Archived News (2008)
December 2008
Modesty's Cars
Following the article in Jensen magazine, intereset
in Modesty's cars continues...
One of the MB list members, a Daimler
enthusiast, shares the following:
"Modesty's Daimler is due to appear in the Evening Standard strip
next week (23rd December). The Daimler appears in 'La Machine' (1963),
'The Mind of Mrs Drake' (1965) and 'The Head Girls' (1966), whereas
the Jensen FF first appears in 'Bad Suki' (1968) and thereafter takes
over as Modesty's regular transport when in the U.K. The Daimler is
also described in the first Modesty Blaise novel: 'They drove down the
Strand and Whitehall in Modesty's Daimler Dart. It was ivory in colour,
and the engine held no esoteric mysteries of adaptation.' Curious second
sentence - given the power of the V8, especially compared to the alternatives
available at the time, it didn't really need much adaptation!
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One of the pictures is from a classic car magazine, the other from the
original advertising brochure. Daimler launched the car as the Dart
and were then threatened by Dodge, who had the name registered, and
had to rename it the SP250, although most enthusiasts still use the
Dart moniker. The SP250 was produced from 1959 to 1964, so it was coming
to the end of its production run when Modesty acquired hers, and was
no longer being produced when the first novel was published. Bumpers
(or in US English, fenders) were an optional extra, and in the strips
Modesty's car did not have them."
Thanks to Richard G (pictured
with his Daimler) for this information! |
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BBC Radio 4 Programme: Drawn to be Wild
It's a small mention, but good to know that Modesty can still hit the news and airwaves. Now, who would you most want by your side in a fight...?
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You can listen to the radio show here.
November 2008
Evening Standard to re-run Modesty Blaise comic strip!
The Evening Standard will be re-running the Modesty Blaise comic strip as of December 1, 2008. Details are on the newspapers page. |
Romero Exhibit in Stockholm
The Seriegalleriet in Stockholm is holding a Romero exhibit from November 22 to December 21, 2008. They will be showing and selling Romero motives with 'Modesty and signs from the zodiak'). Romero was there on November 22 and 23, to meet the public.
Mats Jönsson, one of our MB-list members, visited the exhibition and
met Romero.
"He has been busy this year working on the art for this exhibition with
a lot of different motivs with Modesty and the signs from the zodiac."
"They had twelve different art prints, one for each zodiak sign, including
getting them signed by Romero. There was only 30 art prints made for
each zodiac sign. Of course, I had to buy one of each... "
Mats has very kindly shared scans of the prints with us; these are available on the Artwork page.
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ModestyBlaiseBooks.com Site Update
As you can see, the site has a new design and home! There may still be some bugs to iron out in terms of broken links, downloads not working, etc, so please let me know if you come across any of these and I'll fix them right away. I'd be grateful if anyone with links to this site could update the links; also, I also have a new contact email.
There are a lot of new updates; you'll find most of the new material in the Other Media pages. Thanks for all the recent contributions, especially from the two MB detectives who did so much work researching the radio plays! As for all the contributions that came in ages ago but have yet to be posted... the site is still under development! (All the foreign book covers, plus miscellaneous artwork, have still to be posted - stay tuned.)
I hope you enjoy the new site!
Souvenir Press Paperback Reprints
It looks like Pieces of Modesty, the last in the Souvenir Press paperback reprint series, will be reprinted this year! There is placeholder for the book on Amazon UK with an ISBN, although it is not (yet?) on Amazon.com and there is no other announcement of its release. I can't wait to see the cover will be...
While digging around for information on Souvenir Press, I came across this interesting article from The Times, as well as this piece from a blog.
Madeleine Brent and Garth reprints by Penguin India
As part of its retro revival series, Penguin India is reprinting all the Madeline Brent books (Peter O'Donnell's pseudonym for his historical romance novels), as well as the first ever complete collection of Garth comics!
From the Penguin India website:
"The third major reissue in our retro revival series will be the
Complete Garth in a collectible 5-volume hardback graphic novel box
set. Garth is a character well known to most Indians through newspaper
strips and a brief run as comic books from Indrajal comics. Though there
have been a couple of annuals and two dedicated volumes, never before
has Garth ever been collected. So for the first time ever fans can get
all 16000 strips covering 165 stories in 3000 plus pages."
The release date is still pending, but should be soon...
October 2008
The Modesty Blaise London Walking Tour - Photos Up
In October 2008, a member of the Modesty Blaise fan group arranged a Modesty Blaise-themed guided walking tour of London. Several of the fan group attended; the photos can be viewed here. (There are four complete sets of photos; links to the other three are on the page).
Thanks to Julie for arranging, and to everyone who shared their photos!
August 2008
Modesty Blaise Feature in Jensen Magazine
Jensen Magazine has a cover and gorgeous two-page spread dedicated to Modesty Blaise! View the cover and article here.
April 2008
Map Yourself
Now, MB fans can place ourselves on a map to see how far we span the
globe.
Note: you have to use the '+' button to zoom in, and drag the
map until you've got your city/town to the approrpirate zoom level; as
soon as you click on the map, it will try to place a marker.
If you want to upload a photo, the program prefers ones with a width of 200 pixels.
Click on the image below to go to the map; password is 'pahlavi'.
and...
Modesty Blaise-themed music
One of our Modesty fans has kindly put together three pieces of Modesty Blaise-themed music, along with readings from the books. You can listen to them by clicking on the images below... answers to which books they're from can be found on the Other Media page.
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March 2008
The website has been updated. Be sure to check out the Other Media page for some new, downloadable goodies! The Overview page has been revamped, and this has put me on a particular quest for the missing Tor covers, if you can provide any...
In addition, we now have international covers -- if you have any to add, please send them on in!
Also, as you'll see from the scroll-through pages of the Covers, higher quality scans are needed for some of the covers. If you have any of the books in question (i.e., the ones that look fuzzy), please can you scan to jpg at 150 dpi and email the file(s) to me. Further instructions/specifications on the Contact page.
Thanks to the designer of the new website, as well as all contributors (not just for this update, but to the original site, too) - for the graphics, information, news, links, audio files, and for keeping the Modesty Blaise 'buzz' alive!
February 2008
Penguin India has reprinted the entire Modesty Blaise series, and the covers are unbelievably gorgeous. Below is the amazing spine graphic...
Check out Penguin India's Modesty Blaise micro website, too - well worth a look. Besides information on the books, including excerpts and reviews, there's a fun quiz you can take (and die-hard fans... you'd better get 90% or more!)
Download the PDF flier for the new reprint series here.
(If you have any problems downloading it, you can also get it from 4shared.com)