Closterkeller - Modesty Blaise song

Another Modesty Blaise song came across my radar this week, although it's from the early 90s. Polish goth/rock group Closterkeller have a track on their 1992 album, Blue, called Modesty Blaise. Most of their songs are in Polish, but there are also many in English, including this one. I haven't been able to listen to the track yet; there are many sites offering it for download, but I've yet to find one that works successfully. The blog I stumbled across it on is here -- perhaps one of you can get the track to download successfully?
Anyway, here are the lyrics, quite good I thought:

The secret service man
Is on the phone again
Somebody disappeared
I go where madmen dare
Another foreign affair
Adventures waiting for me

I am the lady
You can rely on
I fight the villains
I am revenge
I'm always ready
Remember my name
I am the Princess
Modesty Blaise

Once there was a time
I was the mistress of crime
The menace number one
And then I changed my ways
Though going straight these days
I didn't lay down my gun

Modesty Blaise

My phone is ringing again
A warning from my friend
I know assassins are near
It's my idea of fun
I never miss with my gun
Destroying danger and fear

I am the lady
You can rely on
I am the Princess
Modesty Blaise
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Modesty Blaise 1982 TV Pilot - Available for Download

The 1982 TV pilot is now available for download. You can Google 'Modesty Blaise Pilot 1982 torrent' to find the torrent file, and download from there (and if you don't already have a BitTorrent client, a good, simple one is uTorrent).

Just don't expect anything true to the original... as I mentioned before, I think it's Remington Steele with different character names. But I'd love to hear what you think, if you do watch it!

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Premio Dardos Award

This blog has received a Premio Dardos award!


The Hammer House of Horror Blog bestowed the award (thank you, Holger!), which is given out by bloggers to blogs. You can read more about the awards in Holger's blog piece; he did the research on what they are and how they work.

It's nice to have some recognition. Although this blog is only a couple of months old, it is an extension of my website, which has been going for about six years now. A lot of work went into that, with contributions from many people, some of whom still pass along any Modesty snippets they find, and many of those end up in this blog, so... it's a group effort. Thanks to all the contributors!

Now I am starting to sound like a rambling Oscar award winner, so before I start thanking my parents and everyone I ever met...

Premio Dardos award recipients can then give the award to another blog (or blogs; some 'rules' say up to 5, some say up to 15.) I think 15 starts would start turning the award into a chain letter, so here are four that I think truly deserve this award:

Bear Alley Blog - dedicated to comics and comic art
Spy Vibe - what is says. Plus, it's a visual treat.
The Drowning Machine - book reviews and interviews
The Bookshelf Muse - a user's guide for writing fiction

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Penguin India 'Garth' Reprints Delayed

It looks like the Penguin India reprinting of the entire 'Garth' series (for which Peter O'Donnell wrote from 1953-1966) is being delayed. The original news release on the Penguin India site, in 2008, said:

"The third major reissue in our retro revival series will be the Complete Garth in a collectible 5-volume hardback graphic novel box set. Garth is a character well known to most Indians through newspaper strips and a brief run as comic books from Indrajal comics. Though there have been a couple of annuals and two dedicated volumes, never before has Garth ever been collected. So for the first time ever fans can get all 16,000 strips covering 165 stories in 3,000-plus pages."

However, the micro-website for the Retro Revival series (which recently reprinted the entire Modesty Blaise series, as well as all the Madeleine Brent novels) seems to be down right now, so looks like we have to wait for more news...

You can view a Garth strip here.

So far the artwork for the Retro Revival series has been stunning, so hopefully we can expect the Garth reprints to be just as good!

Robert McGinnis on YouTube

I came across some video montages of Robert McGinnis' book cover art on YouTube. There's a promo for a McGinnis documentary DVD, which I never knew about and must try to find:


And this montage, Girls, Guns, and Death, includes McGinnis' cover of I, Lucifer.

McGinnis is also featured in this CBS Sunday morning clip, which discusses Stephen King's first 'pulp fiction' novel 'The Colorado Kid' (2005). It is published by Hard Case Crime, a publishing house that aims to bringing back the pulp noir paperback. McGinnis was commissioned to do a number of covers for them, his first book cover work in some years. You can view all the covers on the Hard Case Crime website.

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