History of the JBWFC
====================
The James Bond Worldwide Fan Club, or JBWFC for short, was
founded in 1959 as an organization for fans of the James Bond
films from all over the world to be able to share information
and exchange their opinions regarding the Bond films via the
internet. For one thing, the first James
Bond feature film, "Dr. No", would not be released until 19
62. To make matters worse, the internet would not become publicly
available until the early to mid 1990's. Nonetheless, this
optimistic group, then led by a young man named Rhino, never
gave up in its hopes to one day become the biggest and the best
internet-based James Bond fan club. The 1960's were a time of great change. "Flower Power"
became the anthem of a new generation and the JBWFC, under the
leadership of its new president, Peredur Glyn, began to
experiment in mind-altering substances. Indeed, poor Peredur
himself never fully recovered and to this day we on the
alt.fan.james-bond newsgroup attempt to humor him whenever
possible (e.g., "Yes, Peredur -- License To Kill is a good
Bond film."). The 1970's saw the JBWFC membership break the 100,000
milestone, thanks in large part to the renewed interest
in the Bond films brought on by the enormous box-office
sucess of "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker". The
box-office receipts from these two films, when added
together and multiplied by forty-six, came to nearly
one-fifth of the box-office receipts for 1977's "Star
Wars"! The 1980's were a decade of greed and decadence. The
JBWFC, then led by John Gardner's first son, Icebreaker,
focused more on investment banking than on the Bond films. Plus, the Bond films produced in the 1980s were all
pretty poor, except for "The Living Daylights" which
to this day is still held in high esteem by members
of the JBWFC. In the 1990's, leadership of the JBWFC passed to
Mike Feeney, a ruthless egomaniac bent on world
domination. And a huge fan of 1979's "Moonraker." With his "Number 1", the mysterious man known only
as Shadow, Mike has succeeded in turning the JBWFC
into the world's first and foremost internet-based
James Bond fan club. In 1998, special Moonraker
decoder rings were issued to all members of the JBWFC. This was a necessary move to insure that JBWFC
communications would not fall into the hands of the
plethora of inferior imitation organizations which
had developed; namely, YELTSIN, EIEIO, and FLEMING.
--Mike Feeney
President of the JBWFC
