EXTRACTS: The Modesty Blaise Companion Expanded Edition © 2018 The Book Palace (425 PAGES in Full edition)

E X P A N D E D E D I T I O N INTRODUCTION Modesty Blaise, the character created by Peter O’Donnell, made her international debut on Monday 13th May, 1963 in a strip story illustrated by Jim Holdaway and published in London in the Evening Standard. Modesty herself did not actually appear until Strip No. 2 of the story on Tuesday 14th May. Just two years later the first full length novel chronicling her exploits was published by Souvenir Press in London and simultaneously in Canada by the Ryerson Press. Over the following twenty years ten further novels and a volume of six short stories appeared. A second volume of five short stories was published in 1996. The illustrated strip stories appeared more or less continuously in the Evening Standard from 1963 until they were finally brought to a close with Strip No. 10,183 on 11th April, 2001, which was, incidentally, Peter O’Donnell’s eighty first birthday. In the course of writing ninety five full length and two short strip stories, ten novels, eleven short stories and an illustrated short story in the Modesty Blaise canon, Peter O’Donnell has created more than two thousand human characters large and small, a number of organisations, almost all of them of a criminal nature, and even a number of animal characters, one example being the eponymous “Fiona” of strip story number 70. Approximately two thirds of these characters appear only in the strip stories, a small number cross over either in to or from the novels and the remainder appear exclusively in the novels and short stories. The first section of the Modesty Blaise Companion contains over one thousand two hundred entries dealing with the characters that have been created for and used in the strip stories. During the thirty nine year life of Modesty Blaise in the Evening Standard she has only had five illustrating artists. The first, Jim Holdaway, was her visual creator and he set the standard for those who followed. On his sudden and tragic death in 1970 the task was taken up with great verve by Enric Badia Romero, a native of Barcelona who, over the next eight years established his own distinctive Modesty style, not better or worse than Jim Holdaway, simply different. In October 1978 Romero laid down his Modesty pen and the baton was passed first to John Burns for a year and then to Pat Wright for nine months. Both artists have very distinctive styles but it seems that neither found favour with the Standard management at the time. In May, 1980 the fifth artist was introduced, New Zealander Neville Colvin. He rose to the challenge magnificently and over the next six years produced over one thousand five hundred strips for sixteen stories. Colvin retired in 1986 and Peter O’Donnell and the Evening Standard were once again faced with the task of finding a new artist. Rather than make it six it was decided to reintroduce Romero to the task. He was, after all, the man who had taken over from Jim Holdaway. From September, 1986 until the very last strip in April, 2001, Enric Badia Romero continued the fine work he started more than fifteen years earlier. Of the five artists who have drawn the Modesty Blaise strip Romero has been by far the most prolific, having drawn more than sixty percent of the entire output The second section of the Companion contains over eight hundred character profiles. As only very few of these have crossed over into the strip stories or been drawn elsewhere there are far fewer illustrations in this section. The illustrations are reproduced by kind permission of Solo Syndication, Modesty Blaise Limited, Souvenir Press Limited and the artists all of whom have my grateful thanks Lawrence Blackmore October, 2005 T H E M O D E S T Y B L A I S E C O M P A N VII