Modesty Blaise began her adventures in 1962, inspiring characters such as Emma Peel, the "mod" Diana Prince, Tara "Queen and Country" Chase, and perhaps Elektra Natchios. She's a Greek orphan trained to be an assassin/spy. She leaves "the life" behind, but somehow danger keeps finding her in various films, novels, and comic strips.
The final newspaper story "The Zombie" comprised 135 strips ending with #10183. Its plot mixed elements of The Godfather (mob lord faces assassination when he won't sell hard drugs), Isaac Asimov's short story "The Evitable Conflict" (building a computer to take the tedious job of running the world out of unqualified human hands), and Octopussy (a raucous circus finale).
This story has an unusually long build-up. In this strip, Modesty chats in her boudoir with her current lover Danny Chavasse, a "face man" whose job at the Network was to charm information out of female targets. They plan to visit a racehorse owned by a "clean" mob boss who apparently makes money without prostitution, drugs, or protection.
The "zombie" in question is Leda, a dark counterpart to Modesty, raised by her father as a weapon of violence. She speaks in a robotic tone, no doubt reflecting abuse inflicted on her in childhood. When she kidnaps Chavasse, can his charms melt her traumatized heart?
Writer Peter O'Donnell often staged scenes in bedrooms and bathrooms so that Modesty could shower and change clothes while delivering background information to the reader. Later generations would term this approach "sexposition."
