Modesty Blaise #[nn]
A 1967 Romanforlaget publication of Modesty Blaise represents one of the earliest Norwegian-language editions of Peter O'Donnell and Jim Holdaway's groundbreaking British adventure strip, which had only debuted in the London Evening Standard in May 1963. Modesty Blaise was among the first action-adventure strips built around a strong, self-sufficient female protagonist — a former criminal turned occasional British intelligence operative — at a time when that archetype was essentially absent from the comics page. The Scandinavian market embraced the strip with unusual enthusiasm, and Norwegian editions from this era helped establish Modesty as one of the most popular recurring characters in Norwegian comics publishing history, where she would remain a fixture for nearly three decades.
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The strip was created by author Peter O'Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway, who had previously collaborated on the strip Romeo Brown. O'Donnell originally pitched it to the Daily Express, but the paper's chairman objected to Modesty's criminal background; the Evening Standard picked it up, and the first strip ran on 13 May 1963. By 1967 the strip was being syndicated internationally, and Scandinavian publishers were among the earliest to package O'Donnell and Holdaway's daily strips into stand-alone comic format — the Swedish 'Agent Modesty Blaise' magazine launched the same year, covering adventures from the first O'Donnell story ('La Machine') through the fourteenth ('The Galley Slaves'), all drawn by Holdaway. A parallel Norwegian edition from 1967 would have drawn on the same source material and the same Holdaway artwork.
Trivia · 8 facts
- The Modesty Blaise daily newspaper strip was created by writer Peter O'Donnell and artist Jim Holdaway, debuting in the London Evening Standard on 13 May 1963.
- Jim Holdaway illustrated all strip stories from the strip's launch in 1963 until his sudden death in 1970, producing approximately 19 complete story arcs.
- Any 1967 Norwegian issue reprints O'Donnell/Holdaway strips from the strip's first four years, spanning early storylines such as 'La Machine,' 'The Gabriel Set-Up,' 'The Vikings,' and related adventures.
- The Swedish 'Agent Modesty Blaise' magazine — a close parallel publication — ran 14 issues from 1967 to 1969, publishing the first 14 O'Donnell/Holdaway storylines in translated form, suggesting the Norwegian Romanforlaget edition drew on the same pool of material.
- Modesty Blaise was notable as one of the few adventure-strip protagonists of the 1960s who was an unambiguously competent, independent woman with a criminal past — a character design O'Donnell maintained with sole authorial control throughout the strip's nearly 38-year run.
- O'Donnell retained creative control over the property throughout his life and stipulated that no other writer should produce new Modesty Blaise stories after his retirement.
- The strip was eventually reprinted in numerous collected formats, including Titan Books editions (UK, 1984–1990 and 2004 onward), the First American Edition series (Ken Pierce/Eclipse, 1981–1986), and later Norwegian Semic and Egmont Klassikerserien volumes.
- A 1994 DC Comics graphic novel adapted O'Donnell's original Modesty Blaise novel with art by Dan Spiegle and Dick Giordano, and three film adaptations of the character were produced in 1966, 1982, and 2003.
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