Live And Let Die
| Publisher: |
Daily Express |
| Released: |
15th December 1958 to
28th March 1959 |
| Serial: |
#0139 to #0225 |
| Artist: |
John McLusky |
| Writer: |
Ian Fleming, Henry Gammidge |
Data Stream
| Villains: |
Mr Big (Buonaparte Ignace Gallia), The Robber |
| Bond Girls: |
Miss Solitaire |
| Allies: |
Felix Leiter, Quarrel, Strangways |
| Locations: |
New York, USA; Harlem, NY, USA; Jamaica |
|
|
Above: Bond and Leiter visit one of
Mr Big's clubs in Harlem.
|
Capsule Synopsis
Mr Big is a Harlem gangster, who controls his empire with superstitious
fear. He has discovered a lost treasure beneath a Jamaican Island
and is smuggling the gold into America. Bond's mission to stop
him is made more urgent by the suspicion that he is also an agent
of SMERSH.
Above: The opening panel of "Live
And Let Die" |
Source To Strip
The second in the series of the newspaper comic strips, Live And
Let Die continues from the first outing, Casino Royale, by using
James Bond as the narrator of the story.
Above: Bond and Solitaire prepare themselves
for the keel hauling. |
|
McLusky's opening panel re-uses the lettering
from the original Fleming first edition hardback, but that
is where the faithful adaptation ends.
Writer Henry Gammidge came onboard the series, taking over
from Anthony Hearn, and truncated a lot of Fleming's original
narrative and back story to the main plot in order to compress
the adventure down to just 15 weeks worth of strips.
Gammidge's adaptation skips over a lot of Fleming's detail
which would have slowed the pace of the strip down, and
simplified the plot to work within the confines of the 3
cells a day format. Although this lost some value from Fleming's
original work, the adaptation works well in the strip format
without the reader getting bogged down in lengthy dialogue
or over-complicated scenes.
Gammidge would stay on for another ten outings with artist
McLusky, up until "You Only Live Twice" in 1966
(with the exception of "Dr. No", which was adapted
by one-time Bond writer Peter O'Donnell). |
The artwork show a definite shift in style from McLusky's first
outing, with increased contrast in the various character depictions,
although McLusky's vision of Bond remained quite consistent up
until the point where Sean Connery was cast in 1962. McLusky's'
style is sharper and more cartoon-like than the realistic Casino
Royale, and Live And Let Die can be seen as a foundation for the
rest of his work on the first series.
Above: Quarrel leads Bond to Mr Big's
yacht. |
Best Line
Mr Big (in a note on Leiter's body): "He disagreed with something
that ate him. P.S. We have plenty more jokes as good as this"
Trivia
Live And Let Die was the only comic strip to be republished in
an annual in the UK. The strips were reformatted from their original
1958 cells strips into new layouts for the 1967 "James Bond
Annual".
MI6 Rating
 |
|
Available Now!
Publisher: Titan Books
Released: 25th February 2005
Titles Included: "Casino Royale", "Moonraker",
"Live And Let Die"
"Casino Royale" by Titan
Books
|
Related Articles
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Images courtesy Titan Books and Amazon Associates.
