Spy Comics-Tales of Intrigue, Super-Spies and Crazy Gadgets
Apr 8, 2023 21:14:04 GMT -5
shaxper, MWGallaher, and 3 more like this
Post by codystarbuck on Apr 8, 2023 21:14:04 GMT -5
It's no secret that I am a huge fan of spy-fi (that cover was blown by Kim Philby) and it isn't just the movies or the novels. I have collected and read quite a few spy comics, over the years. This thread will examine some of those.
No what constitutes a spy comic is as fluid as what constitutes a spy novel. What we know as spy novels pretty much grew out of detective fiction and heroic adventure fiction. At least, the super-spy type of story. There are the more cynical stories of The Great Game, nations against nations, burnt out professional spies who have more in common with their opposite numbers than their bosses. You don't get many of that type, in comics. They tend to be your James Bonds, your Men (and Women) From UNCLE, your Avengers, IMF team, and various agents of an alphabet soup of intelligence agencies and security services. You also get some overlap with the adventure-seeking types, who run up against would-be conquerors.
For the purposes of this thread, I will leave out the adventure types, like a Doc Savage or an Indiana Jones, who might run into enemy agents and saboteurs. I will also leave out the more pure superhero types, like Black Widow, except where they engage in real espionage activities. I'm also going to skip groups like The THUNDER Agents, other than to summarize them a bit, since they were more superhero than spy, in their adventures (more's the pity, in my book). I also don't really want to spend much time on spy hunters and counter-intelligence types; so no FBI types, no one looking for Commie infiltrators (who always seem to find them, even when they are not there). I might blur the lines a bit, here and there; but, I will be mostly looking at stories about spies, in the spying game or super agents who battle criminal organizations bent on world conquest or just out to create terror and havoc....which could, theoretically, include The Captain & The Kids but won't.
To start, just a brief look at the spies of the newspaper strips.
The first is Don Winslow of the Navy......
Dandy Don is a veteran of Naval Intelligence (no such thing, from my experience) who spends his time fighting enemy agents and saboteurs, while trying to keep dirt off his "Choker Whites," (so-called because of the high collar, which tended to strangle you, until velcro came along. He works for Adm Colby and he got around a lot, hitching rides on "battlewagons" and "tin cans." His greatest enemy was The Scorpion, an evil foreign agent of Scorpia. Where is Scorpia? Turn left at Bulgaria, then ask.
I haven't read the adventures LCDR Winslow; but, he debuted in newspapers, in 1934, before we got in the shootin' war, but he soon ended up in it. His comic book adventures started with reprints, from Merwil and Dell, before Fawcett started an original Don Winslow comic. He outlived the war and even Fawcett, as he was one of the titles picked up by Charlton, for a short period. His comic strip adventures came to a close in 1955 and so did his comic book adventures. Sadly, we did not get a Top Gun era revival.
Next, there was the real granddaddy spy feature, Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond's Secret Agent X-9. Now, at the start, this was more of a crime strip and the unnamed agency that X-9 worked for was rather obviously the FBI, which handled counter-espionage (spy catching). As such, he dealt more with big criminals than enemy agents, trying to rival Dick Tracy. Over time, he got more involved in catching enemy agents, and got a name: Phil Corrigan, second cousin of a cop turned spirit of vengeance.......or maybe the name is a coincidence. Phil Corrigan was still mostly counter-espionage stuff, until he was reassigned to agents Goodwin and Williamson, who upped the ante, considerably......
The team took over in 1967 and stayed until 1979. Corrigan still fought a lot of criminals; but he got a bit of James Bond flair, thanks to the popularity of the films.
The 60s, thanks to the Bond craze, launched by Dr No, was lousy with spies and super agents. You couldn't swing a dead secretary without hitting a spy, in the 60s, along with some nutjob out to rule the world, or evil spy organization to battle. That will be a primary focus, though we will look at some others and more recent generation attempts at spy stories.
Bond, himself, started out in comic form, in 1958, at the Daily Express, with an adaptation of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel. Art was by John McLusky, who felt Fleming's description of Bond's appearance was too pre-War and outdated and he came up with something a bit more rugged. Ironically, Fleming's own conception of who to play Bond was distant relative Christopher Lee, who had worked in RAF Intelligence; but Cubby Broccoli, Harry Saltzman and Terrence Young chose the more ruggedly handsome Scot, Sean Connery.
Anthony Hern adapted Casino Royale, but Henry Gammidge wrote the bulk of the rest, through 1966, with the exception of Dr No, which was written by Peter O'Donnell, the co-creator of the detective strip, Romeo Brown and the more directly concerned Modesty Blaise. We will get to her, later.
In 1966, artist Yaroslav Horak took over the strip, along with writer Jim Lawrence. They adapted the remaining novels, plus Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun, which was approved by Fleming's estate. From there, they created original adventures for Bond, up through the late 70s, including when the strip moved The Sunday Express ,for European distribution. McLuskey came back for 5 storylines, then Horak returned, until the end, in 1984.
The adaptations relatively closely followed the original novel plots, since the deal had been made with Fleming and not Eon, the film rights holder. As such, you see things like Bond fighting Mr Big, in Live and Let Die, rather than Kananga (who used Mr Big as a cover identity, in the US) and The Spy Who Love Me finds Bond in Canada, who runs afoul of mobsters, at an Adirondacks motor lodge and gets help from Bond, about 2/3 of the way into the story. No submarine-swallowing oil tankers, no Stromberg, no Agent XXX.....not even Jaws! The novel is usually considered to be the worst, by far, as Fleming tried an experiment of writing from another point of view, that of a romantic woman. It doesn't work and he was not skilled enough as a writer to pull it off.
In general, the better the source material, the better the strip; so, the SPECTRE books make for great stories, as do Goldfinger, Dr No, From Russia With Love, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die. Then it varies. The short stories that comprise For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy (and other stories) make for some good work, especially The Living Daylights, where Bond has to try and spot a Russian sniper, to cover the defection of someone across the berlin Wall. The basic elements of the story were used for the Timothy Dalton film, but only the 1st act. After that, the film kind of falls apart. The story is just the defection and counter-sniping assignment and it is tense and thrilling, as you would hope.
Now, when James Bond first came to the US, in film, a comic followed; but, it wasn't one of these. It was in DC's Showcase, of all things....
Issue #43 of that anthology, the book that launched the Silver Age (depending on how you define it), featured an adaptation of Dr No....
The comic itself follows the film version, though it doesn't deviate too significantly from the novel, with the exception that Dr No is working for SPECTRE and not the Soviets, as in the book. The comic also uses the likenesses of the actors.....
That would be it for Bond, in the US, for about 20 years, until marvel picked up the rights to adapt For Your Eyes Only.
This was doe in Marvel Super Special #19 (na-na-na-na-na-na-nineteen), as well as a two-part miniseries version, in standard comic book format (the Special was a magazine format). Writing was from Larry Hama and art by Howard Chaykin (with Vince Coletta doing a number on him) and it is not Chaykin's finest and he disavowed the project after disputes with Marvel. In fact, he stayed away from marvel in large part because of those disputes, until much later. There are moments where the art looks like Chaykin and moments where it is so obscured by Coletta it could have been anyone. The likenesses are only close in a few odd panels; but, the basic story and action moments are there...
Still, Logan's Run it ain't.
Marvel also got the rights to do Octopussy...
Story is by Steve Moore and art by Paul Neary, who were Marvel UK people. I don't know it for sure; but, I suspect that this had been prepared for the UK audience only, but Marvel decided to put it out in the states, too. That, or no one stateside wanted to do one of these things, so they drafted their UK offices. The likenesses are sharper, though the art is definitely not the usual US Marvel stuff...
Marvel did not do this one as a mini-series.
Bond went back home, until 1989, when Eclipse, who had a deal in place with UK publisher Acme Press, gave us an adaptation of the Timothy Dalton Bond film License to Kill (with script by Richard Ashford, breakdowns by Mike Grell, pencils by Chuck Austen, Tom Yeates & Stan Woch and inks by Yeates & Woch), then Grell's own 3-part original james Bond, Permission to Die....
This was a dream job for Grell, though it turned into a nightmare. Grell delivered the work on time and Eclipse ended up sitting on it, until they could pay a printer to print the comics. The end result was a 6 month gap between issues one and two and another 2 years before the third issue was published. It's a good story, with Grell mixing bits of Fleming and bits of the cinematic Bond, as well as a few elements from the then-current John Gardner series of Bond novels (License Renewed, For Special Services, Icebreaker, etc). From Gardner came Bond using a new pistol, the 9mm ASP pistol, a compact customization of the Smith & Wesson Model 39 pistol, with clear plastic handgrips that allow the user to see how many rounds are in the magazine, at a glance, and rounded edges for easy draw. Bond also trains annually with the SAS and the first issue opens with the SAS and Bond foiling an attempt to kill or kidnap Princes Charles and Princess Diana. Bond ends up on a journey across eastern Europe (Warsaw Pact), where he has to help a defector and then stop a lunatic who has developed a super cannon launching system. It was a great mix of literary and cinematic Bond that was killed by the publisher's poor business practices.
Acme took the license away from Eclipse and shifted to Dark Horse (in 1992), where another writer and artist got to live out a dream: Doug Moench & Paul Gulacy......
This one is pretty much cinematic Bond, with a freakish villain, an over-the-top vaillain's lair, and a lot of high tech gadgetry. However, Gulacy strobve to use as much actual tech as possible, using modern, but exotic weaponry, where he could. The story looks great and reads quite well, to. Gulacy's style kind of compliments the old movie poster art of Robert McGuinnis, who designed several US film posters for the Connery era.
Dark Horse continued, with Silent Armageddon, in 1993
This featured story by Simon Jowett and art by UK artist John M Burns. It was slated for 4 issues, but only two were published. There was some kind of dispute between Burns and either Acme or Dark Horse, or both, or the Fleming Estate and he refused to do any further work. The story was abandoned and Dark Horse printed a new mini, the following year, called Shattered Helix....
This also featured Simon Jowett, on story and was also just two issues; but, it was conceived that way. David Jackson and V For Vendetta's David LLoyd did the art.
The following year saw Quasimodo Gambit, from Don McGregor and Gary Caldwell...
The creepy covers are by Christopher Moeller, of Iron Empires fame. As with the other Dark Horse books, these were excellent stories, with exciting art, though it came at a time when the market was consumed by speculation lust and superhero universes. The market came tumbling down and Bond bid America adieu, for a bit.
In 1996, Topps published an adaptation of Goldeneye...
...also from McGregor.
Bond kept quiet for the rest of the Brosnan years and only returned in 2015, with a series from Dynamite, with Warren Ellis handling the writing....
...who has been followed by Andy Diggle, James Robinson, and several others.
I haven't really looked at these, yet.
Bond would launch a craze that would lead to spies on tv, spies in European films, spies in Japanese tv and film (and redubbed by Woody Allen), spies in American films (and spy parodies) and spies in comics.
Next time, we look at some of those spy tv series, which were adapted into comics, mainly at one publisher. Get out your brolly and brush off your bowler, open Channel D, get a number and lose your name, and read quickly, because these comics will self-destruct in 5 seconds, as we peruse the various spy tv tie-ins of Gold Key /Western....everything from an Avengers, without a Hulk, to a pair of western secret agents, with a private train, and everyone's favorite UNCLE. All this, plus an original creation from Gold Key. Just remember to give the proper counter-sign to the phrase, "I understand that Fleming likes to whip up some fun...."
The reply is, "Yes, Viscountess Rothermere scan scarcely sit down, after one of his parties."
No what constitutes a spy comic is as fluid as what constitutes a spy novel. What we know as spy novels pretty much grew out of detective fiction and heroic adventure fiction. At least, the super-spy type of story. There are the more cynical stories of The Great Game, nations against nations, burnt out professional spies who have more in common with their opposite numbers than their bosses. You don't get many of that type, in comics. They tend to be your James Bonds, your Men (and Women) From UNCLE, your Avengers, IMF team, and various agents of an alphabet soup of intelligence agencies and security services. You also get some overlap with the adventure-seeking types, who run up against would-be conquerors.
For the purposes of this thread, I will leave out the adventure types, like a Doc Savage or an Indiana Jones, who might run into enemy agents and saboteurs. I will also leave out the more pure superhero types, like Black Widow, except where they engage in real espionage activities. I'm also going to skip groups like The THUNDER Agents, other than to summarize them a bit, since they were more superhero than spy, in their adventures (more's the pity, in my book). I also don't really want to spend much time on spy hunters and counter-intelligence types; so no FBI types, no one looking for Commie infiltrators (who always seem to find them, even when they are not there). I might blur the lines a bit, here and there; but, I will be mostly looking at stories about spies, in the spying game or super agents who battle criminal organizations bent on world conquest or just out to create terror and havoc....which could, theoretically, include The Captain & The Kids but won't.
To start, just a brief look at the spies of the newspaper strips.
The first is Don Winslow of the Navy......
Dandy Don is a veteran of Naval Intelligence (no such thing, from my experience) who spends his time fighting enemy agents and saboteurs, while trying to keep dirt off his "Choker Whites," (so-called because of the high collar, which tended to strangle you, until velcro came along. He works for Adm Colby and he got around a lot, hitching rides on "battlewagons" and "tin cans." His greatest enemy was The Scorpion, an evil foreign agent of Scorpia. Where is Scorpia? Turn left at Bulgaria, then ask.
I haven't read the adventures LCDR Winslow; but, he debuted in newspapers, in 1934, before we got in the shootin' war, but he soon ended up in it. His comic book adventures started with reprints, from Merwil and Dell, before Fawcett started an original Don Winslow comic. He outlived the war and even Fawcett, as he was one of the titles picked up by Charlton, for a short period. His comic strip adventures came to a close in 1955 and so did his comic book adventures. Sadly, we did not get a Top Gun era revival.
Next, there was the real granddaddy spy feature, Dashiell Hammett and Alex Raymond's Secret Agent X-9. Now, at the start, this was more of a crime strip and the unnamed agency that X-9 worked for was rather obviously the FBI, which handled counter-espionage (spy catching). As such, he dealt more with big criminals than enemy agents, trying to rival Dick Tracy. Over time, he got more involved in catching enemy agents, and got a name: Phil Corrigan, second cousin of a cop turned spirit of vengeance.......or maybe the name is a coincidence. Phil Corrigan was still mostly counter-espionage stuff, until he was reassigned to agents Goodwin and Williamson, who upped the ante, considerably......
The team took over in 1967 and stayed until 1979. Corrigan still fought a lot of criminals; but he got a bit of James Bond flair, thanks to the popularity of the films.
The 60s, thanks to the Bond craze, launched by Dr No, was lousy with spies and super agents. You couldn't swing a dead secretary without hitting a spy, in the 60s, along with some nutjob out to rule the world, or evil spy organization to battle. That will be a primary focus, though we will look at some others and more recent generation attempts at spy stories.
Bond, himself, started out in comic form, in 1958, at the Daily Express, with an adaptation of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel. Art was by John McLusky, who felt Fleming's description of Bond's appearance was too pre-War and outdated and he came up with something a bit more rugged. Ironically, Fleming's own conception of who to play Bond was distant relative Christopher Lee, who had worked in RAF Intelligence; but Cubby Broccoli, Harry Saltzman and Terrence Young chose the more ruggedly handsome Scot, Sean Connery.
Anthony Hern adapted Casino Royale, but Henry Gammidge wrote the bulk of the rest, through 1966, with the exception of Dr No, which was written by Peter O'Donnell, the co-creator of the detective strip, Romeo Brown and the more directly concerned Modesty Blaise. We will get to her, later.
In 1966, artist Yaroslav Horak took over the strip, along with writer Jim Lawrence. They adapted the remaining novels, plus Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun, which was approved by Fleming's estate. From there, they created original adventures for Bond, up through the late 70s, including when the strip moved The Sunday Express ,for European distribution. McLuskey came back for 5 storylines, then Horak returned, until the end, in 1984.
The adaptations relatively closely followed the original novel plots, since the deal had been made with Fleming and not Eon, the film rights holder. As such, you see things like Bond fighting Mr Big, in Live and Let Die, rather than Kananga (who used Mr Big as a cover identity, in the US) and The Spy Who Love Me finds Bond in Canada, who runs afoul of mobsters, at an Adirondacks motor lodge and gets help from Bond, about 2/3 of the way into the story. No submarine-swallowing oil tankers, no Stromberg, no Agent XXX.....not even Jaws! The novel is usually considered to be the worst, by far, as Fleming tried an experiment of writing from another point of view, that of a romantic woman. It doesn't work and he was not skilled enough as a writer to pull it off.
In general, the better the source material, the better the strip; so, the SPECTRE books make for great stories, as do Goldfinger, Dr No, From Russia With Love, Casino Royale and Live and Let Die. Then it varies. The short stories that comprise For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy (and other stories) make for some good work, especially The Living Daylights, where Bond has to try and spot a Russian sniper, to cover the defection of someone across the berlin Wall. The basic elements of the story were used for the Timothy Dalton film, but only the 1st act. After that, the film kind of falls apart. The story is just the defection and counter-sniping assignment and it is tense and thrilling, as you would hope.
Now, when James Bond first came to the US, in film, a comic followed; but, it wasn't one of these. It was in DC's Showcase, of all things....
Issue #43 of that anthology, the book that launched the Silver Age (depending on how you define it), featured an adaptation of Dr No....
The comic itself follows the film version, though it doesn't deviate too significantly from the novel, with the exception that Dr No is working for SPECTRE and not the Soviets, as in the book. The comic also uses the likenesses of the actors.....
That would be it for Bond, in the US, for about 20 years, until marvel picked up the rights to adapt For Your Eyes Only.
This was doe in Marvel Super Special #19 (na-na-na-na-na-na-nineteen), as well as a two-part miniseries version, in standard comic book format (the Special was a magazine format). Writing was from Larry Hama and art by Howard Chaykin (with Vince Coletta doing a number on him) and it is not Chaykin's finest and he disavowed the project after disputes with Marvel. In fact, he stayed away from marvel in large part because of those disputes, until much later. There are moments where the art looks like Chaykin and moments where it is so obscured by Coletta it could have been anyone. The likenesses are only close in a few odd panels; but, the basic story and action moments are there...
Still, Logan's Run it ain't.
Marvel also got the rights to do Octopussy...
Story is by Steve Moore and art by Paul Neary, who were Marvel UK people. I don't know it for sure; but, I suspect that this had been prepared for the UK audience only, but Marvel decided to put it out in the states, too. That, or no one stateside wanted to do one of these things, so they drafted their UK offices. The likenesses are sharper, though the art is definitely not the usual US Marvel stuff...
Marvel did not do this one as a mini-series.
Bond went back home, until 1989, when Eclipse, who had a deal in place with UK publisher Acme Press, gave us an adaptation of the Timothy Dalton Bond film License to Kill (with script by Richard Ashford, breakdowns by Mike Grell, pencils by Chuck Austen, Tom Yeates & Stan Woch and inks by Yeates & Woch), then Grell's own 3-part original james Bond, Permission to Die....
This was a dream job for Grell, though it turned into a nightmare. Grell delivered the work on time and Eclipse ended up sitting on it, until they could pay a printer to print the comics. The end result was a 6 month gap between issues one and two and another 2 years before the third issue was published. It's a good story, with Grell mixing bits of Fleming and bits of the cinematic Bond, as well as a few elements from the then-current John Gardner series of Bond novels (License Renewed, For Special Services, Icebreaker, etc). From Gardner came Bond using a new pistol, the 9mm ASP pistol, a compact customization of the Smith & Wesson Model 39 pistol, with clear plastic handgrips that allow the user to see how many rounds are in the magazine, at a glance, and rounded edges for easy draw. Bond also trains annually with the SAS and the first issue opens with the SAS and Bond foiling an attempt to kill or kidnap Princes Charles and Princess Diana. Bond ends up on a journey across eastern Europe (Warsaw Pact), where he has to help a defector and then stop a lunatic who has developed a super cannon launching system. It was a great mix of literary and cinematic Bond that was killed by the publisher's poor business practices.
Acme took the license away from Eclipse and shifted to Dark Horse (in 1992), where another writer and artist got to live out a dream: Doug Moench & Paul Gulacy......
This one is pretty much cinematic Bond, with a freakish villain, an over-the-top vaillain's lair, and a lot of high tech gadgetry. However, Gulacy strobve to use as much actual tech as possible, using modern, but exotic weaponry, where he could. The story looks great and reads quite well, to. Gulacy's style kind of compliments the old movie poster art of Robert McGuinnis, who designed several US film posters for the Connery era.
Dark Horse continued, with Silent Armageddon, in 1993
This featured story by Simon Jowett and art by UK artist John M Burns. It was slated for 4 issues, but only two were published. There was some kind of dispute between Burns and either Acme or Dark Horse, or both, or the Fleming Estate and he refused to do any further work. The story was abandoned and Dark Horse printed a new mini, the following year, called Shattered Helix....
This also featured Simon Jowett, on story and was also just two issues; but, it was conceived that way. David Jackson and V For Vendetta's David LLoyd did the art.
The following year saw Quasimodo Gambit, from Don McGregor and Gary Caldwell...
The creepy covers are by Christopher Moeller, of Iron Empires fame. As with the other Dark Horse books, these were excellent stories, with exciting art, though it came at a time when the market was consumed by speculation lust and superhero universes. The market came tumbling down and Bond bid America adieu, for a bit.
In 1996, Topps published an adaptation of Goldeneye...
...also from McGregor.
Bond kept quiet for the rest of the Brosnan years and only returned in 2015, with a series from Dynamite, with Warren Ellis handling the writing....
...who has been followed by Andy Diggle, James Robinson, and several others.
I haven't really looked at these, yet.
Bond would launch a craze that would lead to spies on tv, spies in European films, spies in Japanese tv and film (and redubbed by Woody Allen), spies in American films (and spy parodies) and spies in comics.
Next time, we look at some of those spy tv series, which were adapted into comics, mainly at one publisher. Get out your brolly and brush off your bowler, open Channel D, get a number and lose your name, and read quickly, because these comics will self-destruct in 5 seconds, as we peruse the various spy tv tie-ins of Gold Key /Western....everything from an Avengers, without a Hulk, to a pair of western secret agents, with a private train, and everyone's favorite UNCLE. All this, plus an original creation from Gold Key. Just remember to give the proper counter-sign to the phrase, "I understand that Fleming likes to whip up some fun...."
The reply is, "Yes, Viscountess Rothermere scan scarcely sit down, after one of his parties."