History ComicStrip / ModestyBlaise

* WhipItGood: In "Ivory Dancer", Modesty and Willie are attacked by a gang of {{Professional Killer}}s knows as 'the Whip-Men', who use steel-tipped bullwhips as their weapon of choice.

Modesty Blaise is an orphan with a DarkAndTroubledPast who was head of a criminal syndicate before she was 20, and retired wealthy before she was 30. Willie Garvin is a multi-talented Cockney former [[StreetUrchin street kid]] who became Modesty's trusted right-hand man and followed her into wealthy retirement. Retirement was boring, so now TheyFightCrime.

* VaporWear: In the later strips, Modesty more and more frequently wears clothes that makes it obvious that she braless, though she still wears her trademark black bra under other outfits.

* BalefulPolymorph: In "Willie the Djinn", after Kerima mistakes Willie for a djinn, her first wish is for him to turn her EvilUncle into a frog, though after a moment's further thought she decides a spider would be better.

* KnifeNut: Willie Garvin

** In "The Head Girls", the villain strip-search Modesty and Willie and leave them in a DrowningPit in their underwear. Neither Willie nor Modesty has any chance to get dressed until they make thir escape near the end of the story, so the audience gets to see several long action scenes with Modesty in her bra and panties and Willie in his boxers.

* DrowningPit: "The Head Girls" has a variation, making use of the subterranean River Fleet that runs under part of London; the villain takes Modesty and Willie down to a tunnel below the high water mark and waits for the tide to flood it.

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: In "The Head Girls", the villain takes Modesty and Willie to a [[DrowningPit tunnel connected to the river Fleet]] which is below the high water mark. His plan is to leave them behind while he himself escapes well before the tide rises, but an unexpected rain storm fills the tunnel much quicker than expected, and he just barely escapes with his life (but has to leave the McGuffin behind). Willie and Modesty escape, too, of course.

** The third time Modesty and Willie get on the trail of one of Gabriel's schemes, in "The Head Girls", Gabriel is ready with a contingency plan just for them. The first bit, which involves luring them into a trap and gassing them, is pretty good, but then he succumbs to the desire to see them die slowly and painfully instead of just killing them while they're helpless, and sticks them in a DrowningPit and gloats at them long enough for Modesty to spot a flaw in his plan and turn the tables.

* DrowningPit: "The Head Girls" has a variation, making use of the subterranean River Fleet that runs under part of London; the villain takes Modesty and Willie down during low tide and chains them up below the high water mark.

* LingerieScene: The readers often get to see Modesty in her trademark BlackBraAndPanties, either because she's stripped down to [[ShowSomeLeg distract the bad guys]], suffered ClothingDamage in her fights, or is just [[FanService shown changing clothes]].

* YellowPeril: Mr. Wu Smith is a Chinese crime lord based in Hong Kong who dresses and speaks like Literature/FuManchu.

* TrickedOutShoes: In "Take-Over", Willie has a pair of boots where the heels can be detached and clicked together to form an explosive device that can be set to explode on a countdown or on impact.

* WilliamTelling: Part of Willie's KnifeThrowingAct and often pulled by Willie against bad guys.

* BondVillainStupidity: ''All the time''. They often have good reason to, though; they know that if they kill Modesty, Willie will hunt them down and kill them (or vice versa). Because of this, villains tend to want to kill them both at the same time. A more specific example: In "Bad Suki", the villain captures Modesty and Willie together and keeps them alive against the recommendation of her more pragmatic and experienced henchmen, first to enjoy a chance to boast about the cleverness of her operation to someone capable of appreciating it, and then sticks them in a death trap that will suffocate them slowly (ie. give them time to escape).

* ClearMyName[=/=]ClearTheirName: In "The Murder Frame" Willie is the victim of an expert FrameUp and he and Modesty have to use all of their resourcefulness to clear his name and bring the real culprits to justice.

* MilkmanConspiracy: The secretary/spies in "The Head Girls"

* RuthlessForeignGangsters: "Take-Over"

%%* FunetikAksent: Willie Garvin's Cockney. Occasionally inverted to indicate when Willie is speaking in another accent as part of a disguise.

* SlippingAMickey: In "The Killing Ground", meets an attractive young woman who invites him for a drink -- which is drugged, allowing him to be abducted by the bad guys.

* ActionDressRip: Modesty's skirts are designed to tear away, leaving her legs free for action.

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: In "Children of Lucifer", two henchmen are told to dispose of a defector who is fleeing on skis, and to make it look like an accident. They do this by forcing her into a tree, then knocking her out and leaving her to freeze to death. This probably would have worked if their forceful attempts to stop Modesty going down the same ski run [[RevealingCoverUp hadn't aroused her suspicions]].

* HonorBeforeReason: If you've saved Modesty's life at some point, or if you were ever her friend, she regards herself as in your debt and will not forget it, even if you do. This comes back to haunt her in "Honeygun" and especially in "The Galley Slaves," where the entire second half of the plot only takes place because she lets Lim live.

* FlashbackEffects: "The Vikings" includes a flashback to an event during Modesty's criminal career. For the duration, the panel borders change from the usual straight lines to scalloped edge like a thought bubble, to show that it's happening in Modesty's thoughts not in present reality.

* MakeupWeapon: In "Top Traitor", Modesty has a tube of lipstick that conceals a device that sprays knockout gas.

** Two men caught in the act of industrial espionage are found dead before they can be questioned, and it's initially assumed that they've taken suicide pills. Modesty points out that that's much more common for ideologically-motivated spies than in the world of industrial espionage, and correctly suspects that they've been silenced by their employer.

* AsYouKnow: An occasional recurring issue, with characters using bits of criminal or spycraft jargon and then explaining them to colleagues who presumably know the jargon as well as they do. The series itself opens with a scene where Tarrant and Fraser deliver a massive infodump about Modesty's past ''to Modesty herself'', but at least they have the excuse that what they're really telling her, which she didn't know, is how much ''they'' know that ''she'' knows.

* CyanidePill: A Soviet agent in "The Hell-Makers" has a cyanide capsule concealed in a tooth; when Modesty knocks her out, intending to capture her for questioning about her group's plans, the capsule is inadvertantly broken and she dies.

* ShoePhone: In the first story arc, Willie equips Modesty with a pen that's really a disguised gun which can fire a single .22 calibre bullet.

* HornyVikings: In "The Vikings", Modesty battles a group of Scandinavian men who, being supposedly bored with the ease and comfort of modern life, have embraced the ways of their Viking ancestors; plundering shipping and coastal towns. They embrace most of the Viking stereotypes, but it is largely a smokescreen for their actions as RuthlessModernPirates: the Viking trappings making it hard for the authorities to take them seriously.

* APirate400YearsTooLate: In "The Vikings", Modesty encounters a crew of RuthlessModernPirates who dress and act like HornyVikings, because the authorities find it hard to take reports of Viking attacks seriously.

* GoodScarsEvilScars: A bit character in "The Head Girls" has an ugly scar running down one side of his face, which serves to cue the audience to be suspicious of him even before it's revealed that he's up to no good.

* HollywoodSilencer: Just about every time somebody shows up in the comic strip with a silenced handgun, it's a revolver. Attaching a silencer to a revolver doesn't do much.

* RevolversAreJustBetter: In the first story arc, Willie expresses a preference for Colt revolvers; he doesn't trust automatics because of the risk they'll jam up just when you need them.

** Modesty has several tricks for hiding her kongo from weapons searches, including disguising it as part of the handle of her handbag (first seen in "Mister Sun") and wrapping it inside her hair bun.

* AndroclesLion: In "Live Bait", Modesty and Willie work to save the kidnapped young daughter of a friend from an old enemy of Modesty, named Malik, seeking revenge; while Willie manages to escape with the child, Modesty herself is captured while covering their escape. One of Malik's henchmen, Lacroix, expressed his distaste for the child's kidnapping and doesn't join in the attack that ends with Modesty captured, revealing that he had had an encounter with her during her Network days, where she had him dead to rights but let him live. When Malik dies of a heart attack, his henchmen try to kill Modesty, who fights back and is saved by Lacroix's intervention. Modesty doesn't remember Lacroix, and when he reminds her of how she spared his life, she's very grateful and considers the debt more than paid.

* HiddenWeapons: Modesty spends the latter half of the first story arc with her forearm wrapped in bandages after it's injured in a fight. At the climax, after the bad guys have searched her for weapons, it's revealed that she had a hold-out weapon they missed hidden under the bandages.