Black Box gets straight into the action and introduces our potential leading lady (who incidentally isn’t immediately charmed by 007) before the theme song earwig has had a chance to burrow its way into your brain.

007’s latest mission, Operation Black Box, requires him to travel to Tokyo to track down a “cache of digital secrets”. Evil hackers are ready to release your deepest, darkest digital secrets to the world! Let’s go get ‘em!

Yes, James does have a ‘Licence to Kill’. In fact, it’s expected. The big bad in this story is Saga Genji, who is responsible for the cyber theft but my favourite character was his difficult to kill henchman, No Name, who makes up for his dodgy moniker with a creepy collection.

Armed with mission appropriate fancy gadgets and some even fancier new wheels Bond is ready to face off with some baddies, but not before asking Boothroyd, the gadget guy (Q, I presume), to do some cyberstalking for him. Potential leading lady (she does have a name. It’s Selah Sax) isn’t getting away from 007 as quickly as she had hoped. Or perhaps it is Selah that is stalking James …

The usual Bond stuff happens. There’s gambling, alcohol, sex scenes, fight scenes where people get ‘The Living Daylights’ beaten out of them, an explosion and a high speed pursuit, catchphrases, double entendres and a good ol’ villain monologue. Bond utilises his cool gadgets but also manages to improvise when the need arises.

I’m glad I read this graphic novel. After all, ‘You Only Live Twice’. It was a fun, quick read with plenty of action.

Content warnings are included in my Goodreads review.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, Dynamite Entertainment and Diamond Book Distributors for the opportunity to read this graphic novel. I’m rounding up from 3.5 stars.