SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 2

SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1967 - DECEMBER 2ND, 1967
DECEMBER 4TH, 1967 - FEBRUARY 17TH, 1968
FEBRUARY 19TH, 1968 - MAY 4TH, 1968
MAY 6TH, 1968 - JULY 27TH, 1968
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

So it turns out Phil Corrigan is married! Who knew? Certainly not me, so I Googled it after meeting his wife in the first of this week's story arcs. It turns out that during the 1940s, SECRET AGENT X-9 morphed a bit to feature some soap opera elements, and one of those was a romantic rivalry for X-9's affections between his assistant, Linda, and a mystery novelist named Wilda. In the end Wilda won Corrigan's heart and the two were married in 1947 -- meaning that by this point, they've been living in wedded bliss for twenty years of real time!

Anyway -- we meet Wilda here when Corrigan is assigned to investigate what made a government scientist go rogue and blow up his own missile defense system. As part of the investigation, Corrigan realizes that the doctor spent some time at a luxury resort, so he brings Wilda along for cover to spend some time there. And it turns out to be a good thing he went to the resort first (of all possible places), because that's exactly where our poor scientist was corrupted! It turns out the place is run by "Ma" Murkel and her three sons, a group of bumbling bad guys being paid by a foreign power to turn high profile U.S. scientists into traitors.

Corrigan eventually gets to the bottom of the scheme and, after rescuing Wilda -- held as a hostage by Murkel and her sons -- he arrests the goofball family and heads home with his wife.

I gotta say, much like the carnival owner who tried to kidnap a Soviet defector last week, this feels a little... odd (corny?) to me. So this lady, Murkel, runs a resort and somehow got on the payroll of a U.S. enemy, and now she brainwashes the nonstop parade of government scientists who all stay at her hotel? It's just a really weird setup, relying on a ton of coincidence in order to work. Not to mention, as soon as, say, two scientists go bad, any investigation will reveal that they both stayed at the resort and the feds will be on to Murkel (which is exactly what happens here). I guess I just expect better plotting from the likes or Archie Goodwin.

The next arc is a bit better in this regard, though still presents a somewhat questionable hold we'll get to momentarily. In it, Corrigan is assigned to provide security for a defense conference. But the woman running the conference, Susan Foster, has been forced to cooperate with a Chinese operative named Fong who has kidnapped her husband. Fong provides Susan with a microrecorder hidden in a brooch, which she is to use to record the entire conference, and then provide to Fong at the end of the day. However, Corrigan finds out about Susan's predicament and goes to save her husband. Susan herself is kidnapped by Fong, and in the end Corrigan winds up saving husband and wife both, and arrests Fong.

My issue is: what's to keep Susan from simply telling Corrigan what's going on? Fong tells her that her husband's life is in danger, proves that he has her husband, then gives her the recorder. Then he just goes off on his way. At first I thought the recorder was a transmitter, letting Fong hear everything Susan was up to and that she would therefore be unable to tell anyone what was up -- but that isn't the case. It's just a recorder she's supposed to turn on at the conference and then turn off when it's over. And in fact, Corrigan does deduce that something is wrong, leading Susan to break down and tell him everything. Which, again, she could've just done of her own accord, had she been so inclined!

So it's another case of some loosey-goosey plotting, which I'm not used to from Goodwin (and which last week's three arcs mostly avoided -- even the carnival one, while odd in its premise, had no holes). The next storyline rectifies this, with a straightforward tale in which Corrigan travels to the Middle East to investigate a gun-smuggling ring. There, he goes undercover with a museum's archeaolgical team in the desert, where he finds that the dig team's guide, "Brawler" Bradley, is behind the scheme. After evading a couple attempts on his life, Corrigan trails Bradley into the desert, where they find themselves surrounded by the "desert princes" to whom Bradley intended to sell his wares. Some fast thinking on Corrigan's part extricates both him and Bradely, and the guns are destroyed.

His mission accomplished, Corrigan returns to the U.S. to find a telegram for a former colleague, Dan Page, waiting. Page had retired from the FBI some time ago to start his own small newspaper in the little town of Eagle Bend, but now he believes he's in danger. Sure enough, by the time Corrigan arrives in Eagle Bend, Page has suffered a car accident which landed him in the hospital, and his newspaper building has been burned down. Corrigan begins his investigation and runs afoul of corrupt local cops and their patron, the wealthy Clegg Trask. He also makes nice with Trask's girlfriend, Debbie, and eventually learns that Trask works for the mob, who uses Eagle Bend for their annual crime summit. When Corrigan proves more than Trask can handle, the mob backs out of Eagle Bend rather than draw attention to themselves, leaving Trask alone for Corrigan to arrest.

I really liked both these arcs. The first continues the sort of "Bond" formula I mentioned a bit last week, with Corrigan traveling to an exotic locale to thwart a gun-runner. The second is basically Corrigan starring in his own version of WALK TALL or other movies of that sort -- one of those "one man against the corrupt city officials" sort of deals. Unlike the Fong and Murkel arcs, neither of these suffers from any questionable logic, and both are pretty tense thrillers.

Though I do want to mention that there aren't really any stakes in any of these Goodwin/Williamson stories yet. It's like they're playing it safe for some reason. Obviously we know Corrigan won't die; such is the nature of being the protagonist of a serialized story. But literally no one dies in these adventures. Corrigan always knocks out the bad guys and the masterminds are always arrested in the end. Even Corrigan's friend, Dan Page, survives his car accident at the start of the Eagle Bend arc -- and Page never even appears after the accident, recuperating in the hospital with no visitors allowed. He could've just as easily been killed to give Corrigan an even stronger motive for investigating.

I hope this is merely a case of Goodwin and Williamson easing into things. Perhaps the X-9 of the fifties had been a kinder, gentler, and less lethal strip, and the new team wants to establish their tone first before veering away from that "everybody's safe" mentality. I mean, I'm by no means a bloodthirsty reader of anything. I don't want all Corrigan's friends killed, and I don't want him to start offing every bad guys he meets. But there's a medium someplace, where maybe one supporting character gets killed off to at least create the illusion that anything can happen. Hopefully Goodwin and Williamson will find that medium at some point, because otherwise -- much as I do love these strips -- I feel like things will start to get tedious as we move along.