FOR YOUR EYES ONLY and Its First-Rate MARVEL Adaptation

REEL RETRO CINEMA: A new look at old flicks and their comic book connections — on the 40th anniversary of For Your Eyes Only…

UPDATED 6/24/21: Hello, darling! For Your Eyes only came out on June 24, 1981, in the UK and June 26 in the US! Perfect time to re-present this column from 2015’s 007 WEEK. Now, do pay attention… — Dan

By ROB KELLY

In 2006, the producers of the James Bond film franchise were universally praised for Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig in his first outing as 007. Tougher, rougher, and meaner than previous installments, it was clear that Eon Productions had shrewdly realized the excesses of the Bond films during Pierce Brosnan’s tenure (invisible cars, really?) needed to be reined in, lest the series become so silly that it could never recover. And make no mistake, Casino Royale deserves all the praise it received—but it’s worth taking a few moments to discuss another Bond film that was crafted for the same purpose, 1981’s For Your Eyes Only.

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For Your Eyes Only was originally scheduled to be Roger Moore’s fourth Bond film, following 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me (it was even promised as such at the end of that movie’s credits). But in between Spy’s production and release, 20th Century Fox unleashed Star Wars, a film whose impact on the movie business is still under-discussed (even after the 40 billion words that have been written about it). Eon Productions was still being run by Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, half of the team that first brought Bond to movie screens back in 1962 with Dr. No.

Broccoli wasn’t afraid to chase a hot trend, so For Your Eyes Only was put on hold in favor of Moonraker, pretty much no one’s favorite Bond movie, Non-Ironic Division. Basically it’s The One Where Bond Goes Into Outer Space, and while it was a massive hit, fans of the series wondered just where the hell it could go after this. What’s next, James Bond vs. Michael Myers?

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed and it was decided that for the next film, a more “back to basics” approach needed to be taken, for the long-term health of the franchise. Gone were the cartoony villains like Jaws, the outlandish gadgets, and the (literally) out-of-this-world settings. No, this time around, James Bond would be put squarely in the middle of Cold War-inspired espionage thriller.

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Kicking off with a wonderfully memorable title theme by the super-sexy Sheena Easton (go Google her, I’ll wait), For Your Eyes Only combines characters and story threads from two Ian Fleming short stories (published as For Your Eyes Only). It features Moore as Bond once again, paired up with the assassin Melina Havelock (the stunning Caroline Bouquet), and a roguish smuggler (see what I meant about Star Wars?) named Milos Columbo, played by renowned actor Topol. Together, they attempt to retrieve the film’s MacGuffin, a computer system for communicating with nuclear subs called ATAC.

The ATAC is stolen by the film’s main villain, a man named Aristotle Kristatos (played by Julian Glover, who has appeared in, among other projects, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and Game of Thrones, which means if he ever showed up at a comic con, he’d have an autograph line a mile long).

The chase takes Bond through various fabulous locales and dangerous scrapes—he gets attacked by some murderous hockey players, chased by gun-wielding hit men on snow machines, dragged over some coral and used as chum for sharks, and hit on by a jail-bait figure skater named Bibi, whose efforts to get 007 into bed are for naught (told you this film was a change of pace). And it all wraps up with a death-dying climb up a mountain to a remote hideaway!

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For Your Eyes Only is filled with wonderful little details—some thematic, some right out in the open—that help separate it from the previous installments of the Moore era. The cold open has Bond visiting the grave of his wife Teresa (from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), it features a scene of Bond consciously, ruthlessly killing an opponent, and it attempts to deal with the moral questions brought up by Havelock’s quest to kill the man who murdered her parents (“Before your embark on a journey for revenge, dig two graves”). It still manages to retain all the crowd-pleasing stunts and action sequences the Bond series is famous for, but grounds the whole enterprise in something more akin to a John le Carré novel, a startling contrast to the comic-book antics of Moonraker.

Oddly enough, it was with the more sober For Your Eyes Only that the comic book medium embraced 007 once again. There had not been a James Bond movie in comic form since DC’s low-key version of Dr. No (bought lock, stock and Walther PPK from another publisher) almost 20 years earlier. But in June 1981 the House of Ideas released Marvel Super Special #19: For Your Eyes Only.

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Written by the no-nonsense Larry Hama and pencilled by Howard Chaykin (who knew a thing or two about movie adaptations—see? Again with the Star Wars!), Marvel Super Special #19 hits most of the film’s story beats and sports a beautiful painted cover by Chaykin. It was then reprinted as a two-issue regular-format mini-series a few months later, which is where a 10-year-old me purchased it off the newsstand rack while on a family vacation.

In the days before cable and home-video were a thing, having a tangible keepsake of a movie I loved was a wonderful, if abbreviated and simplified (did I mention the inks were by Vince Colletta?) way to relive the adventure, over and over. While they did publish a British-produced adaptation of Octopussy a few years later, For Your Eyes Only is only time a James Bond movie was given the full-on Marvel treatment, written and drawn by the same kind of personnel that could have brought you Spider-Man or the Hulk. While I knew James Bond was never going to join the Avengers or anything, there was something quite powerful about seeing his name under the Mighty Marvel banner. It made this larger-than-life figure seem more intimate, more mine.

While For Your Eyes Only made a ton of money and decades later retains a “fresh” rating over on Rotten Tomatoes, it generally is not ranked among Bond fans as one of the series’ best installments. Some say it’s too dull, some say it’s still too silly (see: the weird, Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote-esque opening with Bond and a Bad Guy Who Is Totally Not Blofeld).

But just like how Neil Gaiman has said the Silver Age of Comics is when you’re 12, so the same could be said for James Bond movies. I had seen The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker in the theaters, but I was a little too young to fully appreciate what was happening before me (“Bond is attempting re-entry”? What does that mean and why is my Dad laughing?). But in 1981, I was exactly the right age to get whisked away with James Bond into a world of danger, exotic locales and beautiful women. I’ll never be able to separate my feelings for For Your Eyes Only the movie from For Your Eyes Only the comic, and I don’t want to. They’re both great, full stop.

Nowadays, of course, when every new film is available across multiple formats, there’s not much need for comic-book movie adaptations. The only Spectre comic book I know of features that green-and-white ghost guy. But who knows? James Bond has “gone back to basics” several times, maybe comics will, too.

Rob Kelly is a podcaster and pop culture historian. He is the host/co-host of several shows on The Fire and Water Podcast Network, including Aquaman and Firestorm: The Fire and Water Podcast, Fade Out, TreasuryCast and Pod Dylan. He is also the co-host, with fellow 13th Dimension contributor Chris Franklin, of the Superman Movie Minute podcast, which examines the Christopher Reeve movies five minutes at a time.

Read more of his REEL RETRO CINEMA columns here.

MORE

— A Special Tribute to Roger Moore on the FILM AND WATER PODCAST. Click here.

— ROGER MOORE: The Man With the Golden Charm — An Appreciation. Click here.

Author: 13th Dimension

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14 Comments

  1. *Sigh!* Why oh why did Vince Colletta get assigned to ink Howard Chaykin on this. Just as Moonraker is “pretty much no one’s favorite Bond movie” so too is Colletta pretty much no one’s favorite inker.

    In any case, Rob agree with your assessment of For Your Eyes Only. It just slightly edges out The Spy Who Loved Me as my favorite Bond film starring Roger Moore.

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    • If Vinnie hadn’t been assigned to this monster inking job – which needed to be completed in one week – none of you would be talking about this book at all. Thank your lucky stars for Vince Colletta, Marvel and DC Comics fans. You got a lot more than you would have without him. And, shame on you, Ben Herman. You surely know more about the publishing business than to take cheap shots at a true professional.

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  2. Thanks Ben! Yeah picking on VC is a little too easy, but having him ink Howard Chaykin was a mistake of colossal proportions. I can only imagine what Chaykin’s four-letter-word response must have been when he saw the finished art.

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    • According to Hama, the entire 44 page book was started and completed in a week!

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      • Job well done then! Looks fine to me.

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  3. And originally, the comic book adaptation of For Your Eyes Only was going to be by Denny O’Neill and Frank Miller.

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  4. I didn’t know that Larry shared this story. A bit of comic book history. Sure, Vinnie inked 44 pages in a week but he was just doing what needed to be done. Not DaVinci by any means but you’ll not find one example of inaccurate inking. Who else could hack it but my father? Apparently, no one, LOL…..

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    • I find your father’s inks great. Especially on sixties Thor. He simplified art sometimes in order to get the job done but it is not like he did a bad job on good pencils. Ditko’s eighties doll like work is all fine and well with some Ditkophiles since it has an interesting philosophical underpinning but Vince had basically the same reason for getting the work done fast and gets vilified for it. He had other interests I am sure.

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  5. Excellent post, Rob! For Your Eyes Only is one of my favorite Bond films from the Roger Moore era, during which I was still a kid myself.

    Fun Fact: Not only does Julian Glover play the villain here after appearing in The Empire Strikes Back as General Veers, (aka “AT-AT Commander”) but fellow ESB actor John Hollis portrayed Not Blofeld in the cold open. Star Wars fans known him better as Lando Calrissian’s trusted aide, Lobot! How’s that for awesome casting choices?

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  6. “For Your Eyes Only” is one of my favorite Bond films, and my favorite Roger Moore Bond flick. I love the return to basics and the Cold War plot. Bond takes care of unfinished business in the opening sequence by dropping Blofeld down a smokestack. And I also love how the movie pokes fun at Bond by having him being pursued by the teen age ice skater Bibi.

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    • Interesting fact that I can only talk about now because of nda..I was writing for variety and some other magazines and DC at the time..I went to the press screening of the film and ended up sitting next to cubby broccoli which led me to interviewing the director John Glen.After the interview we were talking and he admitted they had a script for octopussy but no opening…I offered to take a shot at it on spec. A few weeks later after I had mailed him the script got a letter saying they loved it. I later visited pinewood on the set and interviewed Roger, who got me access to the Eon files and I took away a ton of rare photos and posters…plus lunch with roger.ps they used the beginning of what I wrote for octopussy, the first half of the sequence. They later used the rest of my script for the opening of tommorow never dies they never waste anything.was a fun ride. I later ended up working for Talia Shire and taliafilm, doing publicity for them. Including never say never again…

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  7. Great article! Fun Fact: James Bond movie adaptations were imported from the UK twice! First with DC’s Dr. No from UK’s Classics Illustrated, then again with Marvel’s Octopussy from Marvel UK. (The artwork from Octopussy was actually somewhat better than For Your Eyes Only, but it was ruined with painfully horrible coloring! As lackluster as Vince Colletta’s inks are over Howard Chaykin’s layouts in FYEO, it’s still much less of a violent assault on the eyes that Octopussy’s terrible coloring job is!

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  8. Many of the team who worked on For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy went on to do the Marvel GI Joe comic which was published by Marvel UK initially as Action Force and For Your Eyes was brought in by Marvel UK with the retail price at 75p while the Annual was feature based while Octopussy was published in the UK only in Annual form

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  1. 13 QUICK THOUGHTS: The Best JAMES BOND Movies Ever | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture - […] Rob Kelly penned a piece earlier in 007 WEEK about For Your Eyes Only, the movie and comic-book adaptation.…
  2. The Curious Case of When James Bond Joined the DC Universe | 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture - […] comic until Marvel adapted For Your Eyes Only in 1981, which we covered on Reel Retro Cinema here. The imagination, well, reels at…

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