The actual image the
Daily Express chose when they started the Bond comic strip was a rougher, more agressive, harder-edged look. You can go here:
https://literary007.com/2014/12/24/the-rolls-royce-of-comic-strips-james-bond-in-the-daily-express/
to compare the picture Fleming commissioned, in which Fleming's concept of a "young Hoagy Carmichael" was the template, with the image that strip artist John McCluskey eventually went with.
Interestingly, McCluskey's version strongly resembles Sean Connery. This was some four years before Connery was cast in the first Bond picture,
Dr. No, and it's possible Conery was cast because he already resembled the comic strip image so many readers in the UK were familiar with. Fleming initially was against Connery's casting, but after seeing the first two films,
Dr. No and
From Russia With Love, was so pleased that he altered (or at least added to) Bond's backstory, making him Scottish rather than English.
Regretfully, those first two films were all he lived to see. He died about a month before
Goldfinger was released.
JIM D.