COMIC THRILLER
Tough but feminine
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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Modesty Blaise is the mother of all action heroines.
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It is only right and proper that Penguin has reissued the Modesty Blaise novels under the name of Retro Revival as the books are the ultimate celebration of the swinging sixties. The first novel, simply called Modesty Blaise, which
was first published in 1965, abounds in detailing that is just so 1960s.
And by the same token, though Cobra Trap, a collection of short stories that feature Modesty from age 20 to 52, that was published in 1996, carried within its covers all the technology of the time, the stories did not work as there
was feeling of Modesty being stuck in a time warp.
Debut
For those who came in late, Modesty Blaise, a creation of Peter O Donnell, debuted as a comic strip on May 13, 1962 in the London Evening Standard. The strip was an instant success. A movie was made in 1966 and O’Donnell was a
sked to write a novel to coincide with the release of the novel. While the movie, a comic thriller, met with indifferent success; the book was a triumph and paved the way for 12 more novels, all of which featured sex, sadism, exotic locations and death-defying stunts in equal proportions to create the time-honoured template for a thriller.
The book follows Modesty Blaise and her cockney-speaking, psalm-spouting, multi-talented sidekick Willie Garvin as they tangle with the standard-issue megalomaniac villains, Gabriel. Modesty Blaise has an essay by O’Donnell, &
#8220;Girl Walking”, where he talks of Modesty’s origins. O’Donnell writes about how when he was writing adventure cartoon strips and romances, the Strip Cartoon Editor of the Express group of newspapers, Bill Aitken,
asked him for a cartoon strip. O’Donnell decided to merge the two genres and create a completely feminine heroine with all sorts of combat skills. Pondering about how the heroine comes by her skills, O’Donnell figured out the skills should be something imbibed from childhood. That is when he remembered a wild, independent little girl he had seen in 1942 in Persia.
Early life
Modesty’s background is revealed in bits. She travelled from a displaced persons’ camp in Greece through Arabia and the Mediterranean. She meets a professor, Lob, who teaches her survival skills. After Lob’s death, Modesty sets up the Network, a criminal organisation, makes enough money and retires in London. However the easy life is not for her and she then undertakes a series of hair-raising capers for Sir Gerald Tarrant, of the British Secret Service.
Like all serial heroes, Modesty remains in her late twenties throughout and it is only in the poignantly final Cobra Trap, a collection of short stories, where she ages from 20 to 52. A thriller is as good as its villains and the no
vels has a healthy line up of psychopaths including the twins Lok and Chu in Sabre Tooth and the grotesque death-dealing, A.E. Housman (“There is this to say of blood and breath/It gives a man a taste for death”) quoting De
licata, in A Taste for Death.
It is surprising that Modesty was not adopted by the feminist movement as she is very comfortable in her body and her femininity. She does not try to be better than a man; she does not even see herself as in competition with a man.
She is Princess, in Willie Garvin’s words. And in our minds, she is the princess of pop culture, the mother of all action heroines from Charlie’s Angels and Xena Warrior Princess to the Relic Hunter and Lara Croft.
For more details: http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/modestyblaise/home.html
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