{"id":533,"date":"2007-06-23T07:03:17","date_gmt":"2007-06-23T07:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=533"},"modified":"2007-06-23T07:10:25","modified_gmt":"2007-06-23T07:10:25","slug":"james-bond-colonel-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/06\/23\/james-bond-colonel-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"James Bond: Colonel Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/colsun.jpg\" alt=\"James Bond: Colonel Sun\" \/>\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>By <strong>Kingsley Amis<\/strong> (as Robert Markham), <strong>Jim Lawrence<\/strong> &amp; <strong>Yaroslav Horak<\/strong> (Titan Books)<br \/>\nISBN: 1-84576-175-8<\/p>\n<p>James Bond proves he can never die as the first of the prose \u00e2\u20ac\u0153continuation novels\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is magnificently adapted by the regular strip-team of Lawrence and Horak. Unbelievably, by today&#8217;s publishing practises, when Ian Fleming died in 1964, there was only the unfinished <strong>Man With the Golden Gun<\/strong> to be eventually released. Bond books languished on hiatus until 1968. The story of how Kingsley Amis came to write <strong>Colonel Sun<\/strong> is a fascinating tale, and is fully recounted in this latest graphic collection from Titan Books.<\/p>\n<p>What we all want though, is chills, spills, chicks and thrills and the opening reprint from the <em>Daily Express<\/em> in 1969 is American strip veteran Lawrence&#8217;s second all-original 007 script. And what a cracker it is! In <em>River of Death<\/em> Bond has to infiltrate the Amazon River stronghold of a maniacal oriental scientist. This madman is supplying trained animals to international criminals for the purposes of robbery, espionage and murder. Horak&#8217;s intense illustration is approaching a career peak and easily copes with action, mood, cutting edge science, beautiful women and exotic locales as diverse as the Alps, Rain Forests, London&#8217;s underworld and Rio de Janeiro at Carnival time. This is James Bond at his suave and savage best.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Colonel Sun<\/strong> might almost have been an anti-climax after such an auspicious run by two creators on such a visionary roll, but the sheer pace, complexity and action of Amis\/Markham&#8217;s only Bond novel simply encourages them to up their game.<\/p>\n<p>When \u00e2\u20ac\u0153M\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is kidnapped and 007 is too obviously lured into a rescue attempt in the Greek Islands it leads to an unlikely alliance with Soviet agents against a mysterious third force. These devils are not beyond using Nazi War criminals to achieve their nefarious ends, and this classic Cold War Spy-romp delivers a punch with every strip.<\/p>\n<p>It must have hell on the nerves to follow this adventure in short daily doses, and doubly so at the week-ends. If ever comic strips become part of the National Curriculum we can only pray that this is the calibre of material on any reading list.<\/p>\n<p>Strip \u00c2\u00a9 Express Newspapers Ltd. 1987. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00c2\u00a0 By Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham), Jim Lawrence &amp; Yaroslav Horak (Titan Books) ISBN: 1-84576-175-8 James Bond proves he can never die as the first of the prose \u00e2\u20ac\u0153continuation novels\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is magnificently adapted by the regular strip-team of Lawrence and Horak. Unbelievably, by today&#8217;s publishing practises, when Ian Fleming died in 1964, there was &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2007\/06\/23\/james-bond-colonel-sun\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;James Bond: Colonel Sun&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-novels","category-james-bond"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-8B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}