After Ian Fleming's widow Anne passed away in 1981, the literary rights to the James Bond series were renegotiated, launching John Gardner's continuation novels. Shortly afterwards, new comic book rights were licenced around the world to develop original 007 adventures in the graphic novel format. Although Semic were the most industrious with the rights in Scandinavia, a couple of publishers in the USA produced a collection of original James Bond mini-series comic books between 1989 and 1995.

Eclipse Comics produced the first ever original English-language 007 comic book outing with "Permission To Die", written and drawn by Mike Grell, in 1989 - with concluding issue published in 1991. Dark Horse Comics then took over the licence, producing six new adventures, ending with "The Quasimodo Gambit" in 1995. Since then, no new original 007 comic books have been produced, but some comics are still available to purchase from the original publisher.