This was the first issue of UNDERSEA Agent that I ever owned. I think I was just doing an eBay search of all Silver Age books ending soon, with no bids on them, and I just happened to see this comic. I thought it looked kinda interesting, so I picked it up, despite having never heard of the series before.

Anyway, here are my thoughts on this issue and on what your comments, shax...




I think you're being a little harsh on this issue. It takes plenty of wrong turns, yes, but the opening tale is as exciting (and ridiculous) as anything in issue #1 and the book's key strengths of Ray Bailey's incredible art work and Vic Gorelick's colouring are as big a draw as ever. I do agree that overall this issue is substandard to issue #1, but it's still strong enough that it hooked me enough to make me track down the rest of the series.




(emphasis mine)

Completely agree. Giving Davy Jones superpowers is a rubbish idea. Even within the context of this single issue, the gutsy, but relatably human hero that we've been following through the early stories in this comic, is suddenly replaced by a superhero...and not a very good one at that! Even with absolutely no emotional investment in this series' status quo, I remember being very annoyed at this turn of events when I first read through this issue.




I agree that the first story in this issue is a mad-dash, but it's also pretty darn action packed. It doesn't let up at all and reading this as a kid, it must've seemed like totally "balls to the wall" action and adventure. In that respect, as far as the target audience is concerned, it's job done! However, the inexplicable destruction of Lemuria at the start of the story and the anti-climactic squandering of Dr. Fang as a villain at the end are real head-scratchers to an adult reader.




Good point! This hadn't really ever occurred to me before, but you're right -- they have completely neutered the strong female character that we saw last issue.




Yeah, this tale is utterly ridiculous and that ending is a real eye-rolling moment. But, but, but...this is another really fun story, I think. Plus, there's some glorious artwork in this tale, not least the lovely coastal scenery that Bailey gives us when Jones and Skooby first meet Olaf. I also quite like the little, purple aliens in this adventure too. They look comical, rather than threatening, but it's a shame that they all get wiped out at the end. I sort of felt sorry for them.




The acronym of T.H.E.M. (The Hosts of Evil Motives) is utterly, utterly terrible...and yet, it's still better than U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. as an acronym for the United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis.




Yeah, not a great issue at all, and definitely riddled with problems that make it substandard to the previous one. However, I think it's safe to say that I liked it more than you did. It is ridiculous at times and painfully bad at others, but man, it's also buzzing with Silver Age energy. The breathless pace of the action in this issue is addictive, even if the previous issue was ultimately far superior.

Yeah, that might well be the case...first impressions and all that. One thing we definitely agree on is that it was a crying shame that somebody felt the need to turn Davy Jones into a superhero.

I was kind of heartbroken when Brown kind of left this comic book and Wood contributing less. I often wonder that and being introduced to this series of books - I don't know why they left in the first place? Care to share?

Just found this interview with Len Brown. I found this part interesting:



Brown was never a full time staffer for Tower. He just invented Dynamo, (possibly) named the team, and was then asked to submit a few scripts.


Also:




So Brown was essentially freelancing for them and quit pretty early on because that wasn't his primary employment.

UNDERSEA Agent #3 (June 1966)



While the first two issues of UNDERSEA Agent remained generally under the same creative control, with this issue begins a revolving door of writers attempting to find a new center for the series. Steve Skeates, writing four of the five stories in this issue, is the same guy that Tower brought in to fix the THUNDER Squad by completely changing the premise, as well as NoMan, where he completely missed the point.

His work here isn't quite as upsetting, but it isn't particularly good either. The focus across each of his stories is the same as what we just saw in THUNDER Agents --a mad dash scramble to introduce as many villains as possible in the hope that the readers will latch onto one or two of them. This issue gives us Tyro, a carbon copy of Dr. Fang who, oddly enough, gets killed off just as quickly, an unknown enemy only alluded to in the final story, and the virtually indistinguishable Dr. Mayham and Dr. Malevolent, both evil geniuses who both use experimental new guns with crazy sci-fi powers in attempts to rule the world until Lt. Jones snaps his fingers and his magnetic powers neutralize them.

In fact, Jones is clearly over-powered across these stories, never really struggling against his antagonists. We spend most of the story finding the bad guy, and then Jones takes them out super quick with his new found powers. It's downright dull.

Also worth noting is that, in yet another attempt to make Jones more like a superhero (they gave him his super power just last issue) he is now repeatedly referred to as "UNDERSEA Agent" as if that were his superhero name. He's never been attached to that label previously; It's just the title of the book.

Skeates does make a sincere effort to respect continuity in this outing. Unlike his haphazard attempt to write NoMan without seeming to understand anything about the character and previous adventures, Skeates has done his homework, remembering Jones' concussion bullet gun that even Arneson had forgotten last issue, clearly understanding Jones' new powers and how they are operated by the belt, and even harkening back to the Lemurians and Dr. Fang in the first adventure. Heck, he even brings back Kort from the first issue, though he only appears in a few cameo shots:



But that brings me to the biggest problem I have with this issue -- No Renata Del Mar. She was downplayed terribly last issue, and now she's just gone. This is even weirder when you consider that Kort was HER assistant; not UNDERSEA's. But, to add further insult to injury, she outright gets replaced in the second story, where we are given a new love interest with an identical backstory and conflict to Del Mar's in the first issue, with a father scientist that had been taken away from her by a villain upon which she wanted revenge.

Sadder still: unlike Renatta, the replacement girl gets her dad back, and thus, won't be appearing again in this series.



It's been a few years since I read this series. I honestly don't remember if Renatta is coming back. She was my favorite character of the series, by far.


And hey, here's one more big nagging doubt I have as I continue to read this series: Are there other UNDERSEA Agents??? Skooby makes it clear in this issue that Lt. Jones' rank isn't just honorary (he was a lieutenant before he transferred to UNDERSEA) and that he is actually a commanding officer over Skooby in the UNDERSEA command structure. I would assume that there'd be no need for a command structure if Jones, Skooby, and (sometimes) Kort are the only people working for the organization.

Come to think of it, the purpose of UNDERSEA is supposed to be the exploration of the sea so that man can peacefully exist down there one day, but then shouldn't there be scientists aboard? Who exactly IS dwelling in this enormous undersea structure. We never see anyone other than the professor and these guys.



On to the stories...


"To Save A King"
script: Steve Skeates
pencils: Ray Bailey
inks: Ray Bailey
colors: ?
letters: ?

grade: B-

So we return to the unresolved story of Dr. Fang and the Lemurians, but it all proves to be a tease. Dr. Fang really is dead, replaced by his top Lemurian assistant, Tyro:



(gotta love the personalized monogram with the crown on it)

and Tyro goes on to earn the same kind of random death Dr. Fang got an issue earlier. Explain to me how his remote controlled robot blowing up miles away causes his machines to explode and kill him?

Similarly, we're never outright told what happened to the Lemurians. Did they all die when Lemuria blew up, or are their other survivors aside from Tyro.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, Skeates and Bailey introduce the Manaiians, the good-guy counterparts to the evil Lemurians, and (of course) while the Lemurians are blue skinned and foreign looking, the Manaiians are white and look European.



Not that anyone would have found this kind of thing shocking in 1966, I suppose.

Also, minor goof: with all his careful work to acknowledge past continuity, Skeats missed the fact that the Lemurians can only breathe in water. Oops.

Bailey doesn't work in any of the brilliant sci-fi art that I loved so much in the first two issues, but he does give us this one gorgeous panel:




Plot synopsis: Tyro, Dr. Fang's successor, is driving the animals of the ocean insane in an effort to gain control of the infant heir to the Manaiian Empire (underwater race of amphibious humans who oppose Tyro and the Lemurians). Jones smashes his remote controlled robot, and that somehow blows up Tyro's headquarters, killing him.



"At The Mercy Of Dr Mayhem"
script: Steve Skeates
pencils: Ray Bailey
inks: Ray Bailey
colors: ?
letters: ?


grade: B-


So Dr. Fang is dead, and his replacement is dead, but suddenly we get all this backstory on Dr. Mayhem, a villain UNDERSEA has supposedly been tracking for a long time now. There's nothing remarkable about this villain who is so generic that he's practically indistinguishable from another villain introduced two stories later.




Instead, what sticks out about this story is how thoroughly it erases Renatta Del Mar by introducing a new character with pretty much the exact same backstory (I already discussed this above).

Here's the only other thing you need to know about this story:



WTF???

Were they recycling unused art from some other comic or something? That doesn't even look like Davy Jones.


Plot synopsis: While out at a discotheque (yes, really) two bad guys try to zap Jones with some kind of teleporter ray and accidentally get Skooby instead. Conveniently enough, the girl he was dancing with is the daughter of a vanished professor who had been working on just such a device. Together, they trace the crime back to Dr. Mayhem, pull off a successful rescue attempt, and believe they watch Dr. Mayhem die in an explosion (lots of explosions ending these stories in this issue!), but he just teleports elsewhere, prepared to strike again.




"Submarines"
script: unknown
pencils: unknown
inks: unknown
colors: unknown
letters: unknown

grade: A+

I'm used to these little one and two page informational write-ups being dull, but this one was utterly fascinating, and the art was superb as well. I really wanted to see this continue onto the next page.






"The Panther Whales"
script: ?
pencils: Mike Sekowsky
inks: Frank Giacoia
colors: ?
letters: ?

grade: D

Every bit as bad as it sounds, this story features Jones fighting off a bunch of mutated half panthers/half whales that are attacking as a result of an underwater nuclear test. If that wasn't bad enough, whoever wrote this thing completely missed the boat (almost literally) when we get panels like this one:



So UNDERSEA operates out of immense naval transports and needs to use diving bells to explore the bottom of the ocean? I mean, did the author of this story read the title of this book? UNDERSEA Agent???


Plot synopsis: Jones vs. mutated panther sharks. As bad and as pointless as it sounds.



"The Will Warp"
script: Steve Skeates
pencils: Gil Kane
inks: Gil Kane
colors: ?
letters: ?


grade: D-

Much as I love Gil Kane, I've come to expect Ray Bailey's style when watching these characters in action, and Kane brings a more modern, less retro feel that doesn't jibe as well with the simplistic throwback characterization and plotting of this series. Thus far, UNDERSEA Agent has generally felt like a Golden Age title published a decade too late; Kane's art disrupts much of that for me.

However, the vibrant coloring I often commented upon in the first few Tower issues is back with this story. I believe this brilliant work was once in these issues attributed to Victor Gorelick, so perhaps this is him again.


Anyway, the story itself is terrible. Beyond getting Dr. Malevolent, another villain who is practically interchangeable from Dr. Mayhem (introduced two stories earlier):



(Well, to be fair, he's short and looks like Mr. Mxyzptlk)

the whole thing is horrendously plotted. We spend two pages establishing the problem that Jones' mind is being tampered with, one page having the villain explain what he's done (in case we didn't understand), one page having Jones figure out that he isn't acting like himself (again, in case we still don't understand), A page and a half of Jones and Scooby musing outloud about how bad it would be if, one day, someone created a machine that could make someone not act like his/herself (once again, in case we STILL don't understand), and then four of these ten pages in actually having Jones face off against the villain, defeating him without there even being a struggle.

Is Dr. Malevolent dead? Will we see him again??

1) I hope so
2) I hope not




"True or False"
script: Steve Skeates
pencils: John Giunta
inks: John Giunta
colors: ?
letters: ?

grade: B

It had to happen eventually -- the cliche plot of the protagonist encountering an evil double and having to convince others that he's the real one. It's a ridiculous story, and how it comes to pass makes absolutely no sense (Jones spots the double approaching the base and decides to let it in and tell no one anything in order to see what it's up to), but the payoff is actually pretty fun as Jones figures out that the way to defeat it is to act like the bad guy so that the professor will expect the double to activate the magnetic power belt he has since stolen from the real Jones.

Apparently the belt is even more of a rip-off of Dynamo's belt than we knew before because, like Dynamo's belt, if someone other than the person it is intended for operates it, they go boom.

We're left with Jones and the professor wondering what enemy sent the double, considering that he may be the most deadly enemy UNDERSEA will ever face. So yet another new villain left out there for the fans to beg to see more of.

Plot synopsis: An evil robot double of Jones shows up; Jones outsmarts it into blowing itself up. Jones and the Professor wonder aloud at what sinister new villain sent it to them.




A disappointing issue, devoid of the Ray Bailey sci-fi art I've come to love from this series, as well as my favorite character (Renatta Del Mar). Much as with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, it seems as if no one is watching what's happening from an editor standpoint. Things change and get forgotten and/or contradicted constantly while the writing and plotting remain amateurish. Whereas I was once excited to do these reviews, they've become increasingly tedious with each installment. I truly hope that will change once Wood gets the Dynamo solo series up and running in a few months' time. He seemed to be the only source of coherence across at least the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stories.

Bailey got started working under Milt Caniff for Terry and the Pirates, so yes, his style is incredibly throw-back.