Blofeld and Strucker: masterminds separated at birth?

Blofeld in 007 Legends

This year, as part of the 50th anniversary of the film James Bond, there’s a new video game where Daniel Craig’s James Bond participates in storylines from five 007 films before the actor ever took up the part. The writer of the video game is Bruce Feirstein, who helped script three 007 films in the 1990s, starting with GoldenEye and running through The World Is Not Enough.

But something else caught our eye — the video game’s Ernst Stavro Blofeld looks awfully familiar but only if you’re familiar with a certain comic book spy.

The makers of the Activision video game instead of using the likeness of an actor who actually played Blofeld (Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray and Max Von Sydow), did a little mixing and matching. The 007 Legend’s Blofeld combines the facial scars of Pleasence’s version with the more physical Savalas version).

Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker menaces Nick Fury, courtesy of writer-artist Jim Steranko

Interestingly, and perhaps by coincidence, the 007 Legends Blofeld resembles Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, the leader of the group Hydra that bedeviled Marvel Comics’ Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.

In fact, the Strucker character was originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby for the World War II comic, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. Writer-artist Jim Steranko devised the idea that Strucker survived World War II and now was the chief of Hydra in the 1960s SHIELD story.

Steranko began drawing the SHIELD version of Nick Fury with Strange Tales No. 151, while Stan Lee was still writing the title. Kirby provided rough layouts, essentially an outline for Steranko to follow.

Steranko eventually took over all of the art responsibilities and later began writing the SHIELD stories also. At the end of Strange Tales No. 156, Steranko produced a two-page spread revealing that Strucker, Fury’s World War II arch-enemy, was Hydra’s leader Strucker had a facial scar very much like the Pleasence version of Blofeld.

Meanwhile, here’s a preview of 007 Legends that was upload to YouTube:

Here are the opening credits for 007 Legends: