SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 8

MAY 13TH, 1974 - NOVEMBER 2RD, 1974
NOVEMBER 4TH, 1974 - FEBRUARY 15TH, 1975
FEBRUARY 17TH, 1975 - MAY 24TH, 1975
MAY 26TH, 1975 - AUGUST 30TH, 1975
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Corrigan's next adventure begins as he flies home from Dragon Island. When he lands in the U.S., a fellow passenger is attacked by a female vigilante, and Corrigan finds that the man was transporting heroin into the country. This leads our hero into in investigation of both the drug-running ring and the mysterious woman, who calls herself Lady Vengeance. But Corrigan is stalked by a mob assassin called the Dispatcher as he conducts his investigation.

This all sounds pretty intriguing, right? And on paper, I think it should be. But there's something off about the presentation. We learn halfway through the arc that Lady Vengeance is actually Michele Fortune, daughter of an assassinated mob boss who has teamed up with some of his old associates to tackle the syndicate with the aid of her father's incriminating diary. But Corrigan quickly (and far too easily) gets her to realize that she's basically a mosquito to the mob right now, and that if the FBI had the diary, they could do a lot more damage. So Michele happily agrees to turn the book over to Corrigan, and Lady Vengeance is never seen again after this point.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Dispatcher is the one who killed Michele's father, so we probably have a big showdown between the two at the arc's climax, right? I mean, Goodwin and Williamson have shown capable women taking out bad guys before in this strip, so it wouldn't be unexpected. But that's not what happens here... instead, the Dispatcher and his henchman, Ajax, catch up with Corrigan and Michele, and the Dispatcher is killed by ricochets from Ajax's gun when they attempt a pincer maneuver, after which Corrigan easily dispatches Ajax and brings the arc to a perfunctory end.

And what's up with the Eliminator, anyway? For most of the arc we see only his gloved hands as he talks to Ajax and follows Corrigan around, leading one to think that when we finally see his face, he will either be A) a character we already know or B) disfigured or otherwise distinctive in appearance. But when we do finally see his face (unceremoniously as it's randomly shown during one of his many chats with Ajax), he's jut a normal looking old guy with shades and a pencil mustache.

The entire affair feels like Goodwin and Williamson came up with a premise they really liked, then couldn't figure out how to do it justice with a full story... but they ran with it anyway. The opening scenes are extremely pulpy, with the masked Lady Vengeance crashing mob operations while Corrigan remains one step behind her. Then, suddenly, it simply becomes another typical Corrigan procedural.

Our next arc finds Corrigan's friend, Parez (who last appeared in the "lost world of dinosaurs" arc), visiting the U.S. in search of a statuette stolen from an indigenous tribe in South America. Corrigan and Parez do some investigative work and eventually realize that millionaire mining heiress Jessica Regal has the artifact. They get it back, but Jessica heads to South America after them, teaming up with her criminal partner, de Guerra, to stop them. But of course Corrigan and Parez succeed in getting the statue home. De Guerra is killed and Jessica arrested, and Corrigan heads home.

The story isn't bad, but it's hardly the cream of Corrigan's crop, either. The reappearance of Parez is a nice touch, though, since Corrigan has no recurring allies to speak of in these stories outside of his FBI bureau chief, Tom Ross, and his wife, Wilda.

Doctor Seven returns for the subsequent storyline, so we're automatically off to a good start there. And even better, we have Williamson and Goodwin throwing Corrigan out of his typical espionage element and into another sort of "genre" adventure, as Seven raises a long dormant gigantic robot from the ocean floor, setting it loose to terrorize the world! It turns out the robot was created in 1939 by a mad scientist named Avil Blue, and subsequently sunk by the heroic Brick Bradford. But Blue had stolen the robot's plans from a rival scientist named Kalla Kopak, whose niece -- Karla Kopak teams up with Corrigan to stop the robot's rampage.

All of this is presented via some weirdly specific flashbacks and exposition that made me curious, so I Googled Brick Bradford and Kalla Kopak. I discovered that BRICK BRADFORD was a King Features comic strip that debuted in 1933, and was actually still running when this CORRIGAN arc took place! But rather than do a straight-up crossover between the two in real time, Goodwin and Williamson have chosen to treat Bradford's adventures as if they took place when they were first published, thirty-five years earlier... which leads to a bit of a temporal headache when you consider that SECRET AGENT X-9 was also being published at the same time, but for Corrigan as presented here, the thirties are way, way before his time! (I mean, if he's in his thirties at this point, he was probably born when Brick Bradford was out there fighting Avil Blue... but in terms of the comic strip, he was actually an adult back then! Get it...? Good, because I don't!)

Anyway -- assisting Seven as usual is Joe Ice, now with a hook for a hand, thanks to injuries he sustained (off-panel) in his last encounter with Corrigan. But this turns out to be Ice's last rodeo, as he's electrocuted and killed in battle with Corrigan aboard the robot. In the end, Corrigan and Karla escape the disabled mechanoid as it plunges back into the ocean trench from which Seven pulled it, with Seven and Blue aboard.

As usual, Doctor Seven elevates Corrigan, and this is a really fun storyline, with some lasting consequences for a change, thanks to the demise of recurring foe Joe Ice. And things keep going on the right track in the next arc too, as, upon his return to the U.S., Corrigan finds himself investigating a cult led by a woman named Madame Satan. When Corrigan gets too close, Satan has Wilda kidnapped (this seems to be something Williamson and Goodwin like to do periodically, to give her a purpose in the strip), giving our hero a personal stake in the matter. This one is another really pulpy affair, with a creepy mansion, voodoo dolls, men of means sucked into dark rituals, and so forth.

The next arc features another recurring villain, and not one I would've expected! It's R. Barcroft Baxter, the corrupt movie producer who Corrigan arrested sometime back when he attempted to murder the heiress of Galaxy Studios so he could be come the company's president. Baxter is released from prison after ratting out his mob accomplice, Ash Murkland. But Murkland is none too pleased about this, and abducts Baxter as soon as he leaves the prison. Baxter convinces Murkland to let him live by proposing a scheme to steal Galaxy's new movie and hold it for a million dollars' ransom. This leads to Kay Stirling, Galaxy's head, calling Corrigan for help.

The climax is set during a film festival in the nation of San Oro, where Corrigan captures Murkland after the ransom deal. But Baxter escapes with the money, after informing Corrigan that one of the film canisters Kay took had explosives inside. Corrigan races to Kay's hotel, where he saves her, then he catches Baxter attempting to escape aboard a train.

This arc has a lot of high action; stuff you don't always get in these Corrigan adventures: he leaps from a helicopter into Kay's hotel room to stop her from opening the booby-trapped canister, for example, then later jumps from the same chopper into Baxter's train car. We have a ghost artist covering for Williamson here, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it. I'm not sure why it would, since presumably this artist is working from the same script Williamson would have received, but somehow this arc feels more action-packed than some of the others.

At any rate, as you can tell, this is another one that leaves a favorable impression on me, if only for its use of previous continuity and a couple of unusually thrilling action sequences. It seems that finally, eight years into their run, Goodwin and Williamson have hit a stride. Hopefully they can keep it up for another five years!