YIPPEEE! PART FIVE OF THE MISSING LINK...

Copyright REBELLION

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 they were 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 assisting 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 50 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 on whether Bermejo used publicity photos from Bond movie ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, as I felt that the girl in the pic faintly resembled 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 red-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?