The Press of Danger: 007 in the Funny Papers

James Bond probably owes much of his success to the comic strips.

Before the films were made, Ian Fleming's novels were popularized in British newspaper comic strip adaptations, and composer John Barry admitted that he created the iconic music for the first film, Dr. No, based only on a familiarity with the comic strip.

“I didn’t sit down and intellectualize about it, and I've never read a James Bond book,” Barry said. “I’d only seen like a cartoon strip that they used to have in the Daily Mail in England. So I knew it was about a spy. I knew roughly what the essence was, but I never saw the movie. I just wrote the damn thing, you know.”

Remarkable, by the way, how much the comic strip 007 resembled Sean Connery, who had yet to be cast.