Classic Japanese James Bond Comics Reprinted and Reviewed

For years I've been searching for copies of the Japanese James Bond comics (known as manga) from the Sixties. But vintage editions (first collected in the Sixties, and reprinted in the early Eighties) tend to command a premium on Ebay on the rare opportunities they come up. So I was absolutely thrilled to discover recently that for the first time in more than 30 years, they are back in print! Four Ian Fleming novels were licensed to Saito-Production Co. Ltd. at the height of Bondmania in 1964, and manga adaptations were produced over the next several years. The four titles are all now finally available again in 300-page paperback collections with, naturally, Japanese text. Live and Let Die, Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and The Man With the Golden Gun can now all be ordered from Amazon.jp. (Use your browser's "translate" option to be sure what you're ordering.) And the shipping is fast. I ordered mine on Monday with standard international shipping, and had them in my hands by Friday.

Very little has been written about this crucial chapter of Bond history in Western publications. Even the most comprehensive book on 007 in comics to date, Alan J. Porter's James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007, devotes little space to these works (probably owing to their longstanding elusiveness). But it's still the best source for publication details. According to Porter, "the manga Bond first appeared in serialized form in an anthology titled Boys Life from Shogakukan Inc, and were later collected ... in 1966 under the Golden Comics imprint. While the manga Bond stories were critically acclaimed, the holders of the Bond literary license withdrew permission [for future adaptations]." Porter speculates that this may have been because the manga "diverted so far from the source material."

Remember that part of On Her Majesty's Secret Service where 007 dresses like a gladiator and does battle with lions? Of course you do!

At 300 pages for each novel (and Fleming's novels are all fairly short), it's not surprising that the stories were expanded upon in their graphic adaptations. While the first one, Live and Let Die, seems to hew fairly closely to Fleming's narrative with a few key additions and changes (more on that below), subsequent stories appear to deviate further and further from their source material. While I can't read the Japanese text, looking at the pictures it appears that On Her Majesty's Secret Service features two main male villains—a bald Blofeld (presumably) and someone else with a goatee and hair that twists into devil horns. (All the stories seem to feature an increased number of baddies.) And no sign of Fraulein Bunt. There's also a lengthy sequence where, prior to making his ski escape from Piz Gloria, Bond is made to dress like a gladiator and do battle with lions in an arena. (See above.) And The Man With the Golden Gun, as best I can glean from flipping through it, appears to have very little indeed to do with Fleming's story—though certain key setpieces remain in place, as does the Jamaican setting.

Two seemingly original sequences from Saito's The Man With the Golden Gun

The writer and artist of these adaptations was none other than Takao Saito, who would find fame shortly afterwards creating Japan's most famous and long-running espionage manga series, Golgo 13. Golgo 13 is an assassin who may have fewer scruples than 007, but gets into very similar sorts of adventures and certainly bears a close resemblance to Saito's Connery-inspired James Bond. (The two share a penchant for white dinner jackets over black dress shirts in Saito's illustrations, as well as distinctive eyebrows and sideburns.) Glidrose Publications (precursor to IFP) revoked the Bond license in 1967 and Saito began publishing Golgo 13 stories in 1968. It has been suggested that his early Golgo 13 stories were nothing but a continuation of what the artist had been doing with 007, merely under a new title.

Whatever the circumstances of his origin, Golgo 13 (also known by the alias Duke Togo) went on to enjoy a robust transmedia career. Besides an ongoing manga series now 179 volumes long, the character has starred in two live action films (the second and better known of which, Assignment: Kowloon, starred Sonny Chiba), two anime features, an anime TV series, and six video games. (My own introduction to the character came via Nintendo in the late Eighties.) Viz has published a number of the Golgo 13 manga in English, though not in their original publication order. (Read more on Golgo 13 at Permission to Kill.)

Returning to Saito's James Bond work, these manga collections are no mere footnote in Bond lore. In fact, running a cumulative total of nearly 1200 pages, they're actually the most significant 007 publications in the graphic novel medium to date! Their republication, officially authorized by Ian Fleming Publications (whose hummingbird logo, seen on last year's continuation novel Trigger Mortis, and circular "007" logo, seen on past IFP products, both appear on these editions*) is consequently the most significant Bond reprint in a long time. While it's great to have them in the original Japanese, it is my sincere hope that IFP works with Dynamite Entertainment (who hold the rights to reprint all James Bond comic books, which I assume includes the manga) to produce English translations for the vast Western market who have never had an opportunity to read these stories in any format. Something along the lines of the excellent reprints of Sixties Batman manga that DC have been recently publishing, giving English speaking readers their first chance to read that series in its entirety. Until such a time, however, I strongly encourage Bond fans with an interest in comics to import these Japanese volumes.

The bullet hole design brings to mind the initial
SPECTRE teaser poster

The new reprints, published by Shogakukan under the banner of "Big Comic Special," are, like all manga, designed to be read from right to left and therefore printed in a way Western audiences might call backwards. It takes a little practice, but after early attempts at translating manga into English that reversed the images (which created its own set of issues) so the stories could be read front to back, millions of Western manga fans have gotten used to reading comics this way, even in English, and it's really not very difficult. (What is difficult, for me anyway, is reading Japanese! I tried using the Google Translate app on the panels, but ended up with mostly nonsense.) They are thick paperbacks, roughly 5x7". Like many Japanese paperbacks, these volumes have dust jackets. And there's even another, smaller strip sleeve on top of the dust jacket promoting SPECTRE with a picture of Daniel Craig in a still from the film.

Beneath the busily illustrated dust jacket, the book itself has an entirely different cover devoid of all the extraneous text that eclipses the outer cover. These simpler monochromatic illustrations could easily be confused for covers to the actual Fleming novels. Live and Let Die depicts gold coins; On Her Majesty's Secret Service displays an Alpine mountainscape, and The Man With the Golden Gun shows Jamaican scenery.  (I don't have Thunderball yet.)

Live and Let Die, as I said above, appears to be fairly faithful to Fleming with the alarming exception of apparently replacing Quarrel with an annoying little white kid! Action has been added where you would expect action to be added when going from a novel to a more visual medium like comics (or movies, for that matter). For example, Bond and Solitaire's railroad journey from New York to Miami now includes a fight on top of the moving train. There are some extra chases and fights throughout, and there appears to be a new (white) henchman in Mr. Big's ensemble. Saito actually prefigured the 1973 Roger Moore movie by dressing 007 in a black shirt with a holster over it when he busts up the voodoo ceremony, which has been greatly expanded to include a huge altar in the best pulpy tradition.

The rose petal motif reminds me of the flower
on UK editions of Devil May Care

On Her Majesty's Secret Service is notable for its bald, eye-patched depiction of Blofeld. (Assuming that character is indeed Blofeld.) This is a far cry from Fleming's description of the villain in that book as being tall and slim. Furthermore, while Blofeld drastically altered his appearance from book to book, I don't believe Fleming ever described 007's archenemy as being bald. Or as having a damaged eye. One has to wonder if members of the You Only Live Twice film crew saw this comic (which was originally serialized in 1966, and would have been available and probably ubiquitous while they were location scouting in Japan) and if it had any bearing on Donald Pleasence's iconic look as Blofeld—bald, with a horribly scarred eye. [STOP THE PRESSES! It turns out (thanks to some rough translation by my friend Stu) that this character is not Blofeld at all, but Mr. Big (which explains his darker coloring), who we last saw at the end of Live and Let Die aboard a pirate ship that was about to explode. (Unless he also stood in for Ernst Stavro in Saito's Thunderball.) Apparently the explosion must have damaged his eye. Can you imagine Fleming's Mr. Big presiding over an Alpine fortress? Well, given the timing and location, I still contend he could have been a model for Pleasence's Blofeld.]

While OHMSS retains the overall plot and setting of the book, it also adds and embellishes. Besides the aforementioned lion fight, Bond's introduction to Tracy has been amped up. Instead of following her car and then saving her from the water when she attempts to drown herself, he and she (in their separate cars) both end up in a breakneck car chase with some bad guys, and Bond spends much of that chase on the outside of Tracy's car. She then careens off the road, and he rescues her from a car accident rather than a suicide attempt. When 007 poses as Sir Hillary Bray at Piz Gloria, he dons a false beard. And the ending... I can't really tell exactly what's going on without being able to read the text, but whatever is happening is definitely not what happens in the book! (Or film.) However, it is very cool to see Bond's Bentley illustrated, and the ski chase and avalanche are appropriately spectacular.

The Man With the Golden Gun appears to be the most divergent from its Fleming source. I was disappointed not to find the brainwashed Bond's assassination attempt on M—at least not occurring as it is described in the novel. Flipping through, it appears to be a largely original adventure. But then that's exactly the appeal of these adaptations. For faithful graphic retellings of Fleming's novels, we have the Daily Express strips as collected in several different formats by Titan. The manga stories, on the other hand, look as if they provide as much in the way of new Bond story material as old! Which makes me very much want to read them legitimately. I can only reiterate my plea for IFP and Dynamite to bring these books to English-speaking audiences as soon as possible. In the meantime, though, I recommend buying these fine Japanese editions for an extremely rare and extremely rewarding slice of hitherto obscure Bondiana.

Now if only someone would reprint those Sixties Man From U.N.C.L.E. manga...

*A note on the branding of these volumes: While Dynamite, whose license is with IFP and not Danjaq, seem to have been assiduously avoiding any logos associated with the film Bond, these editions, also copyright IFP, don't do the same. Obviously they are movie tie-ins as well, given the SPECTRE promotion on the outer mini-sleeves. But the title treatment of each story also recalls the title treatment of the film in question, and even the giant "007" is very much the (older style) movie logo, minus the gun barrel.

Ian Fleming's Master Spy James Bond 007 in Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver revealed the title and UK cover art (as well as the car) for his forthcoming James Bond continuation novel today in Dubai and on his website.  At the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, Deaver unveiled this cover and the title Carte Blanche. A corresponding press release doesn't give away many details about the plot (other than that part of the story takes place in the UAE, which we already knew), but it does answer another burning question that's sparked intense debate in the Bond fan community of late: what car will 007 drive in this modern day-set novel? "Carte Blanche also features Fleming's favourite car – a Bentley. Historically, Bond owned three Bentley cars in the course of the fourteen original novels written by Ian Fleming and, bringing the plot completely up to date, Bond drives a Bentley Continental GT in the new book." Sounds good to me! (Though I'm not sure about that bit about Bentley being Fleming's own favorite car.  While it's true that his character favored it, I'm pretty sure Fleming himself drove Thunderbirds and Avantis in the days when he was chronicling Bond's adventures. But that's nitpicking.) I love the looks of the cars Bentley has been making of late (I'd hoped we might see one in Casino Royale, but the Aston Martin DBS was a more than adequate substitute), and the Continental GT is no exception. See for yourself at Bentley's website.

That's not much to go on, but regular readers will know well that I never shy away from flounting the adage and judging books by their covers. So what do I think of the title and cover?  Well, the first thing I thought looking at it was, "Cate Blanchett? What does she have to do with this?"  That was just my first thought looking at those words in that title treatment.  I know, I'm weird.  (And I spent years working on the Lord of the Rings movies where her's was a name that popped up a lot.)  Anyway, as for the title, I like it.  It doesn't have quite the ring of Devil May Care, but it still sounds Bondian and I have every confidence this novel will outshine that disappointment.  One good indicator is the fact that IFP aren't pulling that offensive "writing as Ian Fleming" nonsense that they did with Sebastian Faulkes. The cover image (for the Hodder and Stroughton UK edition) is stark and suitably spyish (shades of Mission: Impossible) and modern looking, all of which are good things.  It's not ideal (I'm not quite sure what it is: is it a fuse or just a plume of smoke?), but it looks good.  I'm surprised they resisted making the curves in the smoke into a woman's body ala the flower on the UK Devil May Care cover or the flames on The World Is Not Enough's teaser poster, but I suppose it looks more contemporary this way. 

A photo accompanying the press release depicts Deaver posing with some mock-ups of the book (at least I assume they're mock-ups!), and honing in on that detail, I like the overall look. Assuming it's about the same size as the classic UK firsts of Fleming and Gardner, the whole design seems very appropriate. Hodder and Stroughton have also set up a mini-site dedicated to the novel, complete with a countdown to its release and a cool little 3D animation of the book itself. Check it out at 007carteblanche.co.uk.

The Hodder and Stroughton edition of Carte Blanche comes out two days in advance of Ian Fleming's birthday on May 26, 2011. The American edition, published by Simon and Schuster, follows a few weeks later on June 14. This book is one of the spy events I'm most looking forward to this year, which is itself the subject of a follow-up post to my Best of 2010 round-up that I've been working on since New Year's Day and hope to have up soon.

Judging A Book By Its Cover/Book Review: DK’s New Bond Set

The holidays are just around the corner (if you can believe it), and while we may not have a new James Bond movie to look forward to this year, that still means some new merchandising from DK. The publisher has made the most of its Bond license, publishing not only specific movie tie-ins like Bond On Set: Filming Quantum of Solace (review here) and Bond On Set: Filming Casino Royale, but also staggering those with a new James Bond Encyclopedia (review here), which has already been revised once, and frequent updates of their trusty warhorse James Bond: The Secret World of 007 (review here), which is certainly the best first book on 007 for young Bond fans today. (It also appeals to those of us older fans who never matured much beyond 11 and still get a kick out of cutaway drawings of gadget-stocked vehicles). Their latest offering is physically (if not content-wise) the most ambitious yet: a set of four matching hardcover volumes, each exploring a different aspect of 007's mystique: Bond Cars and Vehicles, Bond Girls, Bond Villains and The Book of Bond, the latter (not to be confused with Kingsley Amis’ must-have tome of the same name) focusing on the famous secret agent himself. Bond Girls and Bond Villains both hit bookstores last week.

Those familiar with the DK brand are probably aware that the publisher’s hallmark is presentation, and their books focus a lot more on visuals than on content. They can sometimes be frustratingly sparse on information (excepting the aforementioned Encyclopedia, at least) but generally stunning in design. This new quartet is true to form, yet somehow more so in both respects. The content is thinner than ever, yet the presentation yields by far the nicest looking Bond volumes in some time. Being, admittedly, somewhat superficial myself–and a very tactile bibliophile–I’ve been known from time to time to flout the storied axiom and judge books by their covers. To me, not only what it looks like, but how a book feels and even smells often provides as much pleasure as actually reading it. (Clearly, I will never abandon my tangible library even as literature at large becomes reduced to ephemeral bytes on a Kindle or iPad.) Yet I do generally keep these physical book reviews separate from the ones in which I evaluate books' contents. With DK that’s almost impossible. The presentation is the point. How the page looks is at least as important and (clearly in this case) often even more important than the words that are printed on it. Therefore, I will combine my traditional book review with my “Judging A Book By Its Cover” review, and address both aspects at once.

Starting, appropriately, on the outside, these are certainly eye-catching books. They’ll look good faced out together on endcaps at bookstores this season (wherever brick and mortar bookstores still survive, that is) and they’ll look great with their spines lined up next to each other on your shelf. The spines (perfectly flat, not subtly curved) are especially well thought out, with each volume sporting a different suit from a deck of cards at the bottom: Cars gets a club, Girls a heart (naturally), Villains a spade (equally naturally) and The Book of Bond a diamond. The title treatments are uniform, with the word “Bond” standing out in large white caps on each spine. Besides the “Bond” and the heart or club, these spines will stand out because they’re shiny. Not shiny like a grade school library book, like your regular DK hardcover when stripped of its dust jacket, but shiny in a very unique way. The books are cloth-bound, like all the best hardcovers, but the cloth is silky. If you run your hand over the cover, you’ll feel the fine grain of the threads coating the boards. If you rub the books together while pulling one from the shelf, you’ll hear it. (There’s a new sense for my physical book reviews to address!) Since they’re all silver or gold colored to begin with (with black spines), the effect is nothing short of shimmery. It’s very cool. (Enlarge the photo of the spines above for a better idea of the texture I'm describing.) The squarebound corners are hard edges, and the boards themselves are thick. It gives the book weight (which I always like in a hardcover) and makes it feel durable. It also adds overall thickness, which benefits volumes this slight. (Each one clocks in at around 130-150 pages, but it’s not so much the pages as what’s on them that qualifies as slight.)

Opening the very attractive cover and turning past the equally attractive solid colored endpapers (red for Cars, tan for Girls, purple for Villans and blue for Bond) to said pages inside, I’m sorry to report that the seasoned Bond fan will learn nothing new from any of these books. I suppose I shouldn’t have been expecting that, but my hopes were particularly high for Bond Cars and Vehicles since, surprisingly, there has never before been a book devoted specifically to that potentially rich subject. Dave Worrall managed to devote an entire, fantastic volume to just one particularly famous Bond car (and another to all of them, but only in miniature form!), but no one has yet written about all the marvelous Bond cars together. I was hoping this would be it. Sadly, it’s not. You will learn nothing new about your favorite Aston Martin or Lotus, and in fact you won’t even see them all covered. (GoldenEye’s BMW Z3 is a shocking omission in a book called Bond Cars and Vehicles!) You won’t even get any of DK’s famous cross-sections. (I had imagined the book would be mostly comprised of those!) Instead, you get lots of photographs, accompanied by rudimentary text (“A slap with his machine pistol–and boom!–one dead henchman and another Bond car totaled. Would Q regret fitting that burglar protection system in Bond’s Lotus?”). They are, however, very pretty photos, and I must admit I’ve bought other books and magazines before simply for pretty photographs of Aston Martins. And while most of them looked familiar, a few pictures were even new to me. Where else can you see a lovely two-page spread of Mr. Big’s pimped-out ‘71 Cadillac Fleetwood 60 Special by Dunham, parked in front of Harlem’s Fillet of Soul restaurant? (Of course, the car frustratingly isn’t identified, but it’s still a very nice picture. Once again: presentation without information.) The all-photo format keeps this volume of a piece with its companions, but I sincerely hope that DK will one day revisit this subject with more of the childlike glee usually on display in their books, focusing on cool cutaways and schematics–and the makes and models of every vehicle pictured.

I’m afraid The Book of Bond is even less essential on its own. The text (credited to Alistair Dougall) is kind of odd: it’s written like a children’s book (“A shock was waiting for Bond before he left for Nassau to investigate Strangways’ fate. M announced that instead of the Beretta Bond had used for ten years, he would be taking another gun, a Walther PPK.”), like one of those old Bond annuals from the Sixties, or the A View To A Kill storybook, but it’s not a narrative. From a narrative standpoint, it glosses over crucial turning points, like the murder of Tracy. The chapter on OHMSS concludes its recap with, “M, Q and Miss Moneypenny wished the happy couple good luck and Mr. and Mrs. James Bond truly believed that they had all the time in the world.” Accompanying that Disney ending is a full-page picture of the smiling bride and groom. There’s no mention of what happens next, just vague foreshadowing. Yet the omission isn’t to spare younger readers the shock. No, that comes bluntly on the next page with, “Bond avenges Tracy’s murder by drowning Blofeld in a pool of mud in a Cairo clinic.” What murder? If you don’t know, you’ll be confused, and if you do then there’s really no reason for you to read this recap. The loose narrative depends on the reader having a knowledge of what happens in the movies. It’s kind of like the narrative you get on the back of trading cards. This sort of narrative might have had a place back in the Sixties and Seventies before home video, but now every kid who likes the movies enough to own this sort of book probably has them all on DVD and can watch for himself.

However, as with the first title, it’s rather unfair to judge this sort of book by its text. These aren’t text-oriented books; they’re lavish, glossy picture books with brief (and apparently unnecessary) text accompaniment. The reliable DK layout (credited to Dan Bunyan on the first two volumes) outshines the lack of any substantial prose. This superficial format works alright on The Book of Bond (showcasing all six official Bond actors in multiple two-page spreads), but is best served in the final two volumes of the quartet, Bond Girls and Bond Villains.

As with Bond Cars and Vehicles, there has never before (to my recollection, anyway) been a book focusing exclusively on 007's adversaries, which is kind of weird. While I might enjoy a more thorough dossier on these bad guys and the actors who played them than “The confrontation with SPECTRE’s mastermind proves to be the most volcanic of Bond’s career,” I wasn’t expecting it after reading the first two books in the series. Therefore, I was prepared for what we get, and what we get isn’t half bad. It’s pretty cool to flip through a nicely laid-out scrapbook of Bond’s myriad foes–masterminds and henchmen, men and women alike–from over the years. And it’s equally enjoyable to encounter a familiar shot of Donald Pleasence’s Blofeld stroking his cat or Largo giving orders to his frogmen (this one gets a nice double page spread) or a more unexpected full-page portrait of Necros dressed as a milkman and pointing his pistol. Bond Villains is, like its companions, a picture book, but it’s a picture book on a subject for which we haven’t had one before.

The same can’t be said of Bond Girls, as 007's women have already been the subject of The James Bond Girls by Graham Rye (mostly pictures, like this one), The Bond Women: 007 Style by Tim Greaves (all text, and very informative text at that, making up for what it lacks in its picture-free presentation) and Bond Girls Are Forever by Maryam D’Abo and John Cork, which offered the best of both worlds, combining the pretty pictures of the former book with informative text of the latter in a beautiful oversize volume. But DK’s book on the subject still manages to bring its own spin to the material. Of all the aspects of the James Bond movies, the Bond Girls are probably the most suited to this sort of photo book. The layout is once more superb, and serves these beautiful actresses to their fullest advantage. Four whole pages are devoted to Ursula Andress in her bikini, and why shouldn’t they be? They’re all fantastic images. And just check out that title spread of Daniella Bianchi:

Every page of this book is as gorgeous as the women on it. Despite traveling in some well-tread tracks, DK’s Bond Girls holds its own. It’s got a wider range of pictures than Rye’s original book on the subject, which stuck mostly with the most publicized stills from each film. (Which was appropriate for its time.) It lacks any information about the actresses themselves, but in that respect makes a nice companion volume to Greaves’ book, which lacks images. It couldn’t begin to compete with Bond Girls Are Forever, which remains the definitive book on the subject, but what this one’s got that that one doesn’t is portability. I know Bond fans who lug around Cork and D’Abo’s book to conventions collecting actresses’ signatures in it, which I thought was a great idea. But this new book is better for that purpose. (Bond Villains would be great for the same thing.) All of these books are like miniature coffee table books, and sometimes a more manageable size is preferable. It’s nice to have a bunch of photos of Bond cars or Bond Girls all bound together in such a pretty package.

No seasoned Bond fan can expect to learn anything new from this quartet of books. But that doesn’t mean they won’t derive pleasure from them. For presentation alone (which is, I think it’s fair to say, their primary raison d’etre), most fans will feel the need to own these books. And nearing the holiday season, they’ll make ideal gifts for Bond fans of any stripe. The casual fan and the die-hard alike can appreciate sumptuous picture books in lavish binding. (Not to mention a great autograph book to carry around easily to conventions and premieres!)

Judging A Book By Its Cover: Anthony Horowitz's Stormbreaker Limited Edition

While Charlie Higson's Young Bond novels are highly collectible thanks to the obvious, built-in audience of James Bond collectors, Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider books have sparked less of a collector's market.  That's certainly not to say that they aren't collectable, just that they inspire less of a mania than a nearly six-decade-old franchise like 007.  Like the Young Bond books, the early books in the Alex Rider series were first published only in paperback in their country of origin, and pristine copies of these first editions are rare and fetch a decent amount on Ebay.  As with any series, the first book, Stormbreaker, is the most sought after, and the most collectible editions (judging by the exorbitant prices on Bookfinder.com) seem to be the American hardcover first edition (which was the only hardcover first, and had a small print run) and a slipcased, limited edition hardcover put out in 2005 by Walker Books in the UK.  While the first four Young Bonds have all been published in similar slipcased editions, to date Stormbreaker is (sadly) the only Alex Rider novel to receive this deluxe treatment.  There's very little information about this edition available on the web, so it seems like a good candidate for my occasional series, "Judging a Book By its Cover," in which I do exactly what the age-old adage cautions against and evaluate books based on their physical characteristics alone.

Starting on the outside, the slipcase itself is kind of ugly.  It's a flimsier cardboard than the Young Bond limited edition slipcases, and the lime green text across the front declaring ">> LIMITED EDITION >> STORMBREAKER << LIMITED EDITION" in a digital font (designed to look like the readout on a computer screen) isn't pretty.  The silver embossed Stormbreaker logo, however, with a lightning bolt through a globe, is cool.  The red bottom of the case is marred by a giant barcode, the original £20 price mark, and the assertion that "This special limited edition has been signed and numbered by the author."  Personally, I prefer it when barcodes and prices for limited editions come on a removable sticker outside the shrinkwrap rather than printed on the slipcase.  This edition was originally sold with an ugly cardboard band that wrapped around the book further emphasizing the fact that it was a limited edition.  While the collector in me couldn't reconcile throwing it away, I did remove the band for reasons or aesthetics and convenience of accessability. 

Inside the slipcase is a different story.  The book itself is very handsome indeed, with black boards and black endpapers.  There is no dust jacket.  The embossed silver logo appears again on the front cover and on the spine.  It and the letters in the author's name are presented in a subtler "digital" font that can really only be discerened by close scrutiny.  It works much better than the text on the slipcase.  The size of the book, the texture of the boards, the gilt embossment and the letters in Horowitz's name on the spine distinctly remind me of the Jonathan Cape Ian Fleming first editions.  The lettering isn't the same, mind you; it just reminds me of that.  And that's a good thing.  It's a nice looking book.  Unfortunately, it's bound with glue (the prevalent British preference of the moment, also afflicting the Young Bond limited editions) rather than sewn, but oh well.  That's hardly detremental. 

The copyright page reads "First published 2000 by Walker Books Ltd," then adds "This special limited edition published 2005."  The signature page is the first one after the endpaper, coming before the title page or copyright information.  The edition is limited to 750, and signed by Anthony Horowitz in blue ink. 

The book fits snugly into the slipcase, but not so snug that it becomes a challenge to remove it, an annoying factor affecting some of the Young Bond limited editions.

All in all, the Stormbreaker Limited Edition is a very handsome volume packed in a slightly less handsome slipcase.  A crucial cornerstone of the series, it's certainly worth seeking out for Alex Rider and spy fiction collectors.  And as Alex Rider is one of the most influential spy series currently being published, it will only appreciate in value. I wish there were more Alex Rider limited editions.

Book Review: Bond On Set: Filming Quantum of Solace

Bond On Set: Filming Quantum of Solace is Greg Williams’ third "Bond On Set" photography book. He started with Pierce Brosnan’s final 007 outing, Die Another Day, for which he produced a rather haphazardly-assembled collection of candid photographs of the actors and crew on set. (Flipping through it six years later, in fact, it’s easy to forget that the movie is a dud. In still images, it looks fantastic!) Williams is definitely a gifted still photographer, and has a knack for capturing little moments that tell big stories about day-to-day life on a film set. He’s also good at capturing quintessentially Bondian moments (often involving guns or beautiful women), a talent which has earned him the poster shoots for both of Daniel Craig’s Bond movies to date. The best pictures come from subtle juxtapositions of the two: Brosnan or Craig in full Bond attire, but relaxing between takes; Halle Berry pointing a pistol at someone, but smiling broadly at an off-camera joke instead of looking serious; or Eva Green looking gorgeous in one of her Vesper dresses, but instead of posing like a model, clowning for the photographer, throwing punches at the camera.

The Casino Royale book was better organized, generally progressing chronologically through sets and locations in the order they appeared in the movie. Daniel Craig himself provided some insightful and sometimes humorous recollections on the individual stills in a dialogue with Williams at the end of the book. Bond On Set: Filming Quantum of Solace is the best organized book yet in the series, laying out the photos behind chapter headings beginning with "Pre-Production" and continuing with pictures grouped by shooting location. Again, it’s an assortment of color and black and white images, every one of them pretty outstanding. Whereas the first two volumes were very heavy on the candids, there’s a lot more portraiture this time, but even posing his subjects are clearly relaxed and at ease with Williams’ presence. There is sadly no dialogue with Craig this time out, but instead Marc Forster provides some lengthy bursts of commentary throughout the book.

As you might imagine in a making-of photo book of this nature, spoilers abound, so even if you pick it up today, I’d recommend waiting until you’ve seen the movie to really dig into it. The spoiler shots include some very striking photos of one of the film’s female stars (sans costume–at least in the traditional sense) that have already appeared on the Internet. Every male fan will definitely want to at least flip to these pages once he’s seen the movie! In the meantime, you can pretty safely flip through the first chapter or two without ruining much. Enticingly, you’ll get a glimpse in the first couple of pages of how Daniel Craig will look in his first official gun barrel firing pose (since Casino Royale’s variation on that was incorporated into the action). 007's till firing one-handed as opposed to two (in the last volume, Craig discussed how real life law enforcement personnel always use two hands), but in a much more military looking pose than some of the previous Bond actors. (I have to say, inaccurate though it may be, I still think Dalton and Moore created the best silhouettes, with their guns aimed high and their other hands swung out far to the side.) You’ll also see Craig putting the Aston Martin DBS through its paces on a test track in preparation for filming the film’s chase scene, which is pretty neat.

Regular readers will be familiar with my occasional "Judging a Book by Its Cover" reviews, in which I rate books based solely on their physical attributes. Well, for a photography book, wherein you pretty much know what you’ll find inside, and enjoyment thereof is entirely subjective, that’s a big part of what a reviewer can offer, so I’ll lump it right in with the regular review.

Collectors who seek uniformity in their series will not like the "Bond On Set" designs. The only constant among the three volumes is that each one is completely different from the others. The first "Bond On Set" book (published in hardcover by Boxtree) was under a foot in height, and about nine inches across. The second volume, from DK, jumped to just over twelve inches tall, and almost as many wide. This one retains that height, but drops down to ten inches in width.

Both previous volumes featured dust jackets and boards that bore the same images as the jackets. This one eschews the jacket altogether, with winning results. As a collector, I’ve been conditioned from my earliest days scouring used bookstores for Fleming firsts to value a dust jacket above all else, and in many cases, that’s appropriate. But with illustrated boards, it’s simply not necessary–and sometimes gets in the way. From a purely tactile standpoint, DK has fashioned the most satisfying of all three books in Bond On Set: Filming Quantum of Solace. The matte finished boards, bearing a terrific, moody, black and white photograph of Daniel Craig near some railroad tracks, don’t need a dust jacket. They’re much handsomer without one, and I like the way the bare book feels in my hands. It’s uncomplicated. It’s a hefty slab of Bond photos, and that’s exactly what I want from it. Furthermore, it has sharp, well-defined corners and a totally flat spine, which works excellently for an un-jacketed book. Bond On Set: Casino Royale had this too, but you couldn’t tell because of the dust jacket. My first reaction to a book is always based on how it feels when I hold it, and I very much like the way this one feels in my hands. At 160 pages (slightly longer than the previous two) and with thick, solid boards and glossy, heavy stock pages, it’s got a satisfying weight to it. To put it in terms Jason Bourne could appreciate, you’d certainly get a reaction if you hit someone over the head with this book. Despite all that, DK has managed to keep the price point down to a very reasonable $22.00, which is considerably cheaper than previous volumes. It’s a lot of value for your dollar.

I still miss the in-depth, text-heavy making-of books we used to get for Bond films like GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, but to be honest, Williams’ photo books tell the behind-the-scenes story nearly as well. You certainly get a sense of being on set, and he captures all aspects of the filmmaking. You see hard work and fatigue, and you see moments of levity. You see the production process from start to finish. In fact, the still images sometimes manage to tell more in that single, captured moment than a whole DVD making-of featurette. Like its predecessors, Bond On Set: Filming Quantum of Solace is essential reading (if that’s the word) for James Bond fans–and a nicer coffee table item than either of those ones.

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By Royal Command: Judging A Book By Its Cover

Less than a week after it came out, I received my copy of Charlie Higson’s latest James Bond novel yesterday from Amazon.co.uk. (Not bad!) Never mind the story; I haven’t had a chance to get very far into it yet. As always, I’m going to start out by examining the book itself. By doing exactly what the adage warns against: judging it by its cover. Physically, By Royal Command is one satisfying book! I like this cover design even better than the shiny gold one for the last Young Bond, Hurricane Gold.

There is no dust jacket. Looking at pictures of it, I had imagined the book’s boards themselves to be faux leather, I guess because of how the shiny silver photographs. That would have been really cool (and would be a great idea for the eventual limited edition, assuming there is one), but what we do get is also cool. Like Hurricane Gold, the cover is glossy and shiny. Best of all, the striking silver, red and black Union Jack–as well as the Young Bond target design and some of the text–is embossed. It’s a pleasure to run your fingers across the cover and feel the subtle depressions.

The boards are also quite thick, and very sturdy, lending a truly satisfying heft to the book as a whole despite being printed on the same rough, lighter weight paper as all the Young Bonds. This time, though, that paper is the ideal choice, perfectly accented by blood-red page edges, like a Hymnal. For some reason, colored page edges have gone out of fashion, but By Royal Command is a welcome throwback. It reminds me of books I had to read for school–read by countless other students before me. Of the stacks I used to arrange so carefully when I worked summers in the best used bookstore in New England. It is the highest compliment when I say that By Royal Command will make a fantastic used book one day. I know there must be other bibliophiles out there who understand that it’s a good thing when I say I can smell the must already. This is the kind of volume that just touching it, thumbing through its scarlet-edged pages brings all the scents of all the wonderful used bookstores I’ve ever frequented flooding over me. All thanks to those wonderful red edges!

There are also red end papers adorned with a repeating Young Bond logo motif (not as striking as the glossy red poppy end papers of the UK Devil May Care, but still neat), and sparkly red faux stitching at the top and bottom of the inside spine–another nice touch. This volume clocks in at 354 pages, followed by acknowledgements (including one to The Young Bond Dossier’s John Cox–congratulations, John!) and advertisements for the SilverFin graphic novel and the Young Bond online game.

Like I say, I haven’t read it yet. The story may be rubbish, though judging from what Higson has delivered before, I highly doubt it. But from a purely tactile standpoint, this may be my favorite Bond book ever! It’s much, much more satisfying than the lightweight, cheap-feeling Devil May Care first edition, and also more satisfying than the pricey but discouragingly featherweight Higson limited editions. I just love picking it up! I keep doing that, weighing it in my hands. I know most of you probably think me certifiable after reading this post, but I also know that there are some readers and collectors who know exactly what I’m talking about. And if you’re one of them, with even the slightest interest in James Bond, this is a first edition worth tracking down! (Although it will be even more rewarding to track down amidst the musty stacks of an overstuffed used bookstore on some winding country road in twenty years...)