January 1963: Illustrated For Your Eyes Only

In fact, James Bond 007 probably owes much of his success to comic strips.

Before the films were made, Ian Fleming’s thrillers were popularized in British newspaper comic strip adaptations, and composer John Barry admitted that he created the iconic music for the first film, Dr. No, based only on a familiarity with the comic strip.

In the U.S., Bond made only one official American comic book appearance during the 1960s, and that happened even before the famous film series began. Showcase 43, an adaptation of Dr. No cover-dated March-April 1963, appeared on newsstands in January 1963, four months before the U.S. release of the movie.

The first face of 007

Originally published in the British Classics Illustrated series (158A) and the European Detective series (6), the story reprinted by DC was a sanitized version of the first Bond film, with the sex removed, the violence muted and the Jamaican faces whitewashed. 

The cover by Bob Brown shows Doctor No in a radiation bubble suit holding a gun on Agent 007, who is at the controls of the jamming station, with all the usual DC cover chattiness.

“Another moment, Dr. No, and I’ll jam your signals that would have made the American rocket go wild,” says Bond.

“But you haven’t another moment, Bond. This is your last,” replies Dr. No, so caught up in the conversation that he has apparently forgotten to shoot.

Dr. No was the novel in which Fleming finally made it clear that Bond’s adventures are mythic, iconic on a Joseph Campbell scale. Literally, Bond faces a Fu Manchu villain, a naked damsel in distress and a fire-breathing dragon. And the way Fleming effectively fogs over the obvious fairy tale with brand-name verisimilitude is part of what gives this story its persistent charm.

For the record, my favorite Bond art pieces from the era were the understated and evocative paintings on the covers of the Signet mass market paperbacks.