large-size soft cover, Titan Books, September 2005.
The author produced only 13 volumes of the Modesty Blaise full-length books and short stories collections that weren’t comic strip, I loved all of them, (see the entry – Modesty Blaise in my Have You Overlooked – ? section. So I finally decided to buy one of the comic strip books just to see if theyw ere readable. It was as I feared, for someone who prefers actual words, and who reads naturally at a very high speed, a book of three ‘strip’ stories isn’t nearly as good, but it’s still a long way past better than nothing. The artwork is very well reproduced, the stories are good with the authentic feel, and other familiar characters such as Sir Gerald Tarrant are involved. And, I could also pick out events/characters here and there in the three tales, that had also popped up in the books. Not exactly the same, no, but just sufficiently similar that I could see perhaps their genesis in the strip before their far more fully fleshed-out appearance in the books.
Titan list another nine in this large-size softcover comic strip reprint series, each so far as I know, with three stories. One or two of those may be too close to the books, so if you have the books you may not want to buy the Titan strips that cover those stories, but if you don’t have the books and like comic strip, then these are probably the way to go. If you’d prefer the books but don’t have them, I see that The Book Depositary UK seems to have at least some of the original books in currently reprinted editons at very reasonable prices. I recommend the books/story collections wholeheartedly, and the comic strip books reservedly. However I should add that I plan to buy others of them myself so the reservation is more personal, and isn’t too stringent.