JANE BOND (1967)

Jane Bond is an agent with Worldpol.

The World Police Force is an international crime fighting organization with headquarters in several major cities such as London. It seems more active than Interpol, apparently having arrest authority and using it to go after big-ticket threats to law and order. The sort of opponents that Worldpol takes on is several notches above the run-of-the-mill robber or swindler most of us hear about. High level art theft, multi-million dollar gold heists, would be dictators ready to snatch a country. These are Worldpol's objectives.

One of Worldpol's best agents is the very young and seemingly innocent Jane Bond. In her early 20s with shoulder-length blonde hair and often sporting an astonished expression, she does not seem like the sort who would be much help to Colonel Merrill, her stern by caring middle-to-late aged boss at Worldpol. Nevertheless by the time we first meet her, she has already established herself in the role of operative for the organization.

This is shown in our introduction to her: "Meet Jane Bond, secret agent. As cool as an early morning rose and as deadly as nightshade. Born in the United States, educated in Italy, dressed by Zior of Paris - and hated by every crook in the world."

Regarding Ms. Bond's qualifications despite her youth and her demeanor, as well as her habit of using the expression "my gosh" quite often, she is a very accomplished stunt driver, taking part in numerous car chases and even faking her own death on at least one occasion during a high-speed car chase. She can fly an impressive variety of aircraft including a sleek and expensive luxury jet. With those two in mind, it is not hard to believe she can also drive various watercraft with ease.

When she goes up against the nasty and powerful folks that she does, especially Leopold, her arch-nemesis, she goes equipped with more than her own talents and training. She carries a lipstick which also works as a radio to keep in touch with her boss. She has tricky gadgets disguised as pieces of jewelry. She even at one time has a small parachute that also functions as a handbag.

My gosh! I looked and looked and looked and came up with nowhere near what I had hoped to find of Tina and Princess Tina magazines online or for a reasonable expense so my understanding of Jane Bond, Secret Agent, comes from a good number of individual pages. That was enough to let me know I would gladly pay good money, if I had it, for more stories. They are cute and fun and, more importantly, great artwork. Mike Hubbard, the artist, was terrific.

That is what I said back in August of 2019 when I added this page to the compendium. Just recently, to my personal delight but my wallet's anguish, The Best of Jane Bond was released and I snatched it up the day I learned about it. It is awesome! It has a nice amount of cool data about the history of the character and the strips themselves. It had five of the stories beautifully laid out, which I loved reading. It also had the number of stories and the start and stop time of the series.

From that I was able to scour those many individual pages I mentioned and make heads or tails of them enough to come up with what I believe are pretty accurate synopses and metadata for all of them. I may be wrong on a few here and there but ... thanks a ton, Mr. Roach, for doing this book!!

Now, on to my comments on the series itself.

To think that the man went from drawing Jane, a very risque comicstrip lasting several years, to creating and drawing Jane Bond - Secret Agent, a clean-cut young chaste woman. Had to have been quite a change.

The stories are young adult material but still sophisticated enough to be appealing. None of the adventures talk down to anyone and I would happily compare them to any of the Man From Uncle graphic adventures.