Cody is endeavoring to read his way through Marvel's entire publishing history. Let's see if he can do it!
I’ve been leafing through multiple issues of the Marvel Super Special series recently, so readers know the score by now: Marvel Comics launched Marvel Super Special, a full-color magazine series that was “devoted to concepts thought to be deserving of special treatment” in 1977. The early issues featured stories about Conan the Barbarian, Star-Lord, and Weirdworld, as well as bands like The Beatles and Kiss, with some movie adaptations mixed in. As of issue #14, and continuing through its final issue (#41), the Marvel Super Special series became dedicated entirely to movie adaptations.
In 1981, Marvel published a comic book adaptation of the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only as both an issue of the Marvel Super Special series and as a two-issue standalone. Two years later, there was another Bond movie to catch on the big screen, Octopussy – and a comic book adaptation of that one because Marvel Super Special #26.
While the team of writer Larry Hama, penciler Howard Chaykin, inker Vince Colletta, colorist Christie Scheele, and letterer Jean Simek handled the For Your Eyes Only adaptation, the Octopussy team consisted of writer Steve Moore, artist Paul Neary, and letterer Annie Halfacree. For Your Eyes Only had a classic comic book look and tone to it, while Neary took a “fancier” approach to his Octopussy artwork that results in the look alternating between looking quite classy at times and overly busy at others. In my estimation, anyway.
Written by George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum, and Michael G. Wilson, the Octopussy script drew inspiration from the Ian Fleming short stories Octopussy and The Property of a Lady, but they really just account for a couple scenes. The majority of the screenplay is entirely original.
Things kick off with a traditional opening action sequence, completely disconnected from anything that follows. James Bond is on a mission in Cuba (or somewhere in Latin America, according to the comic book adaptation), infiltrating an air force base to look into the presence of an experimental spy plane. His presence is quickly discovered, but that doesn’t stop him from leaving the place a smoking ruin.
In East Berlin, homicidal twin knife throwers chase a very frightened clown away from the circus grounds and through a forest. A knife in his back, the clown – who we’ll come to find out is British Secret Service agent 009 – plunges into a river and is swept away. Downstream, he crawls out of the water, stumbles to the residence of the British ambassador, and smashes through a glass door. The clown hits the floor, dead. A Faberge egg rolls out of his hand.
At MI6 headquarters, Bond is assigned to Operation Trove, replacing the deceased 009. His Faberge egg has turned out to be a forgery of one called The Property of a Lady, which is soon to go up for auction at Sotheby's. The Property of a Lady is being sold by an anonymous seller with a Swiss bank account, and the theory is that the vendor could be a Russian who will use the proceeds to finance covert operations or payoffs. Bond is to attend the auction and see if he can spot this mysterious seller.
The man behind these egg schemes is a Russian general named Orlov, who believes the military forces under his command could (and should) conquer the European continent and have total victory against any opposing forces in just five days. NATO will not make a nuclear strike against them in fear of reprisals. Other Russian higher-ups are not supportive of Orlov’s ideas, but he looks to make them a reality anyway.
An associate in this scheme is Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince who now lives in India. At the auction, Bond drives the price of the egg up to ridiculous extremes, but Khan is willing to pay any price for it. He needs to, due to his association with Orlov. But Bond switches the eggs and sends Khan home to India with a fake – then follows him to India to investigate further.
From there, we get Bond defeating Khan in a backgammon game by using the man’s own loaded dice, a tuk-tuk chase, a delivery of gadgets from Q, a sequence where Bond gets captured and hunted through the jungle, a saw-blade assassination attempt, and a chase sequence involving a train chugging through Germany and an atomic bomb that Orlov intends to detonate at a U.S. Air Force base. To disarm the bomb, Bond has to sneak into a circus… and has to disguise himself as a clown to do so, something that didn’t sit well with a lot of fans. The train chase is a major set-piece, but that’s not the climax of the story – there’s still a raid on Khan’s palace and some aerial action.
Along the way, Bond, of course, finds some time to go to bed with some women, including a mysterious young woman named Magda and the character the film is named after, Octopussy, the head of an order of female bandits and smugglers.
There’s a fair amount of stuff going on in the Octopussy story, but I have never been very fond of the movie. It ranks toward the bottom of the Bond movie list for me because the most interesting part, Orlov and his atomic plans, are largely overwhelmed by the much less involving counterfeit jewelry plot. I don't find the sections with Octopussy or Kamal Khan very interesting, and aside from a few moments, even the action is largely underwhelming. The film also has a humorous tone that grates on me.
Moore did a good job of condensing the story down into this comic book adaptation – and since it’s much quicker to read through Octopussy as a comic book than to watch it as a movie, I would say that the comic book is more entertaining than the movie is. What I found really interesting here is the fact that, unlike most comic book adaptations, this one actually had the rights to use the likenesses of the actors. So Bond looks like the actor who was playing him at the time, Roger Moore. Octopussy looks like the actress, Maud Adams. Khan looks like the actor, Louis Jourdan. There were even panels that made me wonder if Neary had a chance to watch a cut of the movie before creating some of his artwork, because things were reminiscent of what’s seen in the film.
Once the story has been told, this issue of Marvel Super Special lives up to the “magazine” part of its description with an article that covers the history of the Bond franchise, gives behind-the-scenes information on Octopussy, and features interviews with several people who were involved with the making of the film, further increasing the book's value as a collectible for Bond fans.
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