Modesty, Penguins, Thought Bubbles

Speaking of Losey, I haven't watched his Modesty Blaise (yet). But I did come across some great pulpish covers to the series that spawned the movie (try here and here). I love old, brittle paperbacks and comics--and I really love the covers, with with this range of (broadly) mid-20th century design. (For example, the sorts of things that Germano Facetti did at Penguin in the 1960s, the middle two covers being examples below.) The superb blogger Owen Hatherley sometimes writes about this sort of design. The basic illustrative invention on display in any number of 1970s-80s newsprint comic books, and the free play of panels across pages that could sometimes mark really interesting ones, attract me still, even though my days as a "comic book fan" are more than a decade past. (It wasn't long after I gave up or "grew out of" comics that I discovered films.) The fourth image below is from a '70s comic called Iron Wolf (which I've never read or even heard of, but I somehow stumbled upon that blog entry and it sounded fascinating), and the last image is of course the famous Pogo one ...