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JAMES BOND- SERPENT'S TOOTH by Paul Gulacy and Doug Moench.
Hoo boy. I vaguely remembered enjoying this when it came out in 1995. Of course I always liked the Gulacy/Moench graphic novels team, so there's that, and the artwork is good (Bond rather oddly looksa fair bit like Henry Cavill for most of it!), and the pacing is fast, there's plenty of action, and so on...
If this was a more, well, comics-based graphic novel – by which I mean if it was about Nick Fury or something, or even an original character – it would be great. Unfortunately it's supposed to be James Bond. Now, there are two types of Bond to enjoy- the movie Bond, and the books Bond. This clearly sets out to be the movie Bond – there's a pre-credit, and a title splash page reminiscent of the movies' title sequences. Beyond that, however... it makes the daftest bits of Moonraker look like The Third Man. It makes Austin fucking Powers look like The Third Man.
Starting off with a girl fleeing from el chpacrabra and being abducted by a flying saucer, it proceeds to get silly thereafter, bringing in not just traditional Bond movie tropes like “steal nuclear weapons and reshape the world” but genetic mutations, giant octopi, and Bond Vs Dinosaurs in a mobile underwater city.
The plot makes zero sense (even by Bond movie standards), and it doesn't help that this Bond is congenitally incapable of speaking a line that isn't a creaky failure of an attempted pun. It's what the phrase “comic book” was pretty much invented for, but in this case, even though it is a comic book, it's the wrong approach, and to a horrific degree.
This feels like a comic book Bond created by someone who's had The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker described to him by someone who has only read an online review of the movies. While drunk and/or stoned.
But if you tippex out all uses of the name “James Bond” and write in something more appropriate like “Clint Thrust” it makes a decent pre-Powers OTT pastiche with plenty of action.
Hoo boy. I vaguely remembered enjoying this when it came out in 1995. Of course I always liked the Gulacy/Moench graphic novels team, so there's that, and the artwork is good (Bond rather oddly looksa fair bit like Henry Cavill for most of it!), and the pacing is fast, there's plenty of action, and so on...
If this was a more, well, comics-based graphic novel – by which I mean if it was about Nick Fury or something, or even an original character – it would be great. Unfortunately it's supposed to be James Bond. Now, there are two types of Bond to enjoy- the movie Bond, and the books Bond. This clearly sets out to be the movie Bond – there's a pre-credit, and a title splash page reminiscent of the movies' title sequences. Beyond that, however... it makes the daftest bits of Moonraker look like The Third Man. It makes Austin fucking Powers look like The Third Man.
Starting off with a girl fleeing from el chpacrabra and being abducted by a flying saucer, it proceeds to get silly thereafter, bringing in not just traditional Bond movie tropes like “steal nuclear weapons and reshape the world” but genetic mutations, giant octopi, and Bond Vs Dinosaurs in a mobile underwater city.
The plot makes zero sense (even by Bond movie standards), and it doesn't help that this Bond is congenitally incapable of speaking a line that isn't a creaky failure of an attempted pun. It's what the phrase “comic book” was pretty much invented for, but in this case, even though it is a comic book, it's the wrong approach, and to a horrific degree.
This feels like a comic book Bond created by someone who's had The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker described to him by someone who has only read an online review of the movies. While drunk and/or stoned.
But if you tippex out all uses of the name “James Bond” and write in something more appropriate like “Clint Thrust” it makes a decent pre-Powers OTT pastiche with plenty of action.
