Spy Comics-Tales of Intrigue, Super-Spies and Crazy Gadgets
Apr 26, 2023 19:32:52 GMT -5
MWGallaher likes this
Post by codystarbuck on Apr 26, 2023 19:32:52 GMT -5
So, when I say the name Harvey Comics, what image comes into your head? If you are like most comic book fans (who read comics before the 90s), it is probably Richie Rich....maybe Casper, the Friendly Ghost. If you had broad tastes, maybe Little Dot and Little Lotta, or, if you are old enough, Little Audrey and Baby Huey. However, if you are really adventurous and have explored comics of the 50s and late 40s, then you are aware that Harvey also meant horror, sci-fi and a few superheroes. In fact, Harvey got a lot of flack in Wertham's book and that factored a lot into them turning into comics for little kids. They didn't do it right away, though.
Meanwhile, in the 60s, Marvel is becoming a thing and DC is chugging along with a superhero revival. Suddenly, Harvey and Archie were dusting off old properties and hiring old names to do something new. Joe Simon had a long relationship with Alfred Harvey and Harvey hired him to oversee an imprint of adventure and superhero comics, called harvey Thriller. One of the genres he tried was spy-fi, based on the popularity of Bond and UNCLE. However, like Tower Comics and Wally Wood, he tried to marry the popularity of super-spies with superheroes; and, the results were less than super (though quite wacky and memorable).
Our first dabbling is from the pages of the anthology comic, Unearthly Spectaculars. The first issue of this comic featured Tiger Boy, about a kid who transformed into a tiger (and sold breakfast cereal, or something), but he keeps his human head. He's back for issue 2, but he got dumped from the lead spot by a new super-spy/hero, Jack Q Frost....
As you can see, Jack's wardrobe is a cross between a SHIELD jumpsuit and holster and a superhero union suit.
In the first appearance, in Unearthly Spectacular #2, a satellite relays a message from Lord Lazee, who demands a ransom to stop him from destroying ships, via robot, in the Panama Canal....
Meanwhile, In the Arctic, the US is conducting illegal and dangerous atomic tests and discovers a masked man, frozen in ice. He is thawed out and found to be alive and he has ice generating powers, thanks to the atomic explosions. He is James Flynn, an agent of the International Counter-intelligence Agency (ICA), codename: Jack Frost (complete with monogrammed holster). He was captured by enemy agents and dumped out of a plane, where he froze in the Arctic waters (but didn't succumb to hypothermia or oxygen deprivation). While he thaws out, he recalls his ICA training, where he was part of an elite group of super electronic agents, complete with electronic gun (whatever that means), radar detector, tv projector and jet pack (and secret decoder ring and a Swiss Army Knife, no doubt). He was then sent after enemy agents, who were setting up a missile site, at the North Pole (guidance is going to be a problem).
Flynn is sent back to be checked out, but gets re-routed because ICA has a line on Lord Lazee. His robots are creating havoc and Jack Frost springs into action, but he is red hot and needs to refreeze or else. Luckily, there is a frozen food plant nearby and the refrigeration does the trick. he defeats the robots and LL get POed and rockets in a fire breathing (or flame throwing) robot, but JQF defeats it. So, he sends a robot version of himself to battle the hero. He suckers him into coming to a steel plant, where he is vulnerable to the intense heat of the forges. He freezes the railing to damage it into collapsing when the bucket of molten iron crosses it and it collapses and the robot runs away.
Issue #3 sees LL send another robot, one that creates earthquakes and tidal waves, but JQF stops it. He then tracks down LL's lair; but, his manservant gets his high tech barcalounger out of there before JQF can freeze him...
The spy element is never very strong in this and the guy is more of a superhero, as were the THUNDER Agents. It's more like Nick Fury gets caught by Baron Strucker and dumped into a freezer and becomes a combination of Captain America and Iceman. But with less fashion sense.
You never really get to know James Flynn and the second story throws out a girlfriend, with no personality, who is there so that Flynn can become morose because he is going to have to call off the wedding, because he has to remain a human popsicle or he will overheat and die. Simon may have looked at a Marvel comic and saw the soap opera and pathos; but, he was no Stan Lee and couldn't write it. GCD credits at least parts of it to Otto Binder; but, it seems under-developed for his work. obviously, it didn't originate with him and Simon wasn't able to convey much detail. Jack Sparling draws the first appearance, then Bill Draught handles the second, but neither has much flair to the story (which further suggests to me that Sparling's work on the Secret Six was based on layouts or thumbnails from Dick Giordano and not his own). Lord Lazee is just goofy, but not wild enough to elevate this into silly fun. It just kind of lies there.
Harvey's other entry was a spy with a gimmick weapon, Spyman...
I think those covers tell you what is interesting about this one. Can you see it? Check out the schematic of his cybernetic hand/weapon. Something familiar about it?
It's drawn by Jim Steranko.
Steranko broke into comics here, at Harvey, with this comic and some designs for other characters, including a character called Sorcerer, who morphed into the character, Magicmaster, in Double-Dare Adventures, with Jack Sparling actually drawing the comic.
Spyman #1 features Steranko's first professional comic art, with the insert on the cover and the first page of the comic....
In issue one, we meet Johnny Chance, an agent of Liberty, a security and counter-espionage agency, run out of a secret headquarters, built into the Statue of Liberty and Liberty Island......
Chance and agent Mike Pierce are on hand, at Cape Kennedy, where a nuclear missile is about to be tested. Chance discovers agents of the mysterious group, MIRAGE, attempting to sabotage the launch. The MIRAGE guys take Johnny down, with a trick gun and he is chained onto the genuine warhead, which they intend to use to replace the dummy warhead and crash the missile into Washington DC. Johnny is able to fling a ring into an electronic lock, as they use a punchcard key in it and electrocute the enemy agents. He then gets himself free and races to stop the warhead from detonating. he is forced to place his left hand inside to stop the mechanism and he gets the core out before it can explode, but at the cost of his left hand. Mike and the other agents break through and get Johnny to Liberty HQ to try to save his life. Dr Nomran vane has developed a cybernetic hand, complete with optional extras (final price may be higher than sticker price), which they might actually be able to successfully graft onto his arm, thanks to the radiation that destroyed his hand (since previous efforts have been rejected, by the host body). They also whip up a snazzy metallic fibre red suit, which is fire and bullet resistant. They also have developed a plastic skin glove, to cover the cybernetic hand....
They also subject the surviving enemy agents to the Psycho-Probe, which gets passed their conditioning, to reveal the truth. One of them snitches on their boss, The Whisperer and their parent organization, MIRAGE (the Empire of Guerilla Assassination, Revenge and International Menace, which spells out EGARIM, but that is MIRAGE backwards...so, it's kind of like a mirage, a false image.....clever, hunh?) he also reveals they have a mole at Liberty HQ, but his brainwaves flatline before he can name them. Johnny is subjected to the surgial procedure and left to recover, when the Whisperer apepars over his bead, ready to terminate him, with extreme prejudice (and malice aforethought)...
He tries to plant a Doom Crystal, a poisoned cube, which melts under body temperature and soaks into the skin, leaving no trace. However, the cybernetic hand stops him and the doctors come back to check on the patient. Whisperer holds a Psycussion Gun to Johnny's head, threatening to kill him if they don't get him out of the hand's metallic grip. They open a prt and release him, but Johnny is partially conscious and fires a weapon at Whisperer, as he escapes. One of the docs chases after, but Whisperer disappears. Johnny is okay and recovers.
Johnny undergoes a series of tests of the hand, which has weapons ranging from electric bolts, to blackout beams. Mike turns up with a cloak he found in an air vent, demonstrating how Whisperer disappeared. Johnny goes hunting for the spy and runs into a whole pack of MIRAGE agents, who have his girlfriend held hostage. He is forced to surrender and is secured in a handy straightjacket. Whisperer is going to take the girl with him, for security and fun and then turns off an illusion projector, which created the other MIRAGE agents. It was just one guy! Johnny slips out of the straightjacket (Steranko was an escapologist) and attacks Whisperer, revealing it to be a robot, then finds the real one, unmasks him and it is Dr Vane (You're so vane...you probably think this comic is about you), but the Doc escapes up an elevator. Johnny and the guards get it open and find an unconscious, but suddenly untied) Diana (the girlfriend) and the Whisperer cloak, but no doc. There is a whole in the roof of the elevator and the guards assume he got away. Johnny says, "Not so fast." he assembles everyone and then proceeds to do his best Poirot imitation (or Columbo, if you prefer)
He points out they found the cloak and a voice moulator in the elevator, with the unconscious Diana. There is also a mask of Dr Vane. Vane developed the hand, so he didn't need assistance to get out of it, when Whisperer was trapped by it. Therefore, the Dr Vance mask is a fake and Whisperer was never Dr Vance. The mask was designed to throw suspicion away from the real mole. Someone who was missing, when things went down.
Diana is The Whisperer. She used the robot to look like the Whisperer had her captive, but her gag hid the microphone, through which she spoke for the robot. When Spyman went after the robot, she slipped away, donned the costume and went into the elevator, where Spyman pulled off the hood, revealing the Dr Vane mask. She then burned a hole in the roof, to escape when Spyman stopped the elevator, but when he dropped in sleep vapor, she was out like a light. She curses him and uses a matter reverser to block bullets and tries to escape through a tube to the sea, but Spyman put the bomb there and it kills her. he seems awfully happy, even though he just killed his girlfriend.
Thrilling stuff, actually scripted by Steranko, though drawn by George Tuska. You can see hints of what Steranko would do on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, with the gimmicks, the fanatical enemy, double agents, secret headquarter, mental probes and such. Plus, he throws in a bit of bondage and escapology. MIRAGE even look like a pseudo-HYDRA, though the Whisperer is more of a pulp villain, from The Shadow or The Spider. That was half the fun of Steranko's spy stuff, as he mixed the modern cinematic Bond stuff with classic pulp. To bad he doesn't get to draw it, other than the first page, but Tuska does a nice job. Steranko crafts a decent mystery and throws false clues at you, in a bit of misdirection (what would you expect from an ex-magician?).
There is a 2-page spoof, Eye Spy (Agent 00 1/4) and his Gal Friday, Jane Blond (Agent 38-22-36), where the hero uses a pogo stick to hop up to a penthouse spy hideout and tries to snatch a mechanical messenger pigeon, which is actually from ICA, the spy agency in Jack Q Frost. It isn't particularly funny, nor is the art particularly memorable.
Issue 2 finds Johnny Chance fighting against the Evil Eye Society, a group whose agents go around with a sticker of an eye, on their forehead, making it look like they have three eyes. Their leader is a cyclops, with one big eye...
They try to assassinate him with snipers, but the attempt fails. Most of the enemy are killed, then the Cyclops kills the survivor, when he reports in. Johnny's hand is damaged and he gets an upgrade, complete with detachable fingers, for more options. An examination of the dead guy finds a micro-film, with an image of a Mayan temple and Johnny heads South to check it out. he is attacked by locals, who think he is in league with the society, but he drives them off and then deals with a flying serpent, which is a robot. The whole thing turns out to be a ruse, to draw him away from Liberty HQ.
Back at the ranch, a defecting scientist, from Commie Land, arrives at Liberty Island, for debriefing. The eyeball guys attack and get their hinders kicked, by Johnny and his hand.
That is followed by a sci-fi tale, where a guy buried in a capsule until the 21st Century (2069) is released and finds mankind slaves to robots (and smart phones). he runs into a hot babe in a white bathing suit, heels and a black cape, who is part of the underground (looks more like a contestant in a beauty pageant) and ends up transformed into a sort of cyborg, called Robolink, that sounds rather like Earl and Otto Binder's Adam Link. The story is written by Otto, so no lawyers involved.
Some nice misdirection, if a convoluted plot, with the Evil Eye Guys (which sounds way better than Evil Eye Society). Dick Ayers handles the art, Ed Herron is suspected as the writer, though possibly working from an unfinished Steranko script.
In issue 3, Mike is killed by an ID Machine and the letterer can't keep straight whether the doctor is named Vale or Vane (it's the latter). Johnny Chance goes searching for the machine and rescues a woman, who is being chased by people in similar outfits to her own (the women all in skirts, of course). The ladies are even nastier than the guys and Spyman finds himself captured and taken underground, to something out of a Gene Autrey serial...
Spyman is taken to face the Id machine and the blond chick he rescued goes back to help. he blinds the machine with the black ray of his hand, fires a flame thrower, then gives the group the finger, literally....
...and Blondie helps him escape. However, they don't get far before he is zapped by the nasty gals, who then call Tania (Blondie) a wuss. The Id Machine tells them to leave her with the dead Spyman, while he goes off to think and plan an all-out attack on the surface world. Tania carries Spyman to a wall and then through some kind of transporter, to her secret lab, where she reanimates him, like a distaff Frankenstein (doctor, not monster). She explains how a nutsy scientist created the Id Machine, which replicated itself , but was fileld with screwed up human emotions and it went bonkers. It killed its creator (Hank Pym?) and then built its group. They atatck and Spyman fights them off, but Tania is hit and revealed to be a robot. They are all robots. Spyman destroys the Id Machine, with his hand, set to self-destruct.
Bill Draught did the art and Herron handled the script. This doesn't feel like Steranko had any involvement, in either concept or execution and it is weaker than the others.
There is a back-up story, called Campy Champ, about a shmoe who can't get a date, who turns into a super dude, subconsciously and uses super science to sabotage a girl's date and brings her back to his place, to go out with him, in his original form. Sounds like some incel fantasy, minus the more psychotic rambling and threats.
That was it for Spyman as the Harvey Thriller experiment died out pretty quickly and Harvey continued to churn out Richie Rich, Casper and Little (Fill In The Blank) comics, until they went into financial trouble, in the early 80s (before a brief revival, then complete abandonment in favor of licensing Casper and Richie for tv and movies).
Jack Q Frost (the Q stands for Quick) is pretty pedestrian and just bad superheroes, with a campy villain and a boring lead. It makes for a nice oddity, but little else. The better feature is the back up Clawfang, by Wally Wood & Al Williamson, while Tiger Boy has some Gil Kane art and Miracles, Inc has Wally Wood and Dan Adkins art and funnier gags. There is also a 3 Rocketeers story, with Mike Sekowsky art, all in isse 2 of Unearthly Spectaculars. Issue 3 has a sci-fi tale from Wood and Reed Crandall, plus some stuff from Jerry Grandinetti and a Simon & Kirby reprint, from Alarming Tales #1 (1957).
Next time, we head over to Charlton, for their spy action, including Sarge Steel, a bit of spy romance, and another agent of an acronymical organization, from the pen of Tom Sutton.
Meanwhile, in the 60s, Marvel is becoming a thing and DC is chugging along with a superhero revival. Suddenly, Harvey and Archie were dusting off old properties and hiring old names to do something new. Joe Simon had a long relationship with Alfred Harvey and Harvey hired him to oversee an imprint of adventure and superhero comics, called harvey Thriller. One of the genres he tried was spy-fi, based on the popularity of Bond and UNCLE. However, like Tower Comics and Wally Wood, he tried to marry the popularity of super-spies with superheroes; and, the results were less than super (though quite wacky and memorable).
Our first dabbling is from the pages of the anthology comic, Unearthly Spectaculars. The first issue of this comic featured Tiger Boy, about a kid who transformed into a tiger (and sold breakfast cereal, or something), but he keeps his human head. He's back for issue 2, but he got dumped from the lead spot by a new super-spy/hero, Jack Q Frost....
As you can see, Jack's wardrobe is a cross between a SHIELD jumpsuit and holster and a superhero union suit.
In the first appearance, in Unearthly Spectacular #2, a satellite relays a message from Lord Lazee, who demands a ransom to stop him from destroying ships, via robot, in the Panama Canal....
Meanwhile, In the Arctic, the US is conducting illegal and dangerous atomic tests and discovers a masked man, frozen in ice. He is thawed out and found to be alive and he has ice generating powers, thanks to the atomic explosions. He is James Flynn, an agent of the International Counter-intelligence Agency (ICA), codename: Jack Frost (complete with monogrammed holster). He was captured by enemy agents and dumped out of a plane, where he froze in the Arctic waters (but didn't succumb to hypothermia or oxygen deprivation). While he thaws out, he recalls his ICA training, where he was part of an elite group of super electronic agents, complete with electronic gun (whatever that means), radar detector, tv projector and jet pack (and secret decoder ring and a Swiss Army Knife, no doubt). He was then sent after enemy agents, who were setting up a missile site, at the North Pole (guidance is going to be a problem).
Flynn is sent back to be checked out, but gets re-routed because ICA has a line on Lord Lazee. His robots are creating havoc and Jack Frost springs into action, but he is red hot and needs to refreeze or else. Luckily, there is a frozen food plant nearby and the refrigeration does the trick. he defeats the robots and LL get POed and rockets in a fire breathing (or flame throwing) robot, but JQF defeats it. So, he sends a robot version of himself to battle the hero. He suckers him into coming to a steel plant, where he is vulnerable to the intense heat of the forges. He freezes the railing to damage it into collapsing when the bucket of molten iron crosses it and it collapses and the robot runs away.
Issue #3 sees LL send another robot, one that creates earthquakes and tidal waves, but JQF stops it. He then tracks down LL's lair; but, his manservant gets his high tech barcalounger out of there before JQF can freeze him...
The spy element is never very strong in this and the guy is more of a superhero, as were the THUNDER Agents. It's more like Nick Fury gets caught by Baron Strucker and dumped into a freezer and becomes a combination of Captain America and Iceman. But with less fashion sense.
You never really get to know James Flynn and the second story throws out a girlfriend, with no personality, who is there so that Flynn can become morose because he is going to have to call off the wedding, because he has to remain a human popsicle or he will overheat and die. Simon may have looked at a Marvel comic and saw the soap opera and pathos; but, he was no Stan Lee and couldn't write it. GCD credits at least parts of it to Otto Binder; but, it seems under-developed for his work. obviously, it didn't originate with him and Simon wasn't able to convey much detail. Jack Sparling draws the first appearance, then Bill Draught handles the second, but neither has much flair to the story (which further suggests to me that Sparling's work on the Secret Six was based on layouts or thumbnails from Dick Giordano and not his own). Lord Lazee is just goofy, but not wild enough to elevate this into silly fun. It just kind of lies there.
Harvey's other entry was a spy with a gimmick weapon, Spyman...
I think those covers tell you what is interesting about this one. Can you see it? Check out the schematic of his cybernetic hand/weapon. Something familiar about it?
It's drawn by Jim Steranko.
Steranko broke into comics here, at Harvey, with this comic and some designs for other characters, including a character called Sorcerer, who morphed into the character, Magicmaster, in Double-Dare Adventures, with Jack Sparling actually drawing the comic.
Spyman #1 features Steranko's first professional comic art, with the insert on the cover and the first page of the comic....
In issue one, we meet Johnny Chance, an agent of Liberty, a security and counter-espionage agency, run out of a secret headquarters, built into the Statue of Liberty and Liberty Island......
Chance and agent Mike Pierce are on hand, at Cape Kennedy, where a nuclear missile is about to be tested. Chance discovers agents of the mysterious group, MIRAGE, attempting to sabotage the launch. The MIRAGE guys take Johnny down, with a trick gun and he is chained onto the genuine warhead, which they intend to use to replace the dummy warhead and crash the missile into Washington DC. Johnny is able to fling a ring into an electronic lock, as they use a punchcard key in it and electrocute the enemy agents. He then gets himself free and races to stop the warhead from detonating. he is forced to place his left hand inside to stop the mechanism and he gets the core out before it can explode, but at the cost of his left hand. Mike and the other agents break through and get Johnny to Liberty HQ to try to save his life. Dr Nomran vane has developed a cybernetic hand, complete with optional extras (final price may be higher than sticker price), which they might actually be able to successfully graft onto his arm, thanks to the radiation that destroyed his hand (since previous efforts have been rejected, by the host body). They also whip up a snazzy metallic fibre red suit, which is fire and bullet resistant. They also have developed a plastic skin glove, to cover the cybernetic hand....
They also subject the surviving enemy agents to the Psycho-Probe, which gets passed their conditioning, to reveal the truth. One of them snitches on their boss, The Whisperer and their parent organization, MIRAGE (the Empire of Guerilla Assassination, Revenge and International Menace, which spells out EGARIM, but that is MIRAGE backwards...so, it's kind of like a mirage, a false image.....clever, hunh?) he also reveals they have a mole at Liberty HQ, but his brainwaves flatline before he can name them. Johnny is subjected to the surgial procedure and left to recover, when the Whisperer apepars over his bead, ready to terminate him, with extreme prejudice (and malice aforethought)...
He tries to plant a Doom Crystal, a poisoned cube, which melts under body temperature and soaks into the skin, leaving no trace. However, the cybernetic hand stops him and the doctors come back to check on the patient. Whisperer holds a Psycussion Gun to Johnny's head, threatening to kill him if they don't get him out of the hand's metallic grip. They open a prt and release him, but Johnny is partially conscious and fires a weapon at Whisperer, as he escapes. One of the docs chases after, but Whisperer disappears. Johnny is okay and recovers.
Johnny undergoes a series of tests of the hand, which has weapons ranging from electric bolts, to blackout beams. Mike turns up with a cloak he found in an air vent, demonstrating how Whisperer disappeared. Johnny goes hunting for the spy and runs into a whole pack of MIRAGE agents, who have his girlfriend held hostage. He is forced to surrender and is secured in a handy straightjacket. Whisperer is going to take the girl with him, for security and fun and then turns off an illusion projector, which created the other MIRAGE agents. It was just one guy! Johnny slips out of the straightjacket (Steranko was an escapologist) and attacks Whisperer, revealing it to be a robot, then finds the real one, unmasks him and it is Dr Vane (You're so vane...you probably think this comic is about you), but the Doc escapes up an elevator. Johnny and the guards get it open and find an unconscious, but suddenly untied) Diana (the girlfriend) and the Whisperer cloak, but no doc. There is a whole in the roof of the elevator and the guards assume he got away. Johnny says, "Not so fast." he assembles everyone and then proceeds to do his best Poirot imitation (or Columbo, if you prefer)
He points out they found the cloak and a voice moulator in the elevator, with the unconscious Diana. There is also a mask of Dr Vane. Vane developed the hand, so he didn't need assistance to get out of it, when Whisperer was trapped by it. Therefore, the Dr Vance mask is a fake and Whisperer was never Dr Vance. The mask was designed to throw suspicion away from the real mole. Someone who was missing, when things went down.
Diana is The Whisperer. She used the robot to look like the Whisperer had her captive, but her gag hid the microphone, through which she spoke for the robot. When Spyman went after the robot, she slipped away, donned the costume and went into the elevator, where Spyman pulled off the hood, revealing the Dr Vane mask. She then burned a hole in the roof, to escape when Spyman stopped the elevator, but when he dropped in sleep vapor, she was out like a light. She curses him and uses a matter reverser to block bullets and tries to escape through a tube to the sea, but Spyman put the bomb there and it kills her. he seems awfully happy, even though he just killed his girlfriend.
Thrilling stuff, actually scripted by Steranko, though drawn by George Tuska. You can see hints of what Steranko would do on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, with the gimmicks, the fanatical enemy, double agents, secret headquarter, mental probes and such. Plus, he throws in a bit of bondage and escapology. MIRAGE even look like a pseudo-HYDRA, though the Whisperer is more of a pulp villain, from The Shadow or The Spider. That was half the fun of Steranko's spy stuff, as he mixed the modern cinematic Bond stuff with classic pulp. To bad he doesn't get to draw it, other than the first page, but Tuska does a nice job. Steranko crafts a decent mystery and throws false clues at you, in a bit of misdirection (what would you expect from an ex-magician?).
There is a 2-page spoof, Eye Spy (Agent 00 1/4) and his Gal Friday, Jane Blond (Agent 38-22-36), where the hero uses a pogo stick to hop up to a penthouse spy hideout and tries to snatch a mechanical messenger pigeon, which is actually from ICA, the spy agency in Jack Q Frost. It isn't particularly funny, nor is the art particularly memorable.
Issue 2 finds Johnny Chance fighting against the Evil Eye Society, a group whose agents go around with a sticker of an eye, on their forehead, making it look like they have three eyes. Their leader is a cyclops, with one big eye...
They try to assassinate him with snipers, but the attempt fails. Most of the enemy are killed, then the Cyclops kills the survivor, when he reports in. Johnny's hand is damaged and he gets an upgrade, complete with detachable fingers, for more options. An examination of the dead guy finds a micro-film, with an image of a Mayan temple and Johnny heads South to check it out. he is attacked by locals, who think he is in league with the society, but he drives them off and then deals with a flying serpent, which is a robot. The whole thing turns out to be a ruse, to draw him away from Liberty HQ.
Back at the ranch, a defecting scientist, from Commie Land, arrives at Liberty Island, for debriefing. The eyeball guys attack and get their hinders kicked, by Johnny and his hand.
That is followed by a sci-fi tale, where a guy buried in a capsule until the 21st Century (2069) is released and finds mankind slaves to robots (and smart phones). he runs into a hot babe in a white bathing suit, heels and a black cape, who is part of the underground (looks more like a contestant in a beauty pageant) and ends up transformed into a sort of cyborg, called Robolink, that sounds rather like Earl and Otto Binder's Adam Link. The story is written by Otto, so no lawyers involved.
Some nice misdirection, if a convoluted plot, with the Evil Eye Guys (which sounds way better than Evil Eye Society). Dick Ayers handles the art, Ed Herron is suspected as the writer, though possibly working from an unfinished Steranko script.
In issue 3, Mike is killed by an ID Machine and the letterer can't keep straight whether the doctor is named Vale or Vane (it's the latter). Johnny Chance goes searching for the machine and rescues a woman, who is being chased by people in similar outfits to her own (the women all in skirts, of course). The ladies are even nastier than the guys and Spyman finds himself captured and taken underground, to something out of a Gene Autrey serial...
Spyman is taken to face the Id machine and the blond chick he rescued goes back to help. he blinds the machine with the black ray of his hand, fires a flame thrower, then gives the group the finger, literally....
...and Blondie helps him escape. However, they don't get far before he is zapped by the nasty gals, who then call Tania (Blondie) a wuss. The Id Machine tells them to leave her with the dead Spyman, while he goes off to think and plan an all-out attack on the surface world. Tania carries Spyman to a wall and then through some kind of transporter, to her secret lab, where she reanimates him, like a distaff Frankenstein (doctor, not monster). She explains how a nutsy scientist created the Id Machine, which replicated itself , but was fileld with screwed up human emotions and it went bonkers. It killed its creator (Hank Pym?) and then built its group. They atatck and Spyman fights them off, but Tania is hit and revealed to be a robot. They are all robots. Spyman destroys the Id Machine, with his hand, set to self-destruct.
Bill Draught did the art and Herron handled the script. This doesn't feel like Steranko had any involvement, in either concept or execution and it is weaker than the others.
There is a back-up story, called Campy Champ, about a shmoe who can't get a date, who turns into a super dude, subconsciously and uses super science to sabotage a girl's date and brings her back to his place, to go out with him, in his original form. Sounds like some incel fantasy, minus the more psychotic rambling and threats.
That was it for Spyman as the Harvey Thriller experiment died out pretty quickly and Harvey continued to churn out Richie Rich, Casper and Little (Fill In The Blank) comics, until they went into financial trouble, in the early 80s (before a brief revival, then complete abandonment in favor of licensing Casper and Richie for tv and movies).
Jack Q Frost (the Q stands for Quick) is pretty pedestrian and just bad superheroes, with a campy villain and a boring lead. It makes for a nice oddity, but little else. The better feature is the back up Clawfang, by Wally Wood & Al Williamson, while Tiger Boy has some Gil Kane art and Miracles, Inc has Wally Wood and Dan Adkins art and funnier gags. There is also a 3 Rocketeers story, with Mike Sekowsky art, all in isse 2 of Unearthly Spectaculars. Issue 3 has a sci-fi tale from Wood and Reed Crandall, plus some stuff from Jerry Grandinetti and a Simon & Kirby reprint, from Alarming Tales #1 (1957).
Next time, we head over to Charlton, for their spy action, including Sarge Steel, a bit of spy romance, and another agent of an acronymical organization, from the pen of Tom Sutton.