SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 10

NOVEMBER 6TH, 1976 - JANUARY 22ND, 1977
JANUARY 24TH, 1977 - JUNE 11TH, 1977
JUNE 13TH, 1977 - OCTOBER 1ST, 1977
OCTOBER 3RD, 1977 - FEBRUARY 4TH, 1978
FEBRUARY 6TH, 1978 - JULY 8TH, 1978
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Phil Corrigan closes out 1976 and enters '77 with a case that finds him summoned to Brayne Computer Industries, ostensibly to investigate a security breach. However when he arrives, Corrigan finds that the company's CEO, Amberson Brayne, fabricated the issue in order to set up a meeting with Corrigan. Brayne wants a new head of security, and he believes Corrigan fits the bill -- but Corrigan refuses the offer and leaves. Brayne, used to getting his way, bristles at this and brings in his second place candidates for the security job: industrial spy Satin Sherwood and mercenary Rip Tower. Whichever "destroys" Corrigan will get the security job.

Satin plans to ruin Corrigan's reputation and sets about framing him for stealing secrets from Brayne's factory -- but Rip simply wants to kill the guy, and Satin as well, to get the job. In the end, Corrigan and Satin team up to defeat Rip and bring down Brayne, with Satin suggesting that she may return to the straight-and-narrow thanks to the experience.

The story is typical Corrigan fare; well-written and beautifully drawn, but never feeling like there's any real danger for anybody involved. However, we do get an interesting explanation of exactly what Corrigan does for the FBI, here. He's described by Brayne's assistant, Huggins, as a "special troubleshooter" who goes on missions all over the place and typically works alone. This seems to be a case of Archie Goodwin explaining (very, very late in the game) why Corrigan feels more like James Bond or the Man from U.N.C.L.E. than your typical domestic FBI agent. And though it is a bit late to make the distinction, it's nonetheless appreciated.

We dive next into an unusually long storyline, running nearly five months, and delving back into the science fiction realm that Goodwin and Williamson have explored a few times in the past. The story also reunites the newly single-and-ready-to-mingle Corrigan with Karla Kopak, the woman who teamed up with him against Doctor Seven and the sea monster robot back in 1975. (Which, believe it or not, is the last time we saw the doctor! After using him regularly on at least an annual basis, Goodwin and Williamson have now set him aside for over two years -- and by the time this arc ends, that will be more like two-and-a-half years.)

In this one, Corrigan is sent to investigate the disappearance of a government scientist named Questor, who vanished from inside a locked room. Working together, Corrigan and Karla quickly discover that Questor had opened a portal to another dimension, and find themselves sucked through it in short order. Corrigan and Karla soon find Questor, but he's been captured by the "Ruline Elite" of the dimension, led by the warlord Vordath. Vordath quickly puts Karla and Questor to work for him, while sentencing Corrigan to death at the hands of the vicious "Man-Brutes".

But Corrigan instead wins over the primitives, rousing them to rebellion. He and the Man-Brutes return to the Ruling Elite's underground complex, and Corrigan manages to rescue Karla and Questor. Vordath is killed and our heroes make it back through the portal to our world, leaving the parallel dimension embroiled in a Man-Brute insurrection.

This arc really allows Al Williamson to return to his sci-fi comic book roots, with insane alien spacescapes and futuristic technology -- though, puzzlingly, Williamson takes a sabbatical partway through the arc, turning chores over to a ghost artist, who -- while a very fine artist in his own right -- doesn't hold a candle to Williamson's skill in this arena. I have to imagine that this break wasn't planned, because it's hard to imagine Williamson jumping ship for the majority of an arc that caters perfectly to his strengths.

Interestingly, as you may note from the dates listed above, this arc overlapped with the theatrical release of the original STAR WARS. It begins in January of 1977 and ends in June, and STAR WARS debuted on May 25th. I can't help wondering if this was intentional on the part of Goodwin and Williamson. After all, STAR WARS was hyped at comic book conventions well in advance of its release, plus Goodwin worked at Marvel during this period and would've had access to a ton of early concept material. Not that this story resembles STAR WARS in any way, but the idea that Corrigan is embroiled in a sci-fi epic at the exact moment the movie hit theaters feels like a massive coincidence otherwise.

Next up, Corrigan returns to Earth, figuratively and literally, in a sort of hard-boiled adventure that wouldn't have been out of place in a 1930s pulp novel. In this one, he's summoned to the private island of beautiful heiress Tracy van Eden in order to investigate a series of robberies at her company's various locations -- robberies carried out by a mytstery woman in a golden mask and two hoods. Corrigan works with Tracy and her advisor, a bemonocled gent named Waring, to get to the bottom of the attacks. When he learns that Tracy's sister was believed killed in a car accident, but was never found, he begins to put the pieces together... but he reckons without a twist so crazy, it belongs in a daytime soap opera (and I mean this in a good way)!

As you can tell, I liked this one a lot. The prior sci-fi arc, while good, was not exactly what I prefer from Corrigan -- while this storyline is exactly what I like to see him doing! Snooping around, investigating mystery persons, and generally playing detective rather than swashbuckler. Plus, Archie Goodwin revisits his comic book past here, as the mystery woman behind the robberies bears far more than a passing resemblance to Iron Man's foe Madame Masque -- a character Goodwin himself "created" (insofar as he took a pre-existing character and put a gleaming golden mask on her face) eight years earlier in the pages of the Golden Avenger's comic book series.

Next is another fairly engrossing tale, as the death of one of his informants pairs Corrigan with a beautiful sculptress named Diana Shane, who is next on the hit list. It seems that years ago, Diana was inspired by a brute of a man she saw through a hotel window, and she sculpted a few statues based on his likeness. But it turns out that her muse was a hitman named Tragg, who had just faked his death and was waiting to undergo plastic surgery and retire. With Diana having seen his face, Tragg decided that he couldn't let her live, and spent the next five years destroying the statues and hunting her down. Of course Corrigan gets the better of Tragg in the end, but this arc is quite riveting all the way through, with some tense moments and detective work by Corrigan.

Our last arc this week, an extra-length spectaculer clocking in at over fiive months' length, plunges Corrigan back into sci-fi territory, as extraterrestrials begin kidnapping members of a government think tank in order to save their home planet from destruction at the hands of their enemies. Only two scientists are taken before the aliens are forced to abort the plan and return home with their captives -- but one of the two happens to be Karla Kopak, under the protection of Corrigan. Corrigan and Karla, along with Doctor Lathrop Grimm, are taken to another world, where Grimm quickly defects to the other side. Grimm helps the aliens create super-missiles to destroy their foes, prompting Corrigan to head out in a fight and shoot two of the missiles down -- but the third and final one eludes him. Karla, however, has built a weapon of her own on the benevolent aliens' planet: a force beam of such power that it knocks the final missile off course and then even knocks the enemy planet out of its orbit, throwing across the galaxy.

The timeline is incredibly bizarre here. From the time they're abducted until the moment they're dropped back on Earth, it feels like about a day passes for Corrigan and Karla -- yet in that time, Grimm manages to build enormous super-missiles, while Karla creates a force beam of such power that it can knock a planet out of orbit. This is all hand-waved by a few comments about the aliens' advanced technology allowing for accelarated work, but still -- it's a little ridiculous! Other than that, the arc is fine, I suppose. Williamson 1950s sci-fi sensibilities again come to the force, which is never a bad thing in theory. The world was still high on STAR WARS-mania at this point, so Goodwin and Williamson continue to feed the masses what they need, even if the subject matter feels an odd fit for the Corrigan strip. Again, I don't necessarily mind this sort of arc once in a while, but when you see it twice in the span of about a year, that gets to be a bit much. It may be for the best that this duo will jump ship soon for the STAR WARS strip! But we still have about a year-and-a-half of Corrigan to go, so be back here next week for more!