YIPPEEE! PART FIVE OF THE MISSING LINK...

 

 

When I was a much younger kid than I am now, people (usually teachers)

often told me that I had a 'great' imagination. Thing is, it wasn't intended as

a compliment, and carried with it the strong suggestion that I was tethered

to reality by only the most gossamer and fastly-fraying thread. Huh! What

do teachers know? (I should've called down my alien allies from the planet

XRILLFON to sort them out, but I knew they'd be busy.)

 

It seems to me, looking at the opening panel of the above artwork,

that GEORGE LAZENBY as JAMES BOND is looking out at us from the

left-hand side of the page. And isn't that the Saintly ROGER MOORE as

SIMON TEMPLAR helping a woman out of the car on the right? Or am I

just imagining it? What's that? You don't think it's meant to be them? All

I can say then, is that it's a much more interesting place in my world

than it seems to be in yours.

 

And here's me being generous to you by presenting the next episode

of THE MISSING LINK, as drawn by LUIS BERMEJO, for your reading

pleasure. It wouldn't have hurt you to agree with me, now, would it? Pah!

(Don't panic - it's only mock-indignation for comic effect. You're allowed

to disagree with me if you want to.)

 

Interestingly, I remember sitting in the 2000 A.D. offices one day in

the mid-'80s and looking through the ODHAMS PRESS bound file copies

of the first fifty or so issues of FANTASTIC (whence comes the saga of

The Missing Link). When my eyes fell upon the pages, above, I made

the same observation about the first panel to ol' THARGY's team of droids.

(I also speculated as to whether Bermejo may have used publicity photos

from Bond movie ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, as I felt that

the girl in the pic bore a faint resemblance to DIANNA RIGG.)

 

Let me see now, that would have included STEVE MacMANUS,

SIMON GELLER, ROBIN SMITH and art assistant PAUL AILEY. (Paul had

worked on the old POWER COMICS, which is why he had these two bound

volumes in the bookshelf behind his desk.) If I remember correctly, Robin

Smith agreed that there was a similarity and also thought it possible that

the artist had used photographic reference.

 

What do the rest of you think?