Author: Jim Lawrence
Artist: Yaroslav Horak
Publisher: Titan
Price: $19.95
Trouble Spot is one of a large number of trade paperback style books from Titan, which collect the James Bond comic strips that ran through the 60s and 70s in The Daily Express newspaper. These strips originally focused on adapting Fleming’s original Bond Novels, but as this source material was exhausted writer Jim Lawrence began to create his own original stories for the strip. Four such stories are collected within this volume, Trouble Spot, The Isle of Condors, The League of Vampires and Die With My Boots On.
The details of the stories vary, obviously, but they all follow essentially the same formula; Bond’s introductory encounter with a damsel in distress, subsequent plot thickening and introduction of bad guys, ending with a violent conclusion and Bond getting the girl. In this respect Jim Lawrence has pretty much captured the essence of the Bond franchise, since that’s the formula nearly all the novels and movies follow as well. Lawrence’s Bond is the 60s version of the character; a heavy drinking, heavy smoking, womanising, man’s man. In fact the tone of the stories as a whole is pretty misogynistic, and while there are a couple of strong female characters, they never fail to end up in their underwear (or less) at some point, which although I don’t object to as a rule I would prefer to have some story based reason for.
Lawrence’s dialogue is occasionally clunky, but given the format, the subject matter and the situations I think a little clunkiness is forgivable. He has a good grasp of the Bond character, or at least the 60s incarnation of him, and while his villains are a bit trite they are Bond villains so they probably should be. The pacing is fast, but not confusingly so, and considering the newspaper format the amount of expository or recap dialogue and narration is kept top an impressive minimum.
Horak’s art somewhat took me by surprise by actually being pretty good. As a piece of sequential art his work flows very well, and while his options for panel layouts, and indeed composition within each panel, are extremely hampered by the newspaper format of three equally sized squares per issue, he does admirably in trying to introduce some diversity. For example switching to two widescreen panels occasionally for big explosions, which while it seems simplistic these days was probably quite cutting edge for a 60s newspaper strip. In addition his characters are all easily distinguishable from one another, and his appreciation of the female form is suitably astute given the frequency of its appearance here.
Trouble Spot is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people will be immediately put off by the newspaper style art and layout, others by the fairly dated and sexist overtones. The stories are a classic interpretation of the Bond franchise, and in this respect if you are a fan of the character they are worth a look. In addition they represent something of a snapshot in time, a flashback to a different era with different mores. A time where showing naked women for the sake of naked women was not just acceptable, but positively encouraged, and when our heroes were expected to drink, smoke and kill people. As such it is also a very interesting look at how changes in society are reflected in changes in our entertainment. It’s not gonna win any Eisner’s, but it’s a worthwhile read.
Having recently finished a PhD in Immunology Ross is currently working for a UK biotech company. He lives in Cambridge where he reads comics, spends too much money on music and attempts to learn Portuguese. He owns at least 7 lightsabers, yet still manages to have a very attractive girlfriend who he misses very much, thus proving anything really is possible.