Racks and Stacks - Casino Royale

In the Racks and Stacks series, Cody discusses the comic books he has been reading.

This week, a graphic novel adaptation of the first James Bond novel.

In 1953, writer Ian Fleming (who had a history in Naval Intelligence) introduced the world to British spy James Bond in his debut novel Casino Royale – and eventually, Bond became one of the most iconic characters ever created. It was really the 1960s movies that made Bond reach icon status, but Casino Royale was a success itself, spawning a series of books and an American TV adaptation that aired in 1954. The Bond in the original novel doesn’t quite have the charisma of the likes of Sean Connery or other actors who have brought him to life in adaptations, but the basics of the character are there. The intense dedication to his work, his appreciation for alcohol and fine dining, the martinis that he orders shaken rather than stirred, and his eye for beautiful women. Fleming’s Bond is a fussier person than his film counterparts. He’s also harsher, darker, very sexist, and a major nicotine fiend. In the first chapter, Bond is said to be lighting his seventieth cigarette of the day.

Fleming’s Casino Royale has the perfect page count for this sort of adventure, coming in at just around 200 pages, and the author crafted an interesting but very simple story for it. It takes place soon after Bond has earned his 00 status (he is 007, of course) by carrying out two assassinations for the British Secret Service, as he is given the assignment to the Royale-les-Eaux casino in France to play against a man called Le Chiffre in a high stakes game of baccarat. Le Chiffre handles the money for a Communist organization, and has just 50 million francs in ill-advised investments. Now he’s trying to get it back by gambling. The idea is that Bond will wipe him out in the card game instead. While on this assignment, Bond finds himself working alongside  French secret agent Rene Mathis, CIA agent Felix Leiter, and Vesper Lynd, an assistant in the Secret Service. A woman who has a major impact on Bond’s life.

In 2018, publishing company Dynamite Entertainment tasked writer Van Jensen and artist Dennis Calero (with colorist Chris O’Halloran and letterer Simon Bowland) with adapting Fleming’s text into a graphic novel, and the creative team stayed so faithful to the source material that it’s almost as long as the novel, coming in at just over 150 pages. Not only is the dialogue Fleming, but much of the descriptive text has also made its way into the graphic novel through blocks of narrative text. 

For me, this resulted in the book having an overwhelming amount of text, which is not what I’m looking for when I start leafing through a graphic novel. This is an odd situation where I felt that an adaptation was too faithful to the source material; if the Casino Royale graphic novel had less of Fleming’s novel in it, I would have enjoyed the experience more. I wasn’t looking to re-read the book when checking this out. In this medium, I think the images should do most of the talking. However, if you are looking to read Fleming’s novel or re-read it, you can find most of it alongside the images in this graphic novel.

Jensen also made the odd stylistic choice to include moments where we see in “Bond View” perspective, which shows how “Bond’s analytical mind highlights dangers and comments of the people, objects, and setting around him.” I say this is odd because it draws to mind something like fight moments in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movies or even a heads-up display in Terminator P.O.V. or Iron Man’s helmet. While I certainly do think that Bond is always analyzing everything around him, it was strange to see the assessments appear in text on images.

While bringing Fleming's imagery to life on the page, Calero often drew Bond in a way that made me think of actor Michael Fassbender.

So I’m not sure about the “Bond View” thing, but when your main complaint about something is that it showed too much fealty to the source material, that’s not much of a complaint to have. Casino Royale is a great story, and this is a great telling of that story – you just might find the amount of copy and pasted text to be overkill.

I have never played baccarat, I haven’t even seen it played in person, but Fleming was able to explain it well enough that the game between Bond and Le Chiffre is a captivating read, even though it takes up around 20 pages in the novel. Of course, it helps that Bond has to deal with some serious issues when he’s in the midst of playing the game. Jensen and Calero were able to make the baccarat sequence interesting in the graphic novel as well.

Once the game is over, things get even more dangerous, leading to a car chase and a famous torture scene. Beyond the action comes emotional depth, as Bond does some soul-searching and tries to embark on a relationship with Vesper. But things are complicated...

Bond’s world views (and I don't mean the Bond View) will be frowned upon by many readers, but the story is intriguing and the writing has been great ever since Fleming first typed it. I have read Casino Royale many times over the years, and there’s one particular passage that has always stuck with me: “One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees or love or by luck. When that happened he knew he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility.” And Bond is indeed brought to his knees in this story.

Since Jensen was quoting large sections of the book in the graphic novel, it’s a shame that he decided to cut my favorite quote short in the process. Of all things to leave out, when so much was being included.

Note: Marvel Comics will not be covered in Racks and Stacks articles, as they have their own article series.