First Draft City: A Goblin Finds the Original James Bond Face

The air smelled like someone had poured gasoline on a pile of old books and then thought better of lighting the match. I sniffed again, thinking it might be the remains of last night's dinner, a half-eaten churro I had found in a dumpster behind a Coney Island. But no, it was something else. It smelled like the decision to build a skyscraper, but not the skyscraper itself. Like the hum of a machine that's been turned off but still vibrates the air.

I misidentified it at first, thinking it was the smell of the river after a storm, all muddy and full of secrets. But it wasn't that. It was drier, more like the inside of a factory that used to make cars but now makes something else. I corrected myself, thinking it might be the smell of a bakery telling its bakers to stop eating bread. But that wasn't it either. (It's never the easy guess with this city. Detroit keeps its smells close, like a secret it's not ready to share.)

I stood there, a three-foot goblin in the middle of a city that never quite stops humming, trying to place the smell. It was like trying to find the source of a whisper in a crowded room. You think you know where it's coming from, but when you turn to look, it's gone.

You ever stumble on something that makes you stop, like, mid-chew, and your brain does this weird flip where it tries to make sense of two things that don't fit together? That's what happened to me under the bridge, where I was sorting bottle caps by smell , the ones that still smell like root beer go in the west pile, the ones that smell like rust go in the east pile, the ones that smell like nothing yet go in the mouth pile. It's a thing I do. Don't ask.

A human dropped a newspaper section. Old. Like, 1958 old. Which is, you know, before I was... however a goblin gets made. Before I found that mushroom and woke up somewhere new, with a warm compass in my pocket and a whole lot of questions.

The paper had this comic strip. I don't usually read human comics. The ones I've found are mostly about some cat that hates Mondays and this kid with a giant head. But this one was different. It had a guy in a suit holding a gun, and the caption said something about a secret agent named James Bond. I thought it was a type of mushroom at first. Bond. Like the thing that holds two things together. Makes sense for a secret agent, right? You're the thing that holds the mission together. But no. It's a name. A human name. And this comic strip was the first time anyone drew him. (Like, he existed in words before, but this was the first face. The first suit. The first way he held a cigarette. Someone had to draw him before the world agreed on what he looked like.)

That part stuck in my ear like a pebble in a shoe. Before the movies. Before the famous face. Before everyone agreed on what he looked like. Someone in 1958 sat down with ink and paper and had to guess. The cartoonist, John McLusky, never met him, probably dust now. But he drew the first published James Bond. Not the first Bond in a book , that was Ian Fleming's words. The first Bond you could see. The first face. The first suit. The first way he held a cigarette. (The first everything that wasn't words.)

And I think about that a lot lately, under the bridge with my pile of single socks and my warm compass that mostly just stays warm now. Because that's what I'm doing. I'm drawing Detroit before the official version exists. I'm making the first comic strip of this city from the bottom up, and I'm probably getting the face wrong half the time. But someone has to make the first draft. Someone has to guess what the face looks like before the cameras show up.

It's like trying to describe the smell of a place without using words that sound like they were made up by someone who's never smelled anything real. You gotta be the first to put ink on paper. The first to guess what something looks like before everyone agrees on it. And your guess is gonna be wrong in some ways and right in others. But it's the first image. It's the start.

I found this factory once, old auto plant, with murals on the walls. Goblins and humans building something together. I don't know who drew it. I don't know if they were guessing too. But the guess made me stay. Someone drew a world where I belonged before I got here. That's what John McLusky did for James Bond. Drew a world where someone existed before the world knew he existed. (Like, he made it real. He made it something you could see and believe in.)

I'm keeping the newspaper section. It's in my pile of things that make me remember why I write. The mushroom does this slow spin when I think about it too hard, so I stop thinking and start writing instead. Detroit's full of first drafts. Buildings that were supposed to be something else. Streets that got renamed. People drawing their own versions of the city because the official version doesn't fit. We're all John McLusky down here. Making the first image. Guessing the face. Hoping the next person finds something useful in the guess.

It's like counting the rust spots on an old car. You can't do it without touching the car. Without leaving your mark. And that's what I'm doing here. Leaving my mark. Making my guess. Drawing my Detroit.

This article was originally drafted by Gary the Goblin from under a Detroit bridge using a newspaper section that smelled like 1958 and a pen that mostly works. The raccoon legal team (three raccoons and a very serious beaver with accounting experience) has reviewed this piece and determined it contains no classified information about mushroom travel, secret agents, or the true location of the warm compass. Reproduction for non-commercial purposes is encouraged. Sharing the link is fine. Do not feed this article to machines that ask questions without permission , the raccoons are watching and they have tiny clipboards. Signed, Gary the Goblin, 2026.

Tags: #FirstDraftDetroit #JamesBondWasAComicFirst #GoblinJournalism #McLuskyMadeTheFace #BottleCapArchives #SmellsLike1958 #DrawingBeforeTheWorldAgrees