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Biographical information
Physical description
Gender

Male

Chronological and political information
Affiliation

MI5, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Campion Bond is a rotund, effeminate MI5 agent. Bond acts as a usually-shadowy intermediary between the League and M, and is the ancestor of James Bond.

Campion was a descendant of Sir Basildon Bond, an underling of Sir Jack Wilton, the original M, who in 1558 established Prospero's Men (the original League) for Queen Gloriana I. Prospero, the head of the organization, was the original 007.[1]

History[]

Bond1888

Bond is shown in a picture from 1888 wearing a Skull and Bones cap. He was hired by MI5 out of university, and that he was working for Professor James Moriarty as early as his 1891 duel with Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls. Bond leaked state secrets to enemies of MI5 including Fu Manchu. According to Broad Arrow Jack, Bond's family has a bad reputation.

Bond is the one who dispatches Mina Murray and Captain Nemo to collect the other members of the League, and assigns them their mission to retrieve the stolen Cavorite from Fu Manchu.

He later returns it to Moriarty and attempts to convince the League that their mission is over. However, he is absent from the battle between Moriarty and the League and readily accepts Mycroft Holmes's appointment as M - Holmes decided that a treacherous man like him would be more useful alive than hanged.

Alien invasion[]

Bond sends the team to investigate the Martian landing at Horsell Common, and at the end, during the battle of London, is the one who authorizes and supervises the deployment of Dr. Moreau's "H-142" hybrid that he sent Murray and Allan Quatermain to gather. He is the one who explains that the hybrid was actually a hybrid biological weapon and that the British government will officially claim that all Martians died of the common cold while all remaining Londoners were killed by Martians.

Post-Invasion[]

Campion published his Memoirs of an English Intelligencer in 1908. The New Traveller's Almanac was a collection of Bond's notes on various League activities that were declassified and published in the 1930s. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier included a segment from Campion's memoirs; although the postcard section indicated that he was still in charge of League activities as of their Toyland expedition in 1907, by the time his memoirs were published in 1908 he had been demoted and assigned to a desk job in MI5's files department. He seems to further fall by being reduced to serving tea during a meeting between M and the League in 1910.[2]

Campion was Andrew Bond's father, and sired him sometime prior to the publishing of his memoirs in order for him to have been old enough to father Jimmy. "Jimmy" working for MI5 and carrying Campion's 007 case is his grandson, James Bond (this can also be deduced by "Jimmy"'s Walther PPK, which has 007 engraved on it).[3] Along with the 1930s publication of his memoirs, this would imply that Campion was dead or retired by 1958.

Source material[]

Campion is not from period literature. Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill could not find a character that matched the type that they needed, and so invented one. However, in keeping with the comic theme (and done with several other later League characters) they intended him to be the ancestor of a later similar character. For copyright reasons the relationship cannot directly be stated, but is implied through Bond's status as an agent of British Intelligence beneath an M, as well as carrying a cigarette case that is inscribed with "007" in Morse code,[4] along with "Jimmy" carrying the same case in The Black Dossier and, in the same comment, Mina Murray comparing "Jimmy" to his grandfather, Campion.

Media appearances[]

Bond was originally intended to play a major role in the League film; however, a later rewrite giving more time to Moriarty reduced his appearance to a cameo at the end, before another rewrite eliminated it altogether with the intention of him playing a major role in the (never produced) sequel. Early unsubstantiated rumors placed Jason Isaacs or Robbie Coltrane in the role; later (apparently firmer) rumors, when the part was still reduced to an ending cameo, had it planned to be given to former Bond actor Roger Moore (Moore's predecessor as Bond, Sean Connery, starred in the film as Quatermain). [5] As late as April 2003, three months before the release of the film, the movie producers still were promising that Bond would be in the film.[6] He still appears at the end of the film's novelization. His role in the film instead appears to be replaced with that of original character Sanderson Reed.

References[]

  1. "Faerie's Fortunes Founded" segment of the Black Dossier
  2. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III: Century
  3. The League of Leagues
  4. Jess Nevins; Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (paperback, 239 pages, MonkeyBrain, 2003, ISBN 193226504X, Titan Books, 2006, ISBN 1845763165)
  5. IMDb Trivia for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  6. LXG Tidbits
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