SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 11

NOVEMBER 6TH, 1976 - JANUARY 22ND, 1977
OCTOBER 30TH, 1978 - FEBRUARY 3RD, 1979
FEBRUARY 5TH, 1979 - JUNE 16TH, 1979
JUNE 18TH, 1979 - NOVEMBER 3RD, 1979
NOVEMBER 5TH, 1979 - JANUARY 2ND, 1980
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Corrigan's next mission (drawn by a fill-in artist) finds him dispatched to the Middle Eastern nation of Sumeran in an elaborate plot to "steal" a gem, one half of a pair, in a ploy to draw out the thieves who stole the other gem in order to get it back. He's partnered with Yahzid, bodyguard to Sumeran's prince, for the duration of the mission. They meet Madame Kohbra, the leader of a band of insurgents, and follow her into Sumeran's desert, where the ultimate showdown takes place between Corrigan and Yaz against Kohbra and her army. Corrigan of course wins, and Kohbra is branded a traitor by her own followers thanks to his duplicity.

Corrigan has wandered a few Middle Eastern deserts in the time I've been reading this strip, but this one may be my favorite such story. In a weird way, it feels like something Carl Barks might have come up with for the Disney Ducks, and that's something I can never complain about. Corrigan is still in Sumeran when the next storyline begins. In it, he's recruited by J. Garrett Ormsby, a U.S. consulate agent from the local embassy, to rescue some hostages from a for-profit terror organization called the Black Sword -- but the true prize is one specific hostage, Ormsby's ex-wife Della Hope, who works as a State Department employee had harbors some government secrets that must be kept safe. Corrigan is set up with a cover identity as a jet-setting magnate, and is sent to the Riviera as bait for Black Sword. He's quickly (like, really quickly -- minutes after arriving) captured by the villains, and soon finds himself on their island lair.

There, Corrigan quickly links up with Della and the pair makes their escape -- but in the end, it turns out that Ormsby himself wanted Della killed, because the secrets she held, unbeknownst to her, would reveal him as a traitor. Ormsby tries to finish them off, but naturally Corrigan gets the better of him.

Though I appreciate the continuity of starting this arc exactly where the last one ended, I find it fairly lackluster. Goodwin and Williamson are nearly at the end of their long run on Corrigan, so it's possible they were running out of steam at this point. I have to admit that I certainly am. Even though they never fell into the sort of idealized groove I was hoping for when I started reading this material, they at least held my interest early on. Now, as I near the end of their run, I find it a chore every time I pick up the book to continue.

By the way, this arc features the strip that was published the day I was born. The date in question sees Corrigan aboard Black Sword's submarine on the way to their base -- and one of its panels was pulled by IDW to function as the cover of their final CORRIGAN volume! Not too shabby.

Our next arc sees the return of the ever-elusive Doctor Seven. I mentioned last week that Corrigan and the Doctor hadn't crossed paths since 1975, when he raised a giant robot from the sea and lost his main henchman, the recurring Joe Ice. This new 1979 arc suggest that Corrigan's adventures are occurring in real time, as several references are made to years having passed since Corrigan's last encounter with Seven -- years during which the villain has plotted his revenge against his longtime foe.

It all begins like your typical Seven plot. The Doctor begins to drag a U.S. satellite to Earth, presumably with plans to blackmail the world before it hits and causes catastrophic destruction. Corrigan heads out to find Seven and tracks him to an arctic lair. But there, our hero learns that the satellite operation was merely a ploy, and that Seven's true plan was to capture Corrigan himself and replace him with several android duplicates, which would then be sent into the world simultaneously to steal government secrets and sow chaos in several different locations at once.

But, as you might expect, Corrigan awakens and activates all the androids, then poses as one in order to get close to Seven. And, surprisingly, for the first time ever, Corrigan captures his enemy! The story ends with our hero en route back to civilization with an unconscious Seven in tow. I find myself wondering if Williamson and Goodwin knew their time with Corrigan was coming to an end, and felt that it was time to finally give their protagonist an actual clean win over the ever-elusive Doctor Seven. Because at this point, we only have two arcs remaining before the creative duo jumps ship to chronicle the adventures of Luke Skywalker and friends. And this is a really good arc; suspenseful and exciting all the way through, so it definitely feels like a case of "pulling out all the stops" as we hurtle toward the finish line.

And following that trend, the next arc is another mostly good one. It begins on the heels of Corrigan's capture of Doctor Seven, but his superiors are none too pleased over his maverick actions to reach that end. Corrigan is called on the carpet by the bureau's assistant director, and resigns his post. He then gets into a drunken brawl with a couple of bureau agents come to check on him, resulting in his being thrown in jail. But it turns out the whole thing was a ruse conconted by the assistant director to force Corrigan into falling out with his employers, making him attractive as a potential recruit to a terror group called the Inner Circle. And sure enough, the Inner Circle's recruiter, Cybil Crowne, comes calling on Corrigan immediately after his release from prison.

Thus Corrigan joins the Inner Circle undercover, and is sent on a probationary mission to assassinate a renowned government advisor named Ambrose Regent. But when Corrigan tries to stage the hit with Regent's cooperation, Regent reveals himself as a leader of the Inner Circle, merely testing Corrigan's dedication. This sends Corrigan on the run with Regent as his hostage, leading to a cat-and-mouse session in some nearby canyons which culminates in a helicopter chase.

As I said above, this one is mostly good. I like the setup, the buildup, and basically everything that comes before Corrigan goes on the run with Regent. At that point it becomes a little tepid, feeling like ground that Corrigan has trod several times in the past. But again, up to that point, it's really very good.

Goodwin and Williamson close out their thirteen year run on Corrigan with the next arc, and even though it hasn't been very long since last we saw him, Doctor Seven returns in this one -- fittingly, as he had become the defining and most recurring villain in the run. But Seven isn't hte antagonist here (at least, not initially). Rather, he's bait used by Corrigan to get close to the arc's real villain, Mister Neptune -- a James Bond style bad guy (who has literally stolen the plot of Bond villain Stromberg from the film THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), living in an undersea lair with plans to destroy the surface world and start a new civilization underwater. Seven has never wanted to destroy the world, however -- only to rule it. So he teams up with Corrigan and Karla to stop Neptune -- and then he escapes once more.

And that brings to an end the Archie Goowin/Al Williamson run on SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN. They came aboard in 1967 and ran with the strip all the way to the very start of 1980 -- a pretty remarkable feat. While I've gone on record as finding a great deal of this run somewhat lackluster in tems of what I, myself, expect from an ongoing, serialized comic strip, I can't deny that they maintained a level of quality throughout, albeit quality in doing the strip their way rather than the way I would've liked to have seen them do it. Even if I didn't always love his plots, Goodwin's scripts were always engaging -- and Williamson's artwork was breathtaking all the way through.

If you want to see what the duo did next, check out my reviews of their four-ish years on the STAR WARS newspaper strip, which immediately followed their time on CORRIGAN. You'll find those at the bottom of this page. I wrote them six years ago, so even I don't recall exactly what I said, but I do remember enjoying the strips pretty much all the way through.

As for what I'm doing next right here? Well, I'm gonna take Mondays in December off to start working the first series of the New Year -- but don't worry; the AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES posts will continue on Fridays!