Tag Archives: 007

Apr 24 2018

The Illusion of Control in James Bond: The Body 4

By Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

We all know what happens when James Bond meets a beautiful woman. It’s one of the most (in?)famous aspects of the franchise, and it’s an assumption creators Ales Kot and Eoin Marron clearly lean into when their injured Bond runs into a woman named Moira early in James Bond: The Body 4. Even Bond himself, if only momentarily, thinks he knows exactly how things are going to play out.

It never happens. Moira isn’t a conquest; she’s a complicated woman with her own desires and internal life that Bond can barely begin to fathom. That’s really the idea behind this entire issue: James Bond is a professional who thinks he understands how the world works, but control is far more elusive than he ever truly realized. Continue reading →

Mar 28 2018

Racism, Homophobia and Hypocrisy in James Bond: The Body 3

By Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

James Bond is an agent of the state. His actions seldom need to be motivated beyond “for Queen and Country.” We can infer some other values that the character holds from his choice of career. For example: he believes that violence can (and should) be used to bring about justice. He’s pro sex, but possibly in a way that devalues his relationships with his sexual partners. Issue three of James Bond: The Bond reveals another of Bond’s values — he hates white supremacy.

Or… is that it? The thing that seems to really get Bond going is the hypocrisy inherent in white supremacy. His appetite for sweet, violent, humiliating revenge seems to be fueled less by his desire to stamp out intolerance and more to do with people and organizations neither understanding nor practicing what they preach. Continue reading →

Jan 24 2018

Testing 007’s Limits in James Bond: The Body 1

by Drew Baumgartner

James Bond The Body 1

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Hey, is James Bond actually a good spy? I mean, sure, he always manages to escape from the villain’s compound, but he also (almost) always fails to evade capture in the first place. Indeed, I might argue that his very capacity to think quick and get out of tight jams is a bit of a crutch that he uses to make up for his utter inability to preplan and avoid those tight jams altogether. Maybe international espionage is just that hard to plan for — it never seems to go the way M says it will — but it’s hard not to feel that Bond’s reliance on improvisation might also leave his preparation skills underdeveloped. He knows he can figure it out in the moment, so why bother with anything else? It’s an attitude that makes the assignment in James Bond: The Body 1 kind of perfect — MI6 doesn’t have much intel beyond that an assassination attempt will happen, so who better to send in? Continue reading →