SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 3

JULY 29TH, 1968 - OCTOBER 12TH, 1968
OCTOBER 14TH, 1968 - JANUARY 4TH, 1969
JANUARY 6TH, 1969 - MARCH 15TH, 1969
MARCH 17TH, 1969 - JUNE 14TH, 1969
JUNE 16TH, 1969 - AUGUST 30TH, 1969
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Last week I spoke a bit about the stakes in these Corrigan stories feeling extremely minimal. You go into every single arc knowing that not only will Corrigan win, nobody will die and the bad guys will all be captured, and he'll move along to his next mission the very next day. I suggested just a little bit of lethality to perhaps up the ante for our hero. I noted that otherwise, things might get tedious as we move along.

It occurred to me after I wrote those words, however, that there are other ways to break up the tedium, and Archie Goodwin's plotting may be part of my problem here. He writes every arc as straight and episodic as possible. There are no twists or turns. Corrigan shows up, finds out what the problem is, then solves it; the end, on to the next unrelated story. No wrenches are ever thrown into his plans. He never gets blindsided. And, while I have gone on record before as saying that I enjoy watching hyper-competent characters do their thing and succeed at everything, that's not exactly what this is. Hyper-competence is great, but it works best when the characters are using it to overcome serious obstacles. Corrigan tends to sleepwalk his way through every situation, because there are no obstacles that challenge him, and no villains he can't outwit in a very straightforward fashion.

I guess what I'm getting it is that I don't necessarily need to see anybody die to make these stories more compelling. I just need some better plots from Archie Goodwin! Sub-plots, twists, continuing continuity, and so forth. This was something Goodwin and Williamson did pretty well in the STAR WARS newspaper strip of the early eighties. They actually had ongoing plotlines outside of the current story arcs, and they had arcs that built upon one another (and sometimes led directly from one to the next) toward a narrative finish line. That is what I hope to see them bring to Corrigan! Otherwise, it just feels like going through the motions in every storyline.

Fortunately, it looks like Goodwin and Williamson might be going that direction at last, beginning with some of this week's storylines. But before we get to those, we have two more "one-offs" to examine. In the first, Corrigan investigates a scheme to smuggle U.S. government secrets out of the country, hidden inside framed paintings by a mediocre artist. Corrigan busts up the ring, led by a woman named Ilsa Flint, and arrests all the bad guys (including the painter, Burch, who looks just like DC's Oliver Queen).

Then, Corrigan is assigned to visit the kingdom of Alpsberg in Europe and provide security for its princess at her coronation. This seems an odd task for an FBI agent, but we're told that Corrigan handled Princess Sophia's security on her last trip to the U.S., and she has specifically requested him. (In fact, Corrigan notes that in that prior adventure, he helped her to locate a missing tiara -- a very specific reference that makes me wonder if this was an actual storyline in the strip before Williamson and Goodwin came aboard.)

In Alspberg, the prime minister has made plans to replace Sophia with a lookalike who will abdicate in favor of his leadership. So naturally, Corrigan uncovers the switcheroo and saves the day. Notably, the prime minister's right-hand man is a very distinctive looking fellow named Von Krell, with whom Corrigan has a saber duel in an old castle, and who escapes capture, suggesting that he and Corrigan may cross paths again someday. Hopefully this is the beginning of a recurring archenemy for Corrigan, as that would go a long way to rectifying some of the complaints I listed above.

The next storyline features a continuity nod to a previous Goodwin/Williamson strip, as a Chinese agent named Madame Lei arrives in the United States to take over China's operations following Corrigan's capture of Chang Wu. Lei puts out a hit on Corrigan but eventually decides to capture him instead, with plans to exchange him for Chang. But Corrigan kills her right-hand assassin, an American named Joe Ice, and escapes from her ship in international waters. It's suggested that Lei will be punished for her failure, but I can't help wondering if we haven't seen the last of her either.

By the way, it's notable, perhaps as element of the era of "women's liberation", that a lot -- or at least more than you'd expect -- of Corrigan's enemies in these stories are women. Ilsa and Lei here, plus Adrienne Widdoe, who we looked at a couple weeks back, and last week's Ma Murkley -- who also turns out to be the first recurring villain in the Goodwin/Williamson canon, as she escapes from prison to begin our next arc. This arc serves as our very first direct sequel to a prior Goodwin/Williamson production. Unlike the last storyline, which paid lip service to one previous, this one picks up threads from the original Murkley plot.

It seems that while Ma Murkley has been in prison, the FBI has been trying to trace the money behind her sabotage scheme. Murkley uses this as leverage with her mysterious employer, threatening to spill the beans unless he helps to break her out of prison. Corrigan is soon on Murkley's trail, and tracks her to her the home of her estranged daughter, Amanda, where she is forcing the girl to put her up. Murkley demands that her employer, "The Leader" come pick her up in his chopper, otherwise she will reveal his true identity to the authorities.

The ensuing action sees Corrigan capture Murkley's henchmen, but Murkley herself escapes in the helicopter with the Leader. However their fuel line is damaged and they're forced to land at a nearby airfield, where Corrigan catches up in his car. He takes out the Leader, but Murkley attempts escape in the leaking chopper. She doesn't make it far, however, and crashes into a nearby lake. In the end, the Leader is arrested, but there's no sign of Murkley's body.

I like this one a lot for its moodiness. The entire climax takes place at night, at Amanda's house and the airfield, and the Leader is a really cool "Cobra Commander"-looking guy. That said, I'm disappointed to see him captured and cast aside here in such short order. Based on all the build-up, I figured he would either A) escape to menace Corrigan again another day (my preference), or B) be unmasked as someone we already know (less ideal, but still rewarding). Neither of those things happens. Instead he's arrested, but we're never even shown or told who was under his mask! It seems Goodwin and Williamson are more interested in giving the lame Ma Murkley a mysterious death from which she can return another day, than in giving Corrigan a far superior recurring villain with a secret identity and a cool hood.

I'll look at an unprecedented fifth arc this week, only because it's short and inconsequential. It's not even drawn by Al Williamson, who takes the arc off in favor of ghost artist Stanley Pitt. In this one, Corrigan is sent undercover to bait a pirate, Captain Bryne, and his beautiful partner, Raven Storm, into bringing him to their secret island lair, where they've built a fully-functional ICBM with which to threaten the nearby nations. Naturally, Corrigan stops the bad guys and saves the day (with help from Raven, who turns on Bryne when she realizes he actually intends to fire the missile rather than merely use it as leverage), and the arc ends with Corrigan en route back to the United States.

Not much to say about this one other than that it's another extremely Bondian entry into Corrigan's canon, what with the bad guys' base in a mountainous atoll, and the fact that Corrigan wears a tuxedo all the way through. But, while Stanley Pitt is a decent artist, Al Williamson's brilliant work is missed.

But next week, Williamson returns as we begin looking at IDW's second collection of Goodwin/Williamson Corrigan strips!