Warren Ellis is promising to deliver the “original, brutal, damaged” James Bond of Ian Fleming’s novels in a new comic book series out later this year, the first in more than two decades.

Launching in November with a six-issue story arc called VARGR, the series will see 007 back in London after a “mission of vengeance” in Helsinki, where he takes on the workload of a fallen agent. “But something evil is moving through the back streets of the city, and sinister plans are being laid for Bond in Berlin,” said publisher Dynamite.

Ellis, acclaimed author of the novel Gun Machine and the graphic novel Red, was announced as the writer of the James Bond 007 comic book series on Monday. With artwork by Jason Masters, who has worked on Batman Incorporated and Guardians of the Galaxy, the series will be published by Dynamite, in partnership with the Fleming family company Ian Fleming Publications.

Ellis called Fleming’s Bond “an icon”, and said that it was “a delight to tell visual narratives with the original, brutal, damaged Bond of the books”. The author has long been a fan of Fleming’s novels: comics website Bleeding Cool pointed to his comments in 2002, when the author wrote that the spy would be one of the only existing characters he would be interested in taking on.

“Bond is not a superman. He prevails because he is quite simply nastier and more determined to wreak utter bloody havoc than the next guy. In some ways – and I don’t think Fleming was unaware of this – he is what Allen Ginsberg called ‘bleak male energy’, causing and taking immense damage in single-minded pursuit of what he wants,” wrote Ellis. “He is England’s blunt instrument of international assault – the spiteful, vicious bastard of a faded empire that still wants the world to do as it’s bloody well told.”

Ellis also said that “the films try to recoil from Bond the bastard, most obviously in the later, parodic Roger Moore horrors”, with the books “notably less spectacular and far more low-key”. Fleming’s novels, he wrote, show the character as “a scarred man with clear psychological damage, often on the edge of being removed from service by M on mental health grounds”, with it “made stridently obvious that being on the 00 detail of the Secret Service is a job that fucks you up”.

Fleming’s great-nephew Diggory Laycock called the comics series an “exciting new chapter of literary James Bond”. Ellis’s style, he added, is “gritty, dark, and unique, and we can’t wait to see James Bond embroiled in an adventure of his creation”.

Fleming’s character first appeared in newspaper comic strips in the late 1950s. The last James Bond comics were published in 1995, by Dark Horse, and in 1996, in Topps Comics’ uncompleted adaptation of Goldeneye.

