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Alan Moore has another go at Bond


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#1 Revelator

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Posted 26 February 2009 - 08:55 PM

On the eve of the release of the film of Watchmen, Wired conducted a lengthy interview with Alan Moore. The comics maestro naturally discussed his League of Gentleman comics, including the most recent volume:

Sometimes we have characters who are greatly revered that we feel are perhaps too revered, and we would like to give a more accurate picture of them. As an example, there would be the character in The Black Dossier who bears a considerable resemblance to Ian Fleming's James Bond. Well, it's Ian Fleming's James Bond, actually. But what we were trying to do is show the origins of this character, to show what a totally unpleasant character at its inception James Bond was—-a nasty misogynist, some very suspect sexual inclinations, not at all the suave character the movies rounded him out into. We wanted the original James Bond, warts and all...So, yes, it is a massive world of every fictional character that has ever not existed. And it is, on one level, a really over-elaborate literary game. But we are also able to find all sorts of resonances. The reason why these characters have endured is that they're resonant. If you extrapolate upon their possible adventures and have them meeting each other, if you do it right, you can amplify that resonance and make them still resonant to the world of today. The kind of misogyny that is exemplified by James Bond is still a large part of some quarters of the modern male psyche and probably still bears mentioning and talking about.


While I admire Moore's other achievements in the field, I think he's talking out of his :( in this case. His supposedly "accurate" version of Fleming's Bond was a coward reliant on gadgets who took advantage of women on every turn--a very far cry from the original character, whose treatment of women stands out as actually being gentler than that of his smoother movie counterpart. Moore sounds like someone who read Casino Royale 30 years ago, misunderstood how Fleming emphasized Bond's character arc with regard to women, and smugly decided to repeat the old charge of misogyny. In order to traduce the literary Bond, Moore gave him attributes he didn't have and simplified his existing attitudes into the crudest possible sludge. It's basically character assassination, and one expects better from such an author. Instead we get this disingenuous explanation. Worse yet, thousands of readers will read Moore and come away with a distorted and mostly false idea of what Fleming's Bond was like, one which will put them off ever reading the books. That is what angers me even more about what Moore has done.

#2 DamnCoffee

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Posted 26 February 2009 - 10:03 PM

Urgh. That guy's such a wanker.

#3 HH007

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Posted 26 February 2009 - 11:00 PM

Moore is a total stick in the mud, and he's :(ing creepy looking, to boot.

#4 Righty007

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Posted 26 February 2009 - 11:15 PM

I've read that The Black Dossier mentions Leiter as "F. Gordon Leiter." :( :)

#5 Mr. Blofeld

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Posted 26 February 2009 - 11:20 PM

I've read that The Black Dossier mentions Leiter as "F. Gordon Leiter." :) :)

A reference to G. Gordon Liddy, methinks? :(

#6 dinovelvet

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 12:31 AM

I've read that The Black Dossier mentions Leiter as "F. Gordon Leiter." :( :)


He also came up with a Bond girl named "Oodles O'Quim" :)

He appears to be a very grumpy, and possible insane person, but his treatment of Bond was very funny!

#7 Righty007

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 12:50 AM

I've read that The Black Dossier mentions Leiter as "F. Gordon Leiter." :) :)

A reference to G. Gordon Liddy, methinks? :(

Yeah but if you think about it, Gordon is probably Leiter's real middle name. His "son" on James Bond Jr. was named Gordo(n) and many boys are given one of their father's names as either their first or middle name.

#8 Loomis

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 01:19 AM

Actually, I think Moore is absolutely right about Bond.

#9 Mr. Blofeld

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 01:20 AM

Actually, I think Moore is absolutely right about Bond.

Well, then, why are you a Bond fan? :(

#10 Loomis

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 01:40 AM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? Where does that leave, say, Hannibal Lecter fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves. Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY. Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment

#11 zencat

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 01:44 AM

Bah! I got 'yer resonance right here, buddy.

#12 killkenny kid

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 03:35 AM

Bah! I got 'yer resonance right here, buddy.



'Nuff Said!

#13 Greene Planet

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 03:52 AM

Bah! I got 'yer resonance right here, buddy.



'Nuff Said!


agreed.

#14 Mr. Blofeld

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 04:22 AM

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment

What was this writer thinking? She'd obviously confused the filmic Bond with Fleming's Bond, poor dear... :(

#15 killkenny kid

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 05:42 AM

http://www.comicbook...rticle&id=20197


For anyone who cares.

#16 Trident

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 08:14 AM

I'm a bit perplexed about all the fuss regarding the Bond figure in 'LXG: Black Dossier'. The angry reactions to this entry into the series IMO are perhaps mostly due to the fact that some readers may not have understood what LXG, what basically all of Moore's work is about. Moore is working with an element of deconstruction, is always confronting his characters with the myths they have become over the years. And the best results he often achieves by creating the most contrast about a figure. And the Bond figure is no exception to this rule.

Moore claims to have captured the literary Bond and in my view he has done so. [Although he of course can't withstand the temptation to caricature the film myth of 007 with the gimmicks ('exploding' cigarettes, 'flying' Bentley at the workshop)] What people don't seem to get is: this is Bond in an alternate history!

This Bond has (after WWII; a different WWII with the Germans occupying GB, if memory serves) worked over ten years for the fascist 'Big Brother' government of Orwell's 1984! For some reason nobody seems too angry about this particular plotline, which to me is the farthest digression from Fleming I can imagine (I'd have put him into some kind of 'resistance'-movement). But this also serves to show and deconstruct another facette of the Bond character. A popular criticism of Bond during the 60's/70's used to be that the SS would have been proud of a member like Bond and he'd have fitted perfectly into the Nazi apparat. Moore is showing us a Bond that has done so, although in a British fascist system. And pursues the idea that Bond would have arranged himself with the powers that be. This is an entirely legitimate take IMHO.

The howling about all of this is really a bit exaggerated, considering the fate Moore has chosen for all his characters. You think he's tough on Bond? Look what he did to Mina Murray. Divorced from her husband for reasons entirely out of her responsibility. Marked for live (a very, very long life, one might add) by a creature she hasn't even come close to understand herself. Look what he did to Quartermain. A wreck of a man, withering away in opium-induced dreams of his former adventures. And, perhaps worst of all [there is a reason why fans hate the idea of an old Bond!], a very old man on the verge of becoming a senile dotard.

That's not in the character themselves, you say? Moore goes even further. The two of them become a couple after Murray has overcome her very, very Victorian sexual inhibitions. But her upbringing gets the better of her and Mina chooses to leave Allan after the Martian invasion. So it's really all the more stunning to find them some 50 years later not only reunited but also happily sharing their bed, it is implied, with the hermaphrodite-like Orlando of Virginia Woolf. 50 years of war, of adventures and dangers would obviously be enough to question certain inhibitions in both Murray and Quartermain.

You see, Moore really stops at nothing if he sees a chance to pit his characters against their own limits, critics or clichés. His premise is they are real people with all the sides and facettes real people have, pleasant and unpleasant ones. And he has done so in practically all of his own works. Take the 'Watchmen'. He dares to show us the ugly reality of the superhero. Take a bunch of narcissistic weirdos with a vigilante complex. Given superhuman abilities, they don't become superheroes but supernarcissistic superweirdos with a supervigilante complex. In other words: they still are humans with all the flaws that entails. Or lose so much of their humanity that they can't cope with what they've got left of it, as does Dr. Manhattan.

You say there is no reality, especially not an ugly one, as there are no superheroes? Exactly, there is no reality in fiction, for that's what it is: fiction. In LXG:TBD Moore shows us a Bond that might have been in a world that might have been, interacting with fictitious characters that all might have been. But none of it ever happened, ever existed. It's fiction, not reality.

What there is in LXG, in all of Moore's work as far as I can judge is: truth. For without truth no fiction has any meaning. And Moore has plenty of it.

#17 Loomis

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 11:15 AM

Well said, Trident.

#18 MHazard

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 03:01 PM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? Where does that leave, say, Hannibal Lecter fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves. Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY. Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment


Clearly, neither you nor Alan Moore have read The Living Daylights.

#19 Safari Suit

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 04:39 PM

Moore and Gill may be "right" about Bond, but they sure make dull reads. And the "Austin Powers killed Bond" thing is so hackneyed and myopic. Do you really think Myers created the character to destroy Bond forever, or more to pay mocking but generally affectionate and fairly studied tribute? Did you really think people really took Bond super-seriously all the way up to 1997? Yawn.

#20 Loomis

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 04:57 PM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? Where does that leave, say, Hannibal Lecter fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves. Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY. Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment


Clearly, neither you nor Alan Moore have read The Living Daylights.


Is it like the film?

#21 MarkA

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 05:10 PM

The trouble with all the criticisms of Bond they usually come from an alarming ignorance of Fleming's books. The author of the article referenced in the Guardian clearly has never read any of Fleming's books as all her points are filmic references. Don't you just hate this lazy journalism. And I am afraid Loomis that my fandom originally comes from the character of Bond and how he reacts to the world around him. I find him fascinating flaws and all.

#22 MHazard

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 05:45 PM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? Where does that leave, say, Hannibal Lecter fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves. Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY. Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment


Clearly, neither you nor Alan Moore have read The Living Daylights.


Is it like the film?



No.

#23 TheSaint

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 07:59 PM

What do you expect from a drug addict?

#24 The Ghost Who Walks

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 08:33 PM

I must say I always enjoy Moore's unconventional views on things, whether it be on comic books, other writers and in particular, Hollywood. I don't agree with what he says here (in fact, I rarely agree with the guy at all), but I think it's interesting to hear a "mad" genius like him (the guy is a "wizard" and worships some kind of snake god, so he is a bit mad :( ) take on Bond.

Off topic, Watchmen is the best reading experience I ever had.

#25 Loomis

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 11:16 PM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? Where does that leave, say, Hannibal Lecter fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves. Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY. Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment


Clearly, neither you nor Alan Moore have read The Living Daylights.


Is it like the film?



No.


Oh. Won't bother, then.

What do you expect from a drug addict?


Moore's a drug addict? What's he addicted to?

If we're knocking drug addicts, I give you: The Beatles.

Also, both Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore are or were drug addicts (nicotine).

#26 Mr. Blofeld

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Posted 27 February 2009 - 11:20 PM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? Where does that leave, say, Hannibal Lecter fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves. Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY. Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."

http://www.guardian....24/news.comment


Clearly, neither you nor Alan Moore have read The Living Daylights.

Is it like the film?

No.

Oh. Won't bother, then.

Wait, you should! It's better than the film. :(

#27 TheSaint

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Posted 28 February 2009 - 05:23 AM

What do you expect from a drug addict?


Moore's a drug addict? What's he addicted to?

If we're knocking drug addicts, I give you: The Beatles.

Also, both Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore are or were drug addicts (nicotine).

He's admitted to being a pothead and some of the harder stuff in interviews.

Since cigarettes are legal I don't count them as illicit drugs. You forgot to include Connery, Lazenby, and Dalton as they are/were smokers. I have no idea whether Craig is a smoker or not.

#28 Revelator

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Posted 28 February 2009 - 06:16 AM

Does a character have to be whiter than white in order to have fans? I find that Bond is at his most interesting when he's at his most flawed.


Agreed. So why didn't Moore actually try playing with a character who bore a slight resemblance to Bond? You don't critique someone else's character by making up entirely new flaws for them!

Besides, you're assuming that my Bond fandom is based on the character of Bond. It's actually more based on the exotic world in which he moves.


Gosh then, you're in luck! Because they've made a series of films based on the books which feature substantially shallower characterization, and they get rid of that stuff that fascinates those of us who really are interested in Bond's flaws--his mixed feelings on the companionship of women, the conflict between his puritanical and hedonistic sides, his increasing squeamishness and doubts about his profession, his bouts of melancholy and brooding--all axed out for your benefit.

Bond himself is, essentially, a rather dull fellow who'd probably be an insufferable egomaniac and bore if he really existed, which is one of the ideas in John Pearson's JAMES BOND: THE AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY.


Had the biography really been about an insufferable bore it would have been a chore to read and finally repellent. It isn't. It should be obviously clear that Pearson's portrait is both critical and affectionate and finally a moving one. He notes Bond's occasional selfishness and finicky qualities while turning Bond into a flesh and blood human being who gains our sympathy and interest. Pearson, who obviously had critical respect for the source material, managed to write a "what Bond was a real person?" story that Moore, for all his grand claims, utterly failed to do.

Or, to quote a Guardian article, "Bond behaves like an ancient gay dress designer, living in Surbiton and clinging to his final (crystal) marble."


Such is the dubious benefit of quoting a condescending, shallow article by a dunderheaded journalist who thought Austin Powers had killed Bond and ended up being utterly rebuked a few years later when a little movie called Casino Royale came out. And an article that can't keep the movies and books apart either, as in such passages as "Bond was his fantasy alter ego, a libidinous killer who thought women were 'for recreation'. Bond slapped bottoms and peered at his watch during sex; he killed women he had slept with and, worse, he told one dewy-eyed poppet: 'I never miss.'" Of course, the novel of Casino Royale is a character arc that causes Bond to reconsider his ideas of women's disposability, and of course Gold can't keep Bond's character straight, and deceitfully tries to pass off four bits from the movies as part of Fleming's original creation. It's rather like what Moore did to Bond actually--it's what happens when someone smugly thinks they've got something figured out and makes their case on a foundation of sand. Those who profess to not be interested in Bond's character cannot be expected to care when that character is traduced. Others can.

Edited by Revelator, 28 February 2009 - 06:18 AM.


#29 Revelator

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Posted 28 February 2009 - 06:52 AM

I'm a bit perplexed about all the fuss regarding the Bond figure in 'LXG: Black Dossier'. The angry reactions to this entry into the series IMO are perhaps mostly due to the fact that some readers may not have understood what LXG, what basically all of Moore's work is about.


Or, rather, people understand damn well what it's about and are angry precisely over that. "Deconstruction" is sometimes just a cover-word for a snide put-down job based on sloppy assumptions, and that's exactly what Moore has done with the literary Bond.

Moore claims to have captured the literary Bond and in my view he has done so.



Then I very much question the validity of a view that can conflate two versions of a character so drastically different in personality, morals, and temperament.

Although he of course can't withstand the temptation to caricature the film myth of 007 with the gimmicks


In other words, he either fudged the integrity of his own project, just so he could further rubbish a character he had little affection for, or he couldn't get the two versions of the character straight anyway. There's little to suggest that Moore's understanding of Bond is based on anything more than a few fuzzy memories of the most intentionally outrageous passages of Casino Royale and memories of the films.

What people don't seem to get is: this is Bond in an alternate history!


Which apparently means that Bond is the only character to get an entirely new personality to go with it, as if he was just a puppet of history, unlike the other heroes of Moore's books, whose personalities remain recognizable from their literary sources.

This Bond has (after WWII; a different WWII with the Germans occupying GB, if memory serves) worked over ten years for the fascist 'Big Brother' government of Orwell's 1984! For some reason nobody seems too angry about this particular plotline, which to me is the farthest digression from Fleming I can imagine (I'd have put him into some kind of 'resistance'-movement).


Of course you would, because you have some understanding of Bond's very Germanophobic character, unlike Moore, whose feet of clay you seem reluctant to acknowledge, despite just having tripped over them.

But this also serves to show and deconstruct another facette of the Bond character. A popular criticism of Bond during the 60's/70's used to be that the SS would have been proud of a member like Bond and he'd have fitted perfectly into the Nazi apparat.


Which as your own resistance comment shows, is bunk in the first place. What Moore has done is a shallow deconstruction based more on a discredited and spurious 60s take on Bond than on any understanding of the actual character as found in the books. But he then very smugly claims to have captured Fleming's Bond, and this is eyewash.

The howling about all of this is really a bit exaggerated, considering the fate Moore has chosen for all his characters. You think he's tough on Bond?


It should be pretty bloody obvious. Unlike Quartermain, this Bond is utter scum, too pathetic to even be an imposing villain. This is not merely a matter of having a character changing their personality or shedding inhibitions--it is matter of intentionally denigrating a character by giving him attributes that have no basis in the character Moore's supposedly trying to capture. Fleming's Bond was a thoughtful patriot whose dealing with women were rooted in a paradoxical core of gentleness and reflection. Moore's Bond is the sort of pond-scum who's put date-rape drugs in a woman's drink. In other words, it's the version of Bond peddled through the years by critics determined to see him as an arch-misogynistic who, as LeCarre once spouted, would just as well have worked for the Russians if they'd had better caviar.

You see, Moore really stops at nothing if he sees a chance to pit his characters against their own limits, critics or clichés.


Better to say that Moore stops at nothing to pit other people's characters against his own limitations and cliches about their supposedly inner essences.

His premise is they are real people with all the sides and facettes real people have, pleasant and unpleasant ones.


Funny, but that was the premise of Pearson's Bond biography as well. And in the case of Bond he trumped Moore by spades.

You say there is no reality, especially not an ugly one, as there are no superheroes? Exactly, there is no reality in fiction, for that's what it is: fiction...What there is in LXG, in all of Moore's work as far as I can judge is: truth. For without truth no fiction has any meaning. And Moore has plenty of it.


So there's truth in Moore's work but no reality. By this bizarro logic truth is thus unreal. What next, truth is beauty? I think Keats might have beaten you to that one. Let me know when you're done pulling and I can have my leg back, because I can't help much of this as specious nonsense--even in bad fiction there can be truths about human nature or how the world works.
The supposed "truth" about Moore's conception of Bond, which he has uttered several times before, is that Bond is really an unpleasant misognynist and a nasty piece of work. This isn't a truth, but rather an extremely gross simplification of the character, and it is from this simplification that Moore has proceeded.
Even a genius can sometimes be stupid. Alan Moore is almost6 certainly the greatest writer in comics, and his books are distinguished by their conceptual daring, depth of understanding of human character, and postmodern erudition. None of this means that he can't occasionally go awry, for even Homer nodded at times. His LoG books usually work, and when they don't, it's because he's based his version of a character on a limited and faulty understanding of that personage. That is exactly what has happened with Bond, a character he plainly has little sympathy for and cares very little about. And when authors do not want to get to really know the characters they're using, those characters often come across as lifeless, unpleasant caricatures. Such is the case with Alan Moore's James Bond. More's the pity.

Edited by Revelator, 28 February 2009 - 06:55 AM.


#30 Loomis

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Posted 28 February 2009 - 11:33 AM

What do you expect from a drug addict?


Moore's a drug addict? What's he addicted to?

If we're knocking drug addicts, I give you: The Beatles.

Also, both Pierce Brosnan and Roger Moore are or were drug addicts (nicotine).

He's admitted to being a pothead and some of the harder stuff in interviews.

Since cigarettes are legal I don't count them as illicit drugs. You forgot to include Connery, Lazenby, and Dalton as they are/were smokers. I have no idea whether Craig is a smoker or not.


I think Craig is an ex-smoker. But my point isn't really to identify which Bonds are or were smokers - it's that nicotine (while certainly not illicit) is an addictive drug, which many find much harder to kick than even heroin or cocaine. It's certainly way more addictive than "pot".