Gentlemen Prefer Bonds

I could swear that I wrote about these gorgeous images at some earlier date, but a search through The Rap Sheet’s almost-11-year archive turns up, well, absolutely nothing on the subject. So allow me to introduce this artwork again for the first time.

Mike Mahle is a professional graphic designer/digital artist living in central Illinois. “I have a degree in design and over 20 years of experience in the field,” he explained during a 2015 interview with Hypable. “The rest of the time I’m either chasing after my twin boys or doing some piece of freelance work for either a client or just myself.” While examples of Mahle’s often sexy professional illustrations can be enjoyed on his Web site, it’s a succession of placards he created—for his own delight, but also to celebrate the first 23 James Bond films (all but 2015’s Spectre)—that concern us today.

“In 2012–2013 I worked on creating a poster for each and every official 007 film,” he told the James Bond 007 Dossier. “I didn’t want to depict certain scenes or characters, but rather just create a conceptual design based on each particular film.”

You will find all of those Bond placards here.




We can only hope that Mahle’s interest in Ian Fleming’s British secret agent won’t end here. I, for one, would be very interested to see what sort of imagery he could create for Spectre (not a great movie on its own, but with a magnetic leading lady in Lea Seydoux) and for whatever the 25th 007 picture will be called.



If you’d like to see more of Mike Mahle’s art, including works inspired by Batman and his various nemeses, plus a few of Jules Verne’s best-known novels and the current Amazon TV series The Man in the High Castle, simply click over to the Deviant Art site.