Peter O'DonnellModesty Blaise: The Children of Lucifer

Anyone who says there aren't enough books with "female protagonists" is probably unaware of the Modesty Blaise series . These books are exceptionally well written and the comic series takes it one step ahead with some great illustrations as Blaise and her male sidekick Willie Garvin take on international crime, spies , and assorted villains. A unique aspect is that both have respective private lives in the way in which they run through a series of male and female lovers. Blaise has her favorites , the kind of absent minded but otherwise brilliant men while Garvin always seems to be rescuing assorted damsels in distress and ending up in a relationship with them. All in all these comics now available in bound softback is well written, superbly illustrated and huge fun !

Great thrill specially the last story where they travel to Tibet..simply awesome..felt size is odd to hold..like to buy others too but price is very high.

Received in perfect condition. been looking for this book for a very long time.

Good

Perfect.

Dont miss this if you are a Modesty Blaise fan

Ok

Good stuff,as expected.

yet another volume (no. 28 ) of this superb series. I've been collecting them for the past 7 years or so; so had to play catch-up obtaining the early issues. now, to my great delight and despite some odd pauses in the publishing schedule, it looks like the entire run will be completed in the final two volumes. Thank you titan publishing. all volumes contain solid well crafted and enjoyable stories. Of the four stories in this volume I particularily liked "tribute of pharaohs" Set in Egypt it gives us a couple of glimpses of both Modesty's and Willie's pasts which are skilfully woven into the main story.So nice when we see the gentler more vulnerable side of our two heroes.. Settings for the other three stories are Rural England, South America and Thailand; all cracking tales in their own rights. That O'Donnell was able to maintain such high standards on this strip over almost 40 years is remarkable. The art by Romero is up to his usual high standard fleshing out the plots with his superb anatomical design and range of facial expressions. my only criticism, (which another reviewer has also picked up on), is that the introductions to each story by a reviewer new to this series,( Rebecca Chance), give away rather too much of the plot. I advise you to read these after enjoying the story.

This is from 1965, and is the first of the Modesty Blaise text novels. We take for granted female action heroes these days. Kill Bill, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider etc , but Modesty was the first.We get hints of her origins here, from the ruins of World War Two, a ragged girl orphan, escaping from displaced person's camps in the middle east, becoming an animal hearder in the desert, getting an education from an elderly refugee savant, drifting into crime, excelling in crime and becoming a boss in her teens. After making her fortune, she moves to London with Willie Garvin, the Watson to her Holmes, and retires aged 26, beautiful young sophisticated and an expert in weapons and combat.After working for British intelligence, she and Willie become adventurers, spies, and thieves for another 12 novels and 38 years of newspaper strip cartoons. Glancing through some of these strips and lurid book covers, one would be forgiven for dismissing Modesty Blaise's adventures as archaic and sexist soft porn. Not so. What the reader will find is intelligently written, intricately plotted very stylish crime thrillers. They are very human at their core, humorous, touching and generally much better written than one would expect.This adventue, the first Modesty text story, introduces the characters and has Modesty and Willie attempting to foil a diamond robbery. We have memorable villains, sparkling and quotable dialogue, and very well done violence. Far from being some male writer's unrealistic fantasy woman, O'Donnell's Modesty is a thoughtful piece of work, complex, privately vulnerable, totally independant and very clever.He is a writer who simply does female characters and dialogue unquestionably well. Willie Garvin is a great creation too, his and Modesty's near psychic teamwork is one of this books main draws.Obviously Fleming's influence is there, the globetrotting, the affluence, the luxury product placement, the spy gadgets and hardware descriptions, the physical nuances of the villains and the sex. It is surprising that Modesty Blaise is not as well known as Bond perhaps because no decent movie has been made. The dialogue and violence do remind me of Tarrantino, and this book does feature in Pulp Fiction. Perhaps we may see some decent movie version at some point. But it wont be as good as these books.

Lovers of Modesty and Willie will not be disappointed and if you have no idea who they are then this is as good as almost any of the series of these graphic serials, originally published in the London Evening Standard but later syndicalised worldwide, to start with, running from the 60's to the 90's and capturing exciting story lines with period detail; if you first encountered Modesty Blaise through the dreadful film with Monica Vitti then this may come as a surprise otherwise it's great - three complete stories in each volume and consistently good!

Yet another superb repent of the modisty Blaise comic strip. The stories are great as usual

If your considering reading this series for the first time you'll enjoy an old fashioned, good clean excitement, with a great touch of humour and some expert human skills... I enjoyed the series first time round and delighted to have the chance to re read!