CRIVENS! COMICS & STUFF!: "THE NAME'S BOMB... JAMES BOMB..."

Monday, 19 March 2012

"THE NAME'S BOMB... JAMES BOMB..."

I must've ordered several back numbers of this particular issue of MAD back in the day. I loved it so much that, whenever I inadvertently dog-eared a corner or creased the spine of my latest copy, I immediately ordered another one. Until the day that THORPE & PORTER informed me that they had run out - no more back numbers of #146 to be had. I eventually managed to buy one from a pen-friend on the Isle of Wight, and that's the one from which I've scanned the following pages.

I remember waxing lyrically and eloquently to one of my school friends about the JAMES BOND parody contained in its pages. "How do you manage to DO all these things?" "Magnificently... of course!" Hell, I'm still using that line today. Whenever I'm showing off to someone by doing a doodle of OOR WULLIE or POPEYE, inevitably I'll be asked: "How do you do that?" And, equally inevitably, I utter my stock reply, stored in my memory banks since 1973. I guess I'm a creature of habit.

Brilliantly drawn by the amazing MORT DRUCKER, this parody has everything. Great art, funny one-liners and James Bond - sorry, Bomb - himself. What's not to love? If you haven't read it before, you're in for a treat - and if you have, you're still in for a treat, albeit one you've experienced before. When this issue first appeared, Bond double-bills still regularly featured in Saturday matinees in cinemas all across the country. It wasn't 'til about 1974 that the Bond movies back-catalogue was sold to television stations, although it was at least another year 'til the first one in the series (Dr. NO) appeared on the box.

Rereading this issue today, I'm pleased to see that it still holds up very well. And who'd ever have thought that typeset lettering for the speech balloons and captions would work so good - better even than hand-crafted ones? They just seemed, against the odds, to suit Mad to a tee - bestowing upon it a literary respectability that normal comicbook lettering probably couldn't have achieved.

Just how did they manage to do it? (C'mon - you must've seen that one coming.) All together now...

"Magnificently... of course!"

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About the artist:

From 1985 to 2000 A.D. (little joke there), I contributed to a variety of high profile comics and magazines for various companies.

For IPC/FLEETWAY/EGMONT, I freelanced as a lettering and logo artist on various weekly comics and monthly magazines, and also as a resize comic artist and spot illustrator on pocket books, summer specials and annuals.

For MARVEL U.K., BLACK LIBRARY, REDAN and USBORNE BOOKS, I again freelanced as a lettering artist, also working as a restoration artist for MARVEL U.S., restoring and re-creating certain pages of JACK KIRBY art for their MARVEL MASTERWORKS editions.

I also lettered the MARVELMAN sample pages submitted to MARVEL U.S. when they were considering acquiring the character, which - as we all now know - they DID.

Supplied comic strips, cartoons and illustrated advertisements for local business campaigns and newspaper publication on a professional basis since the age of 16. Did my first paid art job for publication at 14 or 15 for Lanarkshire Education Board.

Have also made TV appearances as a collector of memorabilia.

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Just some of the titles I worked on are:

2000 A.D. * JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE * DICEMAN * SONIC The COMIC * JUDGE DREDD, LAWMAN Of The FUTURE * CRISIS * REVOLVER * EAGLE * TIGER * BATTLE ACTION-FORCE * BUSTER * WHIZZER & CHIPS * WHOOPEE * NIPPER * SCHOOL FUN * ACE VENTURA, PET DETECTIVE * The REAL GHOSTBUSTERS * DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE * COUNT DUCKULA * RUGRATS * The TRANSFORMERS * DEATH'S HEAD * THUNDERCATS * GALAXY RANGERS * DRAGON'S CLAWS * SINDY * MARVEL MASTERWORKS * The TROLLS * LOADED * INFERNO * WARHAMMER * ROSE BLACK.

Copyright Notice:

Images remain the property of their respective copyright owners and are used here only for the purpose of review, promotion, and nostalgia.

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In the case of images culled from my own collection where copyright of an item isn't mine, I impose no copying restrictions on fellow bloggers.

(Although, if you don't allow copying on your own site, then you really shouldn't be copying from others, should you?)

And while you can credit this blog if you like, it's not mandatory. Who has time to make notes of every casually visited site during an idle browse of the Internet?

In the case of anyone copying images of my own artwork and calligraphy, I affirm my right to be identified as the creator, and any such copying should not be for the purpose of monetary or material gain. (Unless it's mine.)

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Please also note that this blog is not sponsored by, affiliated with, or connected to, any organisation, business, or group, and is wholly independent.