Third Zone by Boboy Yonzon
Third Zone

MODESTY ASTRIDE

Jul 18, 2022, 3:38 AM
Boboy Yonzon

Boboy Yonzon

Columnist

In a few tulog na lang, I will be scouring shops in the Bay Area and I am sure I would be lost in space in some of them. For one, I am looking forward to exploring the comics shops in Berkeley. If they are still around.

One of my delightful finds in my past visits there were several volumes of the British comics strip Modesty Blaise, that ass-kicking former criminal boss who later turned a page to run after bad men for Her Majesty.

Blaise was product of the tumultuous 60s, created by Peter O’Donnell for the London Evening Standard and drawn by a parade of artists, my favorites of which are the quirky Jim Holdaway and the Spanish Enrique Badia-Romero with their sketch-like but bold ink strokes.

I only got to know Modesty in the short-lived Daily Globe, a Philippine broadsheet that was so top heavy. I understand that the comic strip ended in April 2001, after almost 38 years, 10,183 individual daily strips, appearing in more than 70 newspapers and in 35 countries. I clipped some of what came out in the Daily Globe. Modesty got censored from time to time in the USA for its occasional nudity.

Modesty was sexy. In my scale, she is much better than Anna, Salt, and the The Tomb Raider combined. Modesty Blaise may even be tougher and more skilled than James Bond. She was fantastic in hand-to-hand combat; her favorite weapon being the kawara stick.

So that I don’t get caught gushing like a fan boy, I will be leaving it to writer R.C.Harvey of the Comics Journal to introduce our idol Modesty Blaise in his review in 2015.

“The strip followed the clandestine adventures of the voluptuous and superbly athletic Modesty, a retired and fabulously wealthy erstwhile leader of an international crime network who now devoted her considerable talents for lethal undercover work to helping the British secret service, which she did with the able assistance of her comrade in arms, Willie Garvin.”

To R.C.Harvey, “Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin are a literary pair that ranks with Damon and Phintias. Or Roland and Oliver. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. But Modesty and Willie are a greater literary achievement than these more celebrated duos: they are more fully rounded, more human. Their personalities have depth and nuance. They live. For a potboiler pair, that’s a notable feat.”

The reviewer recalls that he first heard of Modesty Blaise in the mid-1960s, right about the time the movie starring Monica Vitti appeared. By all accounts from Modesty fans, it was a terrible movie. “O’Donnell said it gave him a nose bleed.”

Vitti, a blonde Italian actress, insisted on remaining a blonde in the movie; Modesty has dark hair. A young Harvey also got curious because his friends kept saying that its main attraction, Modesty, was often nude. Like another notorious and earlier British comic strip, Jane. And even Tiffany Jones, I suppose. They manage to go naked every so often. For teens and young men, that is enough carrot to follow.

But after some serious reading, the reviewer concluded that Modesty Blaise is a much more complex and fascinating character than James Bond ever was.

“As for the charge of nakedness—overwrought. Modesty sometimes strips to bra and panties when she’s caught in a dangerous situation while attired in ordinary street clothes. But that doesn’t happen often. Usually, she goes into action deliberately, seeking out some dastardly villain she’s been alerted to. And for such forays, she dons a black jump suit that covers her from head to toe.” Honestly, female nakedness being rare in broadsheets, Modesty became a welcome surprise.

Modesty and his right-hand man, Willie, even had a trick whenever she was in a tight spot with goons. She drops her clothes momentarily to distract her opponents, just in time for him to come to the rescue.

“No,” insists Harvey, “the attraction—what holds me enthralled still—about Modesty Blaise is neither nudity nor Bonded gender change. Instead, it is the ingenuity of O’Donnell’s plots—their inventiveness, their twists, the tenterhooks upon which O’Donnell suspends his readers—the intelligence of his stories and their devices, the novelty of his characterizations, and the transcendence of the partnership between Modesty and Willie, their romance without romance.”

Garvin fondly calls her Modesty “Princess,” and that, it turns out, claims Harvey, is the consummate expression, for him, of their relationship. She calls him “Willie love,” but that, for American readers, is misleading: they aren’t lovers. For readers in their native Britain, however, “love” here represents not fevered ardor but a kind of familial affection, and that is an almost complete description, to her, of their relationship.

I agree, Modesty Blaise has a well-fleshed character and a very absorbing back story that creator O’Donnell based on his experience during the World War II. He was struck by a young, barefoot, hungry girl who wielded an improvised weapon and went her way with grace, self-containment, and courage. Blaise became her, an orphan and a survivor who, in the comics, was adopted by an older man, a Hungarian professor and, through him, was sharpened by academic and practical knowledge.

When her father figure died, Modesty turned to a life of crime and became the global syndicate’s big boss. She retired with a huge stash and led a quiet life. For a while.

O’Donnell not only wrote scripts for Modesty comics strips but wrote novels and short stories, as well. Only, he did not have control over the several versions of Modesty Blaise movies. They turned out to be duds. As did the film for another heroine in black, Emma Peel of the Avengers (not the Marvel one). The British may want to take the lead of Daniel Craig in giving authenticity to Bond, who was cardboard or comics in several incarnations. If so, Modesty Blaise, the ball breaker, may come to a new exciting life.


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