a livid bruise on her butt cheek, so the gauntlet is thrown — turns deadly serious when Modesty and Willie infiltrate their enemy's home and discover that he's a seriously kinky sadist who's been putting his bought-for-a-hundred-dollars and ultra-submissive Asian child bride through a mutilating and hellish existence.

Definitely a very mixed bag, PIECES OF MODESTY is worth a look for Blaise fans and is certainly better than the later short story collection, COBRA TRAP (1996), but overall the book feels like six story arcs from the newspaper strip that have been shorn of the accompanying artwork. If you want my honest opinion, the second half of the book is the best of it, especially "A Perfect Night To Break Your Neck" and "Salamander Four," and though not bad "I Had A Date With Lady Janet" is a major disappointment to us Willie Garvin boosters, providing nothing that couldn't have been had in a story not narrated by our favorite Cockney badass. This is also the only book in the series not to be included among the recent reprints, so it's a bit of a collector's item and as such is hard to find and not exactly cheap. Having paid thirty-five bucks for my hardcover edition, I have to say that it isn't worth much more than fifteen-to-twenty bucks max, even for die hard Blaise junkies, so caveat emptor.

I, LUCIFER (1967)

Heads of state, powerful industrialists, and other people of authority and wealth are being threatened with death, the predicted demises all coming true unless the cash is delivered as per the extortionists' instructions. At the heart of the scheme is a deeply insane young man whose condition causes him to believe he's actually the biblical Lucifer, and he's blessed with strange psychic abilities that allow him to foretell the future with a high rate of accuracy. Controlled by a group of scoundrels who nurture his delusion, Lucifer's predictions are not one hundred percent on the money, so when the group's victims don't pay up or ignore the threats, the intended victims are murdered by hired killers to make it seem as though the eerie prognostications are guaranteed, thereby lending the extortion racket fear-inducing credibility.

One notable on the hit list who refuses to pay up is Rene Vaubois, a high-ranking official in the French Deuxième Bureau, and when the extortionists dispatch assassins to kill him and thereby send a message to others who would not give in to their demands, they don't take one thing into account: Rene's close association with Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin. After Modesty and Willie thwart the attempt on Rene's life, the hired hands that survive the encounter describe the pair to their superiors, who, upon realizing just who they're dealing with, have the good sense to give Rene a miss and proceed to other victims. But if there's one thing we know, it's that once you fuck with a friend of Modesty Blaise you may as well start digging the hole and make sure it's deep enough for yourself and anyone else stupid enough to have pissed her off, so Modesty and Willie embark on a difficult quest to find the secret lair of the extortionists and put them out of business once and for all.

But things don't go as smoothly as planned, and Modesty finds herself the captive of her quarry, alongside her recent boyfriend, the frequently hilarious poltroon Stephen Collier (a series regular, here making his debut). Once at the villains' island stronghold Modesty enters the bizarre world of Lucifer and his twisted handlers (pornographic puppeteers the Seffs being particualrly nauseating and offensive), and must endure under threat of a diabolically escape-proof doom until Willie figures out where she is and comes to her aid. But with no coherent trail of clues the likelihood of rescue grows smaller by the day, and Modesty must figure out how to survive in a nest of killers and madmen, all while keeping the way-out-of-his-depth Collier alive as well. By any means necessary.

This third novel in the Modesty Blaise series has a lot of terrific character bits and the introduction of Stephen Collier is a great bit of fun, particularly the contrast of his nerves of jelly demeanor with the personalities of Willie Garvin, Rene Vaubois, John Dall, and damned near every other male in the story. The villains are suitably perverse and weird, the plotting is solid, and it all reads smoothly enough, but the introduction of Lucifer and his psychic powers takes the series too far into the realm of the fantastic for my tastes. Admittedly one has to suspend quite a bit of disbelief to enjoy any book in this series since between the two of them Modesty and Willie can do pretty much anything achievable within the realm of human capability and neither of them are even forty, but once you have a guy who has actual superpowers involved in the proceedings it somehow cheapens the overall effect. It's not that O'Donnell couldn't have come up a formidible enough villain, it's just that throwing our heroes into the ring with a character straight out of the X-Men is a genre mix that doesn't quite work. There are some fans of the series who rank this one toward the top of the list, but I have to disagree. It isn't bad by any means, but...

SABRE-TOOTH (1966)

This second novel in the series is a great step up from the rather routine MODESTY BLAISE (1965), which is not a bad book in and of itself but it can't help but pale in comparison to the subsequent stories that reveal O'Donnell to be a master of both characterization and page-turning suspense.

SABRE-TOOTH has to do with a Mongolian military megalomaniac (Ooh! Alliteration!) who is assembling and training an army of mercenaries with the goal of seizing oil-rich Kuwait (can you say "eerily prescient?"), but he needs two utterly badassed commanders to lead his men. Aware of Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin as ideal choices for the role, and equally cognisant of their retirement from professional ass-whuppin' and criminal activity, the blackguard kidnaps a child dear to our heroes and uses her as leverage to ensure their cooperation. Thus pressed into service, Modesty and Willie must figure out how to survive leading an army of cutthroats, rescue their young charge, defeat the hand-to-hand skills of "the Twins," stop the invasion of Kuwait, and somehow escape from an absolutely escape-proof training ground.

This one's as serious as a heart attack, and there's even a sequence in which Modesty endures...Well, let's just say that I had to put the book down for a while before I could continue reading what she was going through, an experience that made me respect her mental and physical skills all the more. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

A TASTE FOR DEATH (and a casting game)

"There's this to say for blood and breath, they give a man a taste for death."
-A.E. Housman

As Souvenir Press continues to reissue Peter O'Donnel's Modesty Blaise novels, I gobble up each one with the eagerness of a puppy stumbling across a spilled plate of filet mignon and Yorkshire pudding.

Cover to the original paperback edition.

I just finished 1969's A TASTE FOR DEATH, the fourth entry in the series of prose novels featuring the character (as opposed to the collected editons of the Daily Mirror comic strips), and it may be my favorite next to LAST DAY IN LIMBO (1976). Once again ex-criminal mastermind Modesty Blaise and her right hand man Willie Garvin are drawn into a violent maelstrom of intrigue, murder and international mayhem when Willie accidentally stumbles upon a young blonde getting kidnapped on a secluded beach in Panama. Horrified to witness the sadistic demise of the girl's companion at the hands of two thugs, Willie mercilessly signs off the two goons and discovers that their kidnapping target, though quite lovely, is as blind as a brick, so what would her abductors be after? The man behind the plot turns out to be Gabriel, a scumbag whom Willie and Modesty had put out of commission years earlier and had presumed dead in prison, but now he's back and up to more lowdown shit, so Willie contacts Modesty to help get him and Dinah — the hot blind blonde — out of the country after Gabriel recognizes Willie's handiwork on the corpses of his hired help and posts lookouts at every possible Panamanian exit point. Once Modesty enters the proceedings we're off to the races, and the action barely lets up for the rich character development that sets O'Donnel's crime fiction apart from that of most of his contemporaries. More murderous personages are introduced — most notably Simon Delicta, a truly scary psycho who gives Ian Fleming's Red Grant a run for his money and actually puts the frighteners on Willie Garvin, and that's really saying something! — Modesty's sometimes-boyfriend Steve Collier makes a return appearance and nearly steals the book with his from-a-poltroon POV, Dinah reveals hidden talents of an unusual nature, and the whole crew weathers a harrowing series of deceits, double-crosses and death traps before the book reaches its breathless conclusion. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Whenever I read a Modesty Blaise adventure I am caught up in a desire to immerse myself into her world, and I surf the internet in hope of finding some new tidbit of information or analysis that will float my boat until I tackle the next book. This morning I found a site where famed comics writer and novelist Peter David mused about who should be cast in the role of Modesty should a good feature film about her ever be made. That morsel can be found at http://peterdavid.malibulist.com/archives/002996.html so check it out.

NOTE: let me tell you immediately that the 1966 Joseph Losey feature MODESTY BLAISE, very loosely adapted from the first novel, is an outright steaming pile of painfully campy dogshit and should be avoided by anyone who may have the slightest interest in Peter O'Donnel's unique creation.

A waste of quality graphics heralding a cinematic atrocity.

Watching that film was like witnessing a good friend getting raped by at least four hopped-up thugs in Halloween masks, raucously laughing amongst themselves while the violation took place and expecting you to find their misdeeds highly amusing. O'Donnel himself reportedly hated the film so much that he has publicly railed against it on several occasions, and I don't blame him one bit. I strongly urge you to avoid that film like you'd avoid urethral irrigation with Naval Jelly (look it up).

Anyway, Peter David suggests a choice so obvious for Modesty that if it had been any more in my face it would have bitten me. Modesty is supposed to be very easy on the eyes, have an effortless confident physicality/sensuality, and a somewhat exotic, possibly Mediterranean look (her exact point of ethnic origin remains unknown thanks to her being amnesiac regarding her past prior to the age of approximately twelve). I don't know what you think, but that sounds a lot like Angelina Jolie to me.

This promo still from one of the TOMB RAIDER flicks even looks like one of the 1970's/1980's Blaise book covers, for fuck's sake, with Angelina looking quite right with her hair pulled back, resembling Modesty in her trademark bun. And take a look at this shot from MR. & MRS. SMITH:

Modesty's cool focus fairly drips from this image, although her hair would be pulled back so as not to obstruct her sighting of her target, so I have to agree with David on this one.

But the tougher bit of casting is that of Willie Garvin. At first glance Willie is a blonde Cockney lout with a semi-thuggish demeanor about him, but once you get past that first impression, the man reveals a highly intelligent mind of near-superhuman clockwork precision, a kind heart, and the physical skills of the most fearsome of professional killers. Not at all a guy you'd want to fuck with, yet involved in the most unique male-female friendship in literature, Willie's a very tough call, and had it been 1965 I would have chosen Michael Caine for the part without hesitation.

Michael Caine, circa 1965: the ideal Willie Garvin.

His performance in the original GET CARTER (1971) is not far off the mark, save for Carter's much more dour personality, and the scene where he's completely nude — he was in the midst of some righteous osh-osh — and ushers two hitmen out of the flat into the street at shotgun-point in broad daylight is exactly the kind of smooth move I could see Willie pulling.

But that was then and this is now, so who to cast? I'm woefully ignorant of much of the current stable of British leading men, so I confess to being damned near totally clueless. If there are any fans out there reading this, what do you think? Help a Bunche out!

MODESTY BLAISE (1965)

Following the disbanding of the Network, the international crime cartel headed by Modesty Blaise, her former right hand man Willie Garvin is at a loss as to how to channel the myriad skills he used in his six years in service of the Princess (as Willie affectionately refers to Modesty), and after getting involved in a South American revolution and consequently ending up in some pesthole prison he's pretty much shit outta luck. Fortunately for Willie, his plight is known to Sir Gerald Tarrant, head of a British intelligence organization, and knowing of Willie's value to Modesty he informs her of the situation. When he gives the information to Modesty, Tarrant is does so telling her that there are no strings attached to his gift, thereby winning her gratitude and promised help should he need it in the future. After rescuing Willie, Modesty's adventure — and subsequent frequent involment in Tarrant's cloak and dagger world — begins in earnest as she and Willie take on Gabriel, a crook with a diamond-thieving agenda who comes off as Ian Fleming-light, and all you really need to know about the outcome is that Modesty and Willie put the kibosh on his scheme.

Apparently written as a screenplay featuring his newspaper comic strip characters, Peter O'Donnell's first Modesty Blaise novel isn't bad, but it can't measure up to the later entries in the series thanks to it being just another in the flood of espionage stuff that was glutting the market at the time, albeit with outstanding protagonists. And the screenplay was distorted almost beyond recognition as the appalling Joseph Losey film of 1966, a movie that sucked out loud just about as much as it's possible for a film to suck out loud. Trust me when I urge you to skip it, even as a camp curiosity.

A TIME FOR MODESTY

The 1960s. A time of great social change that affected all aspects of the international human experience and a decade in which the British wielded considerable impact upon the globe’s pop culture; music, film, television, fashion and literature all felt the influence of the British sensibility and an America that simmered with ready-to-boil civil/political/sexual/hallucinogenic madness fell victim to the spell of “Cool Britannia.” The post-Camelot Yoo Ess Uv Ay welcomed the Beatles, 007, ultra-foppish outfits that made the wearer seem either insane of quaintly fey, THE AVENGERS and a host of other notable lime-flavored diversions, but oddly one of the major groundbreakers of UK entertainment never really made its presence known over here. That MIA bit of fun was the daily comic strip MODESTY BLAISE, and considering its relatively adult content it’s really no surprise that it would never have flown in stateside papers at the time. And that, if you ask me, is a goddamned shame.

When it comes to tough and glamorous female characters of UK origin the one that immediately springs to mind for most Americans of a certain age is Emma Peel, the second and unarguably most popular partner of dapper, bowler-chapeuxed secret agent John Steed for two years on the cult classic TV series THE AVENGERS. Peel was smart, classy, dead sexy in a catsuit, resourceful and tougher than any man in the room and capable of handing the most daunting opponent with her highly stylized martial arts moves. Sounds cool, no? Well lemme tell ya, brother, next to Modesty Blaise Emma Peel has all the resonance and interest of a slowly screeching “squeaker” fart that fizzles out with a pitiful whistle from betwixt the vast butt cheeks of popular culture. I don’t mean to disrespect Emma but Modesty is the real deal (and besides, I like Cathy Gale better as Steed’s partner anyway). But I digress…

The MODESTY BLAISE comic strip, written and created by Peter O’Donnell and lavishly illustrated by Jim Holdaway, debuted in the pages of Britain’s The Evening Standard on May 13th, 1963 and introduced readers to the globe-hopping exploits of the stunning Modesty Blaise and her ultra-badass of a right hand man Willie Garvin, a pair of retired criminals with hearts of gold who once ran a crime syndicate called the Network. Having accrued considerable fortunes and desiring lives that didn’t entail potentially getting their asses shot off on a daily basis, the two take up well-heeled lives of leisure but it seems that no matter where they go the fates conspire to involve them in all manner of hard-hitting adventure and intrigue. Keen-minded highly trained strategists, fiercely loyal friends to those in need and just plain downright deadly, Modesty and Willie are a match for anyone misguided enough to rouse their ire.

Modesty’s origin is fraught with the sort of horrifying crap that either forges tungsten-like fortitude or destroys a person utterly, but even as an amnesiac child our heroine was a born survivor, enduring nomadic homelessness ranging from her escape from a prison camp in Greece during the waning days of WWII through years of wandering in the Middle East (aspects of which “influenced” Chris Claremont’s origin for Storm of the X-Men). The girl, whose name was a casualty of severe trauma, fell in with an old man named Lob, a professor from Bucharest, after she rescued him from an assailant in a refugee camp when but a waif of perhaps twelve years of age. Under his guidance the girl absorbed knowledge like a sponge, learned several languages, honed her survival skills and gained the nickname “Modesty” upon entering puberty, and to that she added the surname “Blaise,” garnered from the tutor of Merlin the sorcerer. During her late adolescence, Lob died and Modesty ended up in Tangiers where she began her criminal endeavors — which strictly abhorred drugs and vice — eventually happening upon rough-and-tumble diamond in the rough Willie Garvin who was earning a questionable living handing out Muay Thai ass-whuppings in the kickboxing ring in Saigon. Recognizing a potential asset to her organization, Modesty bought Willie out of jail with no strings attached and from that transaction was born one of the most unique relationships in adventure fiction. Modesty and Willie are soul mates and a perfect match in every way, as intimate as two kindred spirits can be and utterly willing to die for each other without a moment's hesitation, but, intriguingly, they are not lovers.

Their lack of a sexual relationship serves to magnify the intensity of their friendship, an unbreakable and deep connection that thrives and grows despite the presence of several significant romantic involvements for both characters, and their bond is fascinating to read about.

With all of this information, you are now ready to dive headfirst into Modesty’s harrowing world and I promise that you will not be bored. You have the choice of availing yourself to the comics or the even better series of novels penned by series creator O’Donnell, and you can’t go wrong with either incarnation.

Titan Books is currently collecting the strip in chronological order in an ongoing series of handsome trade paperbacks and despite some reproduction glitches inherent to the inevitable ageing of the source film, these books are exactly what your collection needs to give it a touch of class. The stories are entertaining as hell and are real nail-biters in many cases, especially the perverse “Uncle Happy” in the second collection and volume three’s “Top Traitor,” a tale in which Modesty’s high-ranking secret service pal Sir Gerald Tarrant goes missing and is assumed to be a mole for enemy interests. And as if first class entertainment weren’t good enough, the reprint volumes also provide fascinating articles on the development and history of the series, plus riveting interviews and reminiscences from the strip’s creator.

There are thirty-eight years and ninety-five serials to wade through, all written by O’Donnell and drawn by several artists (the John Burns run is stunning and inexplicably underrated), so Titan will be blessing us with volumes of this classic series for quite some time provided the current books do well, and I promise you that I’ll be on board for the long haul. Search all you want, but it is simply impossible to find a more cracking good adventure strip from the past fifty years than MODESTY BLAISE. If you haven’t experienced this phenomenon, then now is the time for Modesty. And you can trust your Bunche on that one, muthafukkas!

A couple of additional short notes:

1. In 1994 DC Comics issued a graphic novel adaptation of the first Modesty Blaise novel (entitled “Modesty Blaise”) drawn by comics legend Dick Giordano; it’s a perfect introduction to the character for those who don’t necessarily cotton to the daily newspaper strip format of the classic run and can be obtained with a little comic shop or internet sleuthing.

2. There have been two theatrical features based on Modesty Blaise and one 1982 TV movie; the 1966 Joseph Losey campfest MODESTY BLAISE is available on DVD and majorly sucks sweaty ass, so I heartily advise you to spurn it like you would spurn a rabid dog (Peter O’Donnell has been quoted as saying of the film “It makes my nose bleed just to think of it”). I have not seen the TV version but available reports are not favorable, and the 2003 MY NAME IS MODESTY: A MODESTY BLAISE ADVENTURE deals with the character’s origin — minus Willie since he was not a part of the years chronicled in this story, and that’s a big detriment to the whole feel of the series — and is pretty decent despite its slow pace and seventy-eight minute running time.

3. Some of the particulars of Chris Claremont’s origin for Storm in UNCANNY X-MEN # 103 are clearly “influenced” by the early years of Modesty Blaise; read that Marvel oldie and then read “In the Beginning” which is found in the tail end of the first Titan reprint volume and judge for yourself.

4. Perhaps the best-known “homage” to Modesty Blaise is Renny Harlin’s unjustly maligned 1996 thriller THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT, which featured Geena Davis as an amnesiac housewife whose true self is revealed in an action film fan’s wet dream. Read some of the O’Donnell stuff and then see this film; you will be amazed by the similarities.