The Bond Sequence

james bond with Bug Eyed…Two hundred and forty-four James Bonds, and they are all wearing fly goggles.

James Bond wearing Top Hat…This is what I mean by commit: at no point in the archive does Thomas Hunt waver on the costume. Bond is in a top hat. Bond is in fly goggles. Bond, sometimes, is in a tuxedo, but if the tuxedo is there the top hat is there too. The variable is the period. Cyberpunk. Renaissance. Old English. Synthwave. Steampunk. The prompts are essentially a single sentence rotated through every visual idiom available to MidJourney, and the result is a comprehensive catalog of what each idiom does to an Englishman in a hat.James Bond in tuxcedo and top…

rZqrTsZ44 james bond in a top ha

What is the bit doing? Bond is, in any reading, the most processed character in the British twentieth century — refined into pure style by sixty years of franchise revision. He is also, like the Mad Hatter, a figure of conviction that the present world is not what it appears to be. Bond knows there is a conspiracy. Bond has the equipment to expose it. Bond, in fly goggles, is the inheritor of the same iconography that runs through the Mad Hatter cycle and the Mad Bitcoins broadcast persona itself. The goggles are how Thomas signals initiate across every figure he draws.

james bond in a top haThe most-iterated configuration — james bond in a top hat with fly goggles in cyberpunk, forty-four runs — is the one where the costume sits most comfortably. Cyberpunk Bond is a perfect fusion because the genre is already an architecture for stylish men with secrets. He stands in front of neon rain. He has a small device in his hand. He is going somewhere expensive. The goggles read as equipment rather than affectation in this context, and the top hat reads as signal — the Hatter inside the spy.james bond with Bug Eyed…

The james bond in a top hat with f…renaissance variant (thirty runs) is the surprise. Pulled back into oil paint and chiaroscuro the costume becomes aristocratic. Bond is no longer a working spy; he is a duke. The goggles, which read as utilitarian against neon, read as ceremonial against Vermeer. This is a real visual discovery. The same costume, the same posture — and the historical setting changes the social class of the wearer.

james bond in a top hat with fly goggles in cyberp

Old english (nineteen) is the one that almost works. Bond stands at the edge of a dirt road in a Constable landscape. The fly goggles look wrong here, and the prompt knows it: there is no British romanticism that has any use for aviator equipment. The collection's near-failure here is more interesting than its successes — it shows where the costume's grammar breaks.

james bond in a top hat with…The spock in a top hat with fly goggles outliers (nine and eight, two variants) are the cycle's metacommentary. Thomas knows the costume is portable. He removes Bond and inserts Spock and the rig still functions; it is no longer about Bond. It is about a uniform of seeing. Anyone you put in the goggles is, by costume, an initiate. The figure becomes interchangeable; the apparatus is the message.james bond in a top ha

james bond in a top hat with…Two anchors worth opening directly:

• MadBitcoins as James Bondmadbitcoins as james bond with top hat and fly goggles. Six iterations. The artist puts himself in the costume. This is the only point in the cycle where the figure has a name — and the name is Mad Bitcoins. The disguise drops. Bond was always Thomas. The goggles were always his.

• a bull wearing fly goggles and…a bull wearing fly goggles and a top hat. Eight runs. The costume jumps species. The financial bull is being inducted. The crypto-bull and the spy-Hatter become one creature. This is the cycle's culminating gesture: every figure in his bestiary is now eligible to wear the uniform.

MadBitcoins as James Bond…The Bond Sequence reads, finally, as costume design for an order. Thomas is not asking what Bond looks like in different settings. He is asking who else is allowed to wear what Bond wears. The answer, the archive insists, is everyone he draws.James Bond in tuxcedo wearing…