MODESTY BLAISE

When he created Modesty Blaise in the comic pages of the Evening Standard, Peter O'Donnell gave the world an incredible female character. It was inevitable that she grace the big screen and while the results there were far less than spectacular, the first attempt gave the readers of the world another way to enjoy her exploits. Two years after the first strip appeared, O'Donnell was hired to create a screenplay based on his works. He chose the basic storyline of how Blaise and Garvin began working with Sir Gerald Tarrant of British Intelligence.

Having drafted the screenplay and rightfully expecting it to be made, he took on the job of novelizing it further publication. Therein lies the irony for while the director of the movie would have the insane idea of changing the story totally, using virtually nothing of what O'Donnell had written and ending up with such a lame movie nobody wanted to see it, the book was a huge hit.

Every year or two for a while, O'Donnell moved from the Modesty Blaise comic strip universe to the Modesty Blaise novel universe. There were subtle differences and no attempt was made to mingle the two. It was not necessary. Both were in their own way Modesty Blaise and because he created both incarnations, there was never a case of "hey, she wouldn't do that!"

Eleven novels and two collections of short stories came from his mind and each one is a gem to be treasured.

Two other paperbacks were published by Star Press which on the surface look 'normal' but are really repackaging of several of the story arcs from the original comic strips. Great to read but illustrated, not prose.

If it were not for what would turn out to be a truly bad movie, the non-comic strip reading world might not have the joy that is Modesty Blaise to read. Creator Peter O'Donnell was contracted to write a screenplay for the movie which he did. He then was offered the chance to write the novelization of his screenplay which he also did. The only thing in common between the book that he drafted from his screenplay and the actual movie that was released, according to Mr. O'Donnell, was the name of the film and perhaps one inconsequential line spoken.

The movie was not horrid, per se. It just was bad and that had horrid consequences for the future as studios would look at the results and shy away from any suggestion of another attempt. This was a shame for the world survived the Bond satire Casino Royale around the same time frame and it survived the Bond camp that was much of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. But it never got the chance to survive the non-Modesty Blaise that the 1966 film delivered.

It would be almost forty years later that anyone would try again. This one was a lot better, which is not saying much. It was interesting and it was meant to be a prequel for the "real" Modesty Blaise adventures to come. They just never came.

Maybe some day they will.

In 1982 American network ABC aired a one-hour pilot for a potential series about Modesty Blaise. It did not do well. It did not get another chance.

As can be seen in this list, all but one of the comicbooks released concerning Modesty Blaise are reprints of the original comic strips, collated into cohesive groupings.

I have listed them in the order that they originally came out although I have kept all the groups together, thus one group might start before another one ended but I have not separated them.

Of note are the two runs by Titan. The first was back in '85-'90 and had 8 issues with 20+ story arcs reprinted. Then the project went into hiatus before being resurrected and restarted in 2004. This second stab resulted in the full run of strips making into graphic novel format, almost always with 3 arcs per issue.

DC Comics also had a one-shot issue with the retelling of the story from the first novel.

Comics Revue, the magazine which specialized in reprinting comic strips had two sets of works dealing with Modesty. In its monthly issue, it would have numerous pages of strips about Blaise, stretching a story arc over several issues. I have not bothered to list them as they are so many. Wikipedia has a good listing of them. In short, the reprints started with issued #26 and ran almost without break for several hundred issues.

Comics Revue did have a short series of Comics Revue Presents Modesty Blaise in which it released 25 issues each containing one complete story arc. Actually there were 24 of them but for some reason when it came time to end the run, they chose to have the last one be the same as the 1st one. These I did list as a group.

While there are several spy series that got their start as movies and even more than began as television shows, this wonderful set of adventures had its origins as a comic strip, making it quite unique.

Peter O'Donnell had been a successful writer for two different comic strips for British newspapers when he was given the chance to create an adventure story. Wanting to create an enjoyable but believable storyline based on a woman as the heroine, he spent a year developing the characters and the style he would use. He used as the genesis of her backstory a young refugee girl he had met just briefly during his time in the Service during WWII, coming up with his own story for who she was, how she got there, and where she would go from that point.

On a Monday, the 13th of May, in 1963, the first adventure of Modesty Blaise started in the London Evening Standard. She would continue to enthrall readers for 38 years until the strip finally ended on the 11th of April, 2001. During that incredible run, Modesty would see more than 10,000 different strips made to tell over 90 separate adventures.

O'Donnell was the writer of each of the strips. He chose as his artist Jim Holdaway, a man he had worked with before and one he greatly respected. Holdaway would remain 7 years until his death in 1970. His replacement was a Spanish artist named Enrique Romero. For the next 8 years, Romero grew the panels until he decided to try his own project. The next few years saw three different artists hold the pen, John Burns, Patrick Wright, and Neville Colvin who did the most. In 1986, Romero returned to the post and stayed until the strip ended 15 years later.

The Evening Standard was the initial home for the Modesty Blaise strips but they were syndicated worldwide to South Africa, India, Malaysia, Australia, and others. Even the U.S. saw many newspapers carrying the strips though they less common, partly because Modesty did not always show modesty in her apparel. Nothing could distract a man intent on harm better than a pair of shapely female breasts suddenly flashed before his eyes. Prudish American publishers were nervous.

As explained in the excellent article on Modesty Blaise on Wikipedia, the strips about Modesty Blaise number over 10,000. These are broken down into 95+ story arcs. There were a small number of arcs that fell outside this system, such as In The Beginning, an arc which ran between the 8th and 9th arcs and told the original of Blaise. In my listing below, I numbered it '0' because if you can read it first, it is a good idea.

The Modesty Blaise fandom owes a huge debt of gratitude to Titan Books which has put into easy-to-read large paperback volumes the Blaise stories at an affordable price. In addition to the strips which are worth the price alone, the books contain terrrific articles, some by the author before his death.