Whither Bond Comics?

In keeping up with the James Bond theme this week, let's talk about Bond comics. In yesterday's post, I questioned why, oh why we didn't have any ongoing Bond comics.

Well, just today Newsarama published an interview with Alan J. Porter, author of the newly published James Bond: The History of the Illustrated 007, which examines the history of James Bond comic books and comic strips. It turns out that there have been 145 stories--some adaptations, some original--over the years, in over 20 countries. U.S. publishers have included DC, Marvel, Eclipse, Dark Horse, and Topps. One thing Porter notes in the interview is:

Perhaps the most surprising thing to me from a historical perspective is the fact that outside of the British newspaper strips no-one has every managed to successfully publish a Bond comic on a sustainable basis. For whatever reason, Bond has had a very patchy career in comics.

It's hard to say why. You'd think that the market today could sustain a Bond comic, given the critical and commercial success of things like Criminal and Queen & Country. And you'd expect someone to try more or less continuously, as with the Star Trek licence--it's jumping from company to company, but usually someone is publishing Trek...so why not 007?

Maybe the rights are too expensive, or maybe the Fleming estate is too difficult to deal with...hello, don't you guys like money, as Chris Sims would say?!?

But speaking of Star Trek...Hey, GITCorp...remember the great job you did with the Star Trek DVD-Rom, gathering all the comics that had been published by diverse companies and gathering them into one beautiful little package? Looks like the James Bond comics might be ripe for such a treatment...