After watching MY NAME IS MODESTY a few weeks back, I decided to dive back in to the world of Peter O’Donnell’s daring heroine, starting with the one volume of the comic strip Durham Library has that I haven’t read, Ripper Jax (by O’Donnell and artist Enric Badia Romero.
The best strip in this 1990s collection is the first one, in which Modesty learns a psychometric friend of hers is being coerced by knife-wielding gangster “Ripper” Jax, who’s holding the psychic’s daughter hostage. Can Modestry and her trusty dioscuri Willie Garvin rescue the girl and fix Jax’s wagon? Yes, of course, but there are some surprises along the way. The remaining strips are good, though not as good:
- The Maori Connection. Trouble in New Zealand where Modesty’s friend Sir Gerald’s niece is in peril from someone looking to eliminate competition for a large inheritance.
- Honeygun. That’s the nickname of a female assassin who did Modesty a favor years ago; now the bill’s coming due.
- Durango. Two of Modesty and Willie’s friends are hostages with the eponymous revolutionary leader in Guatemala. The rescue plan goes sideways when it turns out Durango knows and hates Modesty Blaise.
The introduction to the collection argues that while Modesty is frequently described as the female James Bond, they’re fundamentally different: Bond works on orders from M, Modesty acts according to her own sense of morality. Sounds about right.
I recently finished rereading AVENGERS: Behold the Vision by Roy Thomas and multiple artists (most notably John Buscema, who did the cover, and Barry Windsor-Smith) as part of my Silver Age Reread over at Atomic Junk Shop. While my assessment of this run hasn’t changed from the last time I read the TPB, it does strike me the team is surprisingly underpowered for “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” With Thor, Iron Man and Captain America out of the book and Wanda and Pietro absent it feels close to the Detroit Justice League second-string level at times. Perhaps that’s why Thomas has Hawkeye ditch his bow and arrow in favor of becoming Goliath but that role never really worked for me. Still, I’m an Avengers fan from the Kookie Quartet days (the era when the team was Cap, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) so I enjoyed this (as always with decades old comics, YMMV).
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