Credit: Dangerous Minds / Diamond Comics

Diamond Comics is the largest comic book distributor and publisher in India. They’ve created a lot of original Indian comic book characters as well as publishing foreign comic titles like The Phantom, Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. The Diamond superhero comics look more or less as we’ve come to know them. They don’t depart radically from the American versions.

But the James Bond comic books in Hindi are from another universe entirely. With eye-searing colours and primitive graphics, Diamond’s James Bond series completely lacks the elegance and style we associate with the suave superspy. Day-Glo 007 has been shaken, stirred and put up wet.

I was going to say that these covers are kind of lysergic. But really they’re not. This is what shit looks like after eating a handful of Datura or Amanita Muscaria. Double oh my God!

You got James Bond… and then you got this guy. Judging by these insane Hindi comic covers, 007 apparently traded in his tux for hot pants, a six-pack of steroids, and a vendetta against cobra cults, kung-fu skeletons, and what appears to be… Dracula’s accountant? In one image, our man Bond—looking like a backup dancer from a forgotten Bollywood aerobics video—wields a dagger and revolver against a sea of black-hooded figures. In another, he’s transformed into a shirtless, musclebound Rambo clone dual-wielding automatic rifles with golden bayonets. Ian Fleming never could’ve dreamt this fever dream up in a million vodka martinis.

Diamond Comics’ James Bond is the bizarro-world version of Britain’s iconic gentleman spy. Forget cold war intrigue, martini bars, or Aston Martins. This Bond crashes through purple castles, rescues wide-eyed damsels with Farrah Fawcett hair, and apparently has a sponsorship deal with Lay’s potato chips. These covers don’t just reinterpret Bond for an Indian market; they explode the entire mythos like a garish, over-inked Molotov cocktail. The vibe is more Cannon Films than Connery—more Chuck Norris than Pierce Brosnan. And yet, they have a kinetic charm you can’t deny. It’s Bond, but cranked up to eleven, airbrushed in neon, and printed with the urgency of a fever dream.

The West gave India a white, British secret agent; India handed back a psychedelic brawler in bell-bottoms who fights skull-headed mob bosses and disco dominatrixes on rooftops. These comics are time capsules of another kind of globalisation—where pop culture gets Xeroxed, mutated, and fed through a pulpy, subcontinental filter. The result? A Bond who might not order his martinis “shaken, not stirred”, but who will definitely pile-drive you through a wall before doing a flying kick into a volcano.