I wrote a little about my thinking with Mission106 a while ago. I remember seeing The Avengers and The Prisoner in reruns when I was very young.Those were a couple of my favorite shows. It was sometime later that I found out about James Bond. The TV shows are dated, but the movies keep getting updated. Another secret agent I remember was Nick Fury, who went from being an army sergeant in WW II to a pseudo-Bond in the present day somehow without aging a bit. He connects us to some more up-to-date secret agents in S.H.I.E.L.D. And for those who like their agents with extra cheese, there’s a Hasselhoff version (YT).

by Steve Epting

One agent that caught my interest in recent years was Velvet Templeton, for the way she turns the tables. The author, Ed Brubaker, pitched the character to television, with unsurprisingly disastrous results, before taking her to comics. What happen in that line of work when people get older? When they’re not as quick anymore, and not in peak physical condition? Velvet became the executive administrative assistant, which, if you think about it, is a vital and extremely sensitive job – privy to all the secrets, everyone’s secrets. The Bonds of the world get thrown into all the dangerous situations because they are not indispensable. The Moneypenneys of the world are another story.

By Ellis and Masters, from James Bond: VARGR #1

Someone in my Twitterverse said that Warren Ellis’ James Bond comic books were better than any of the recent movies. I agree. They’re not as full of themselves or bound by formula or budget, so the creators get to have fun with it. They’re far more bloody and brutal though.

So that’s just a little ramble. There are a lot of directions we can go with secret agents. Let’s try them all.