Having conceived the idea after a chance meeting with a girl during his wartime service in the Middle East, O'Donnell elected to work with Jim Holdaway, with whom he had worked on the strip "Romeo Brown", after a trial period of collaboration with Frank Hampson, creator of "Dan Dare", left O'Donnell dissatisfied. "Modesty Blaise" debuted in the London "Evening Standard" on 13 May 1963. The strip was syndicated among a large number of newspapers ranging from the "Johannesburg Star" to the "Detroit Free Press", the "Bombay Samachar", "The Telegraph" (Calcutta, India), "The Star" (Malaysia), "The West Australian" (Perth), "The Evening Citizen" (Glasgow, Scotland) and the "Birmingham Evening Mail" (Birmingham, England).