Peter O’Donnell, who created the comic strip Modesty Blaise for the London Evening Standard in 1963 and who chronicled her adventures for the next 38 years, died over the weekend at age 90. O’Donnell began writing comic strips when he was 17, a nascent career that was interrupted by a stint in the army during the Second World War. Serving in a mobile radio detachment in Persia, O’Donnell had a chance meeting with a hungry little girl. According to the Guardian, she “eyed them warily but accepted some food. Before she left, O’Donnell gave her two tins of stew and showed her how to use a tin opener. “To this day, I can see in my mind’s eye the smile she gave us and the sight of that upright little figure walking like a princess as she moved away from us on those brave, skinny legs.” Twenty years later, that encounter sparked the creation of Modesty Blaise , “a woman who, though fully feminine, would be as good in combat and action as any male, if not better”. Over the years, the alluring secret agent was called upon to thwart a multi-million pound diamond heist, foil a private army of professional killers, and defeat Caribbean drug traffickers and homicidal Norsemen. Modesty was drawn first by Jim Holdaway and later Enrique Badia Romero (see left), but O’Donnell also produced Modesty Blaise novels, whose most ardent admirer may have been Kingsley Amis. O’Donnell once said that the proudest moment of his career was receiving a letter from the Lucky Jim author who praised the books as “endlessly fascinating.”
