Willie Garvin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Willie Garvin is a character in the long-running British comic strip series Modesty Blaise, as well as a series of novels based upon the strip. The character was created by Peter O'Donnell in 1963 and, alongside Modesty Blaise, made his first appearance in the story "La Machine", appearing for the first time in strip no. 21. Garvin also appears in every volume of the Modesty Blaise book series.
Contents |
[edit] Character background
Garvin appears throughout the Modesty Blaise series as Blaise's confidant and right-hand man. His background is never presented in an ordered, chronological context, but rather in bits and pieces over the course of the comic strip, which ran from 1963 to 2002, and the literary series, which shared a more-or-less common continuity and ran from 1965 to 1996.
What is known can be pieced together from the many tidbits revealed by O'Donnell over the years. Garvin is British and has a rather shady background. He was born to an unwed mother who died young, leaving him in the care of his "auntie"—an aged and alcoholic prostitute—who "taught him how to duck." He was then put in an orphanage which he ran away from after crossing a bully known as Dicer and losing his virginity to a girl nicknamed "Rosie the Bang". He served in the French Foreign Legion, including the gruesome Battle of Dien Bien Phu, and later lived in Thailand, where he made his money as a Thai boxer.
It is during his time as a boxer in Thailand that he first meets Modesty Blaise, who despite being only in her early twenties, runs a powerful (but moralistic) criminal organization called The Network. Blaise sees Garvin in one of his fights, and sees him getting arrested afterwards (why is not stated in the series). Modesty buys him out of jail and tells him that she believes he is capable of being more of a man than he currently is. She tests him by having him collect money owed by a person in Macao. This simple order gets so complicated that Willie actually has to break the man out of a prison in mainland China just to complete the mission. Modesty is astonished and impressed by Willie's intrepidity and she invites him to join The Network. Willie accepts and spends six months training with Modesty to the point where they trust each other as much as they trust themselves. Willie becomes Modesty's most trusted man in The Network, and stays on for six years until Modesty shuts the organization down. Afterwards, the two remain close friends -- Willie opening a pub on the outskirts of London called The Treadmill -- and when Sir Gerald Tarrant offers Blaise a chance to put her skills to work on behalf of British Intelligence, she easily recruits Garvin to fight by her side.
[edit] Character traits
Peter O'Donnell often joked that he was in love with Modesty and best friends with Willie, and that that was why he could write them so vividly.[citation needed] Willie has a well-developed, if slightly dark, sense of humour, and often jokes about his and Modesty's lifestyles. He is given to quoting psalms, as he was once imprisoned for a year in Calcutta with only a psalter to read. Very sociable, he has a number of female acquaintances, and is often reminded of anecdotes of them in the most unusual situations (such as when swimming in shark-infested waters or when hauling heavy objects up slopes). The one exception to his romantic conquests is Modesty Blaise; feeling that he owes her a debt greater than anything physical can offer, he refuses to consider her in a romantic light and Blaise, in return, reciprocates by treating Garvin as her one trusted friend. Garvin rarely refers to Modesty Blaise by her name; his preferred nickname for her is "Princess". On occasion, he literally provides a shoulder for her to cry on (one of Blaise's character traits is that she occasionally weeps following the conclusion of a particularly nasty mission).
Garvin is a tall and extremely strong man, though not muscle-bound. Like Modesty, he is a polymath of the first order: adept in safe-cracking and lock-picking, expert at military tactics and a student of the criminal arts. He speaks several languages, including German, Spanish, Arabic and French; his English has a heavy cockney tone to it, though he is able to turn it on and off like a switch. Willie is a master knife thrower and can throw almost any object with extreme precision. He makes his own knives and is deadly with them at ranges up to 90 feet. He doesn't like pistols (because he thinks that guns give people to much confidence), and he and Modesty have also stated that he is a poor shot, but he has shown himself to be capable on the rare occasions that he uses such weapons.
Willie, like Modesty, has a strong sense of right and wrong that is governed more by his morals than by the law. Although he avoids using deadly force whenever possible, usually taking his cue from Blaise as to whether to fight "for keeps" (the duo's euphemism for killing), he won't hesitate to kill to protect Blaise (see, for example, the conclusion to the 1975 comic strip "Cry Wolf").
[edit] I Had a Date with Lady Janet
With one exception, all of the literary adventures of Modesty Blaise are told in the standard third person. The sole exception to this is the short story "I Had a Date with Lady Janet", which first appeared in the collection Pieces of Modesty. That story is told in first person from Willie Garvin's point of view.
[edit] Fate
Although Garvin continued to appear in the Modesty Blaise comic strip until O'Donnell retired in 2002 (actually he retired in 2001, but a book-length strip based upon one of his short stories subsequently appeared in a Scandinavian publication the next year), chronologically his final appearance comes in the closing story of the 1996 short story collection Cobra Trap. (This last story is also called "Cobra Trap", like the book.)
The story takes place a number of years into the future, with Modesty in her early fifties and Willie approximately 60 years of age. During a caper to protect a trainload of innoncent people, including some children, from a group of rebels, Modesty suddenly kisses Willie romantically (for the first and only time) and reveals to him that she is dying of a brain tumor. She orders Willie to leave with the train, allowing her to die alone in battle against the rebels. Before he can react, Blaise is shot dead. As he races to meet up with the train, Willie is also shot dead. As the story ends, O'Donnell describes Willie meeting Modesty in an ethereal environment, some kind of afterlife.
[edit] Portrayals
Willie Garvin has been portrayed on film on a couple of occasions.
Terence Stamp portrayed Garvin in the 1966 film version of Modesty Blaise. In this film, Garvin is portrayed as slightly psychotic when he first appears on screen. Later, the writers of the film choose to break O'Donnell's anti-romance taboo and have Garvin and Blaise fall in love and even talk about getting married.
Garvin next appeared on screen in a 1982 made-for-television film based upon the character, which was produced as a pilot for a possible television series. In this version, Garvin is portrayed by Lewis Van Bergen.
Also in the early 1980s, John Thaw recorded an audio adaptation of "I Had a Date with Lady Janet" which he performed in character as Willie Garvin.
The 2003 film My Name is Modesty was produced as a prequel to the comic strip and novels; as such it is the only Modesty Blaise adventure in which Willie Garvin does not appear.
| The Modesty Blaise series by Peter O'Donnell |
|---|
| Characters Modesty Blaise | Willie Garvin |
| Comic strip Modesty Blaise (1963-2002) |
| Books Modesty Blaise (1965) | Sabre-Tooth (1966) | I, Lucifer (1967) | A Taste for Death (1969) | The Impossible Virgin (1971) | Pieces of Modesty (1972 - short stories) | The Silver Mistress (1973) | Last Day in Limbo (1976) | Dragon's Claw (1978) | The Xanadu Talisman (1981) | The Night of Morningstar (1982) | Dead Man's Handle (1985) | Cobra Trap (1996 - short stories) |
| Films Modesty Blaise (1966) | Modesty Blaise (1982) | My Name is Modesty (2003) |
