Comics Interview — Issue #069

Lawrence recounts a 40-year career writing radio serials (Green Hornet, Sgt. Preston), juvenile book series (Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew), and over 20 years scripting the James Bond newspaper strip beginning in 1965. He discusses his collaborative relationships with artists Yaroslav Horak and Jorge Longaron, the challenge of condensing Fleming's novels into strip form, and the decline of adventure strips as television supplanted them as the primary vehicle for mass fantasy. He also describes creating the strip Friday Foster and writing Barbara Cartland and Dallas strips.

Grell explains why he was chosen by Acme Press and Glidrose Productions to launch a new James Bond 007 prestige comic for simultaneous UK/US release through Eclipse, describing his intent to base Bond on Fleming's literary version rather than the films. He discusses his characterization choices—using Hoagy Carmichael as Bond's physical model, modernizing the weaponry, avoiding SPECTRE due to film rights, and creating a multilayered villain named Widziadlo whose name translates to "phantom/spectre." He also addresses his ongoing Green Arrow series, the upcoming "Blood of the Dragon" arc featuring Shado's return, a planned Robin Hood illustrated book, and future DC projects.

Shackleton, Dargaud's English-speaking manager of foreign rights based in Paris, describes the French comics market—where albums are treated as legitimate literature rather than disposable entertainment—and explains why Dargaud's earlier direct US distribution effort for Asterix and Valerian underperformed. She discusses global licensing across roughly 30 countries and languages, content censorship challenges in Germany, Scandinavia, and Asia, the recent market saturation and reduction in Dargaud's annual output from 100 to 70–80 titles, and the contrast between the French hardcover album tradition and Anglo-Saxon publishing norms.

A reference sidebar listing James Bond novels by Fleming and John Gardner, parodies, non-fiction books, comic-book appearances, and a filmography of every Bond film and TV special from 1954 through the then-upcoming License to Kill (1989).

A letters-page debate about handgun control in which reader Jim Burke challenges a previous editorial by comparing gun-control logic to atomic bomb regulation; staff writer Henry Vogel replies, conceding that laws do not deter determined criminals but arguing that gun control would primarily harm law-abiding citizens.