MAY 2025 - I DON'T WATCH TV ANYMORE

At least not like I used to. I grew up watching TV. As a child, I was enamored with my Saturday morning and weekday afternoon cartoons, as you might expect. Everything from HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, THUNDERCATS, and TRANSFORMERS to SUPER FRIENDS to THE SMURFS and GARFIELD AND FRIENDS. I also followed the adventures of THE DUKES OF HAZZARD and THE A-TEAM in live action. I watched TV all the time through elementary school, high school, and college. I took in the TV shows my parents grew up with via "Nick at Nite" and weekday syndication (I have very specific memories of watching THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW anytime I was home sick during elementary school). There were the TGIF sitcoms on ABC (PERFECT STRANGERS was always my favorite). Must-See TV on NBC. STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and DEEP SPACE NINE during the nineties "Golden Age" of first-run syndication. In terms of animation, you had BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES, X-MEN, and SPIDER-MAN on Fox Kids when I was in middle school and high school. Then DRAGON BALL Z and GUNDAM WING, among many others, on Toonami during college and beyond.

Then the early twenty-first century brought me THE OFFICE, PARKS AND RECREATION, 30 ROCK, MODERN FAMILY, and more in the comedy genre, as well as 24, PRISON BREAK, LOST, and a slew of other network dramas with a similar serialized feel. In a way, these were -- to me, at least, someone who didn't watch the pay cable channels like HBO and Showtime -- the precursors to "prestige" or "peak" television. Which I'm not sure why we call it that; it was never all good -- but by the later part of the 2000s, I was watching it. I was engrossed with MAD MEN, BREAKING BAD, and THE WALKING DEAD on AMC, and JUSTIFIED on FX, as well as -- having finally gotten an HBO subscription -- BOARDWALK EMPIRE and GAME OF THRONES.

I watched a lot of TV around that time, in the aughts and into the teens. And I liked most all of it. MAD MEN is one of my all-time favorite television experiences ever. I love that show; at the risk of a little hyperbole, I'd even say that I cherish it (or at least I do the first three seasons; I find that my interest plummets the further the narrative moves into the sixties). Likewise, JUSTIFIED, which I adored. GAME OF THRONES was great for the first several years. BREAKING BAD was amazing, but not something I'm particulary attached to; I can't really ever see myself watching it again. And I will never understand how THE WALKING DEAD became the cultural juggernaut that it remains to this day. I gave up on that one a few seasons in; it was too dark and depressing for me. The final scene I ever watched was when a certain baseball bat connected with a certain beloved character's face, and I never looked back (though I did often question why I had even stuck with it for that long, in hindsight).

MARCH 2025: I TAKE THINGS TOO LITERALLY

And we're back! So far, so good with this new format. And this month I even have something of interest (at least to me) to talk about!

Not too long ago on the Marvel Masterworks Message Board, in a discussion about X-Men Omnibuses, the dreaded Chuck Austen was name-dropped. I was there when Austin's run on UNCANNY X-MEN was published. I read it. I actually thought it started off okay, but it quickly went off the rails and ended as one of the most rightly reviled stretches in the title's history. However -- even when it was briefly good, it wasn't what I was expecting.

See, in advance of his run, Austen did an interview with WIZARD magazine where he said that to prepare, he had gone back and re-read the 1970s Chris Claremont/Dave Cockrum issues. I'm assuming he was a kid when that material was published, because he seemed to consider it the X-Men's gold standard, even more than the subsequent Claremont/John Byrne run. So naturally when he said this, I figured, "Great! He'll probably bring back Banshee and redeem him from Joe Casey's character assassination. Maybe they'll even visit his castle! Maybe they'll fight Count Nefaria or something. I bet we'll get some good swashbuckling Nightcrawler action. Ooh, maybe he'll even bring back Eric the Red!!

None of that happened. In fact, Austen's run bore zero resemblance to the Claremont/Cockrum run I loved. Aside from Nightcrawler and Wolverine, it was a completely different cast. The stories did not in any way, shape, or form, call back to that classic run. It didn't "feel" like the run in terms of style, either.

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 8

"THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS" | "OCTOPUSSY"
"THE HILDEBRAND RARITY" | "THE SPY WHO LOVED ME"
September 12th, 1966 - November 12th, 1966 | November 14th, 1966 - May 27th, 1967
May 29th, 1967 - December 16th, 1967 | December 18th, 1967 - October 3rd, 1968
Written by Peter Lawrence | Illustrated by Yaroslav Horak

"The Living Daylights" was a short story by Ian Fleming, loosely adapted and greatly expanded into a 1987 film of the same name starring Timothy Dalton as Bond. As usual, the comic strip adapts the original story far more faithfully than would the eventual film. The story is simple: a British agent in East Berlin plans to cross the Berlin Wall with Russian nuclear secrets, but the Russians' best Sniper, "Trigger", is tasked with stopping him. But MI6 gets wind of this, and Bond is dispatched to West Berlin to snipe Trigger before the Russian can snipe Agent 282. Bond realizes Trigger is actually a beautiful woman, and rather than kill her, simply shoots the rifle from her hand. But she's killed in the end anyway, in an "accident" arranged as punishment for her failure.

And that's it! The film version of the story uses this entire sequence, in modified fashion, as its cold open. The short story is finished before the opening credits roll, save for Trigger's death, and the remainder of the movie is an original story about Bond locating her and eventually working with her to take down a drug lord.

"Octopussy" was another short story by Fleming, but the newspaper adaptation is quite long, running just over six months in length. In it, Bond is approached by Trudi Oberhauser, the daughter of a man who was like a second father to him. The elder Oberhauser's body has been found with a British service revolver's bullet in his head, two decades after he disappeared in the Swiss mountains. Bond plays detective, working this personal mission with Trudi, following a trail from London to Jamaica, where he reunites with Mary Goodnight for assistance. Eventually, Bond determines that Oberhauser was killed by a British officer over some Nazi gold in the final days of World War II -- and the officer, Major Smythe, now lives on a seaside estate in Jamaica. But Bond fails to capture Smythe, as the villain instead meets his end at the hands of his own humongous pet octopus, which he has nicknamed "Octopussy" (a much better way to integrate the title into the story than in the motion picture, where "Octopussy" was a nickname Smythe gave his daughter).

The various adaptations are a little weird on this one. All versions of the story begin basically the same way, with Bond seeking to investigate someone's murder -- only in the film, that deceased party is agent 009 -- while in the short story and newspaper strip, it's Trudi's father (though so far as I can tell, Trudi herself does not exist in the source material). The original version sees Bond corner Smythe and take pity on him, allowing him to choose suicide over arrest. This is referenced as backstory for the character of Octopussy in the film, which otherwise goes off in its own, typically over-the-top direction, sending Bond to India to investigate a cult led by Smythe's daughter, who is involved in a scheme to steal Russian nuclear secrets.

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 7

"YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE" | "THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN"
May 17th, 1965 - January 8th, 1966 | June 10th, 1966 - September 9th, 1966
Written by Henry Gammidge & Jim Lawrence
Illustrated by John McLusky & Yaroslav Horak

As Bond's next adventure begins, eight months have elapsed since the murder of his bride, Tracy. Bond is in bad shape, and M decides to snap him out of it with a new, extremely difficult mission: he is to purloin a Japanese code-breaking device. Bond travels to Japan and links up with his contact there, an Australian MI6 diplomatic agent named Dikko Henderson. Soon after, Bond meets M's opposite number in the Japanese secret service, Tiger Tanaka. Right off the bat, the film adaptation differs from the source material. As usual, Fleming's original work is much more down-to-earth. Bond is simply trying to obtain a decoder device, and in order to do it, he agrees to a favor for Tanaka -- breaking into a compound where a Westerner named Doctor Shatterhand has set up a sort of amusement park of suicide, and assassinating Shatterhand. Compare that with the film, where Bond travels to Japan to try and find the source of a giant rocket that swallows space shuttles!

(I don't know what to make of the premise, by the way, that scores of Japanese people are flocking to Shatterhand's castle so they can kill themselves in interesting ways. It's very clearly presented as a common shared interest among the Japanese; it's not a few odd apples out to off themselves. This is possibly one of the biggest instances of what I once saw described as the commonplace "weird racism" in Ian Fleming's works.)

However in both versions of the story, the villain is the same: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. Though SPECTRE no longer exists here; indeed it's notable that in Fleming's original works, the organization only existed in THUNDERBALL, where it was basically disbanded by the end. The stories then followed Bond's search for Blofeld in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, and his final encounter with the villain here, in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE -- and that's it. One story with SPECTRE proper, followed by two more with Blofeld more or less alone. Meanwhile in the films, SPECTRE exists as an organization in four installments: DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, THUNDERBALL, and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, with Blofeld operating solo or with a pared-down organization in two more films, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, afterward.

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 6

"THUNDERBALL" | "ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE"
December 11th, 1961 - February 10th, 1962 | June 29th, 1964 - May 15th, 1965
Written by Henry Gammidge | Illustrated by John McLusky

THUNDERBALL has the peculiar distinction of being the only James Bond story developed by Ian Fleming himself with the intention that it would become a movie. In the 1950s, Fleming worked with producer Kevin McClory on a project to bring Bond to the silver screen. When the project fell by the wayside, Fleming went ahead and adapted the story they had come up with into a novel. Years later, when Bond finally did make it to the movies, producers Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman adapted the novel THUNDERBALL into the fourth film in the series. So essentially, THUNDERBALL was a movie treatment adapted into a novel, which was then adapted into a screenplay!

As such, one might expect the original THUNDERBALL, adapted into this comic strip, to sync up fairly closely with the film -- and at least initially, that's true. Both versions open with Bond declared unfit for field duty by M, and sent to recuperate at a spa called Shrublands. There, he encounters a mystery man named Count Lippe, who tries to kill Bond when the agent shows too much interest in the Count's Tong tattoo. Bond reciprocates, giving Lippe a near-death experience, and then returns to work at MI6. Meanwhile, the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion -- SPECTRE -- holds a meeting to discuss their latest plot: stealing a NATO plane transporting two nuclear missiles. SPECTRE's agent on the inside, co-pilot Giuseppe Petacchi, kills the plane's crew and hijacks it, ditching it in the Atlantic ocean near the Bahamas after SPECTRE takes the bombs.

LOOK UP! LOOK DOWN! LOOK OUT!

JAMES BOND IS BACK!

(With all due apologies to the THUNDERBALL movie poster.)

Back in 2018, I started looking at the James Bond newspaper strips originally syndicated in Britain's Daily Express in the 1950s and '60s. I got about halfway through the series, and then was forced to stop due to a number of factors in my life at the time. It was the first retrospective series I ever failed to complete, and it has bothered me ever since. I vowed at the time that I would finish my originally intended run (all of the strips that adapted Ian Fleming's original novels) someday. And now, five-and-a-half years later (seriously?!), it's time.

There are eight storylines left, but a few are based on short stories -- so I've broken it out to three posts in total, which will take us right up to the end of the year. And I know we're going to sail right through to the end of this thing, because unlike last time, I've already written up all the posts! As previously, the main crux of these posts will be to compare and contrast the quite faithful newspaper adaptations with the typically more loosely adapted (or in some cases totally made up) films.

For those who need a refresher, or perhaps weren't even born yet those many years ago when I started this project, here are the first five posts in the series:

JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 1
JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 2
JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 3
JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 4
JAMES BOND NEWSPAPER STRIPS PART 5

And with that, we'll reconvene next week to get to it. See you then!

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.

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.

SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 9

SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1975 - DECEMBER 27TH, 1975
DECEMBER 29TH, 1975 - MARCH 27TH, 1976
MARCH 29TH, 1976 - JULY 24TH, 1976
JULY 26TH, 1976 - NOVEMBER 6TH, 1976
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Notwithstanding Doctor Seven's giant robot, Corrigan's adventures have been as down-to-Earth as always since he returned from the lost world of dinosaurs in 1970. But here, in late '75, Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson have decided to throw Corrigan into an adventure that's as far from grounded as (in)humanly possible! In this one, Corrigan is assigned to recover a manuscript stolen from a literary museum. The author's great-granddaughter, Trisha St. Cloud, tags along with him as he conducts his investigation. At first, all seems straightforward; Corrigan deduces that one Professor McQueen masterminded the heist. But when Corrigan and Trisha catch up with McQueen aboard his chartered freighter down near the Arctic Sea, things get... weird.

It turns out that the manuscript details the true-life adventures of Trisha's great-grandfather, though no one has ever believed it. In the book, he and his fellow passengers are kidnapped from their boat and taken to a tropical island in the arctic inhabited by cavemen and aliens. Trisha's great-grandfather escaped and wrote his book, and McQueen found the diary of a sailor who got away with him, corroborating the story. Thus, McQueen now believes the aliens are real and wants their technology.

So naturally, the freighter is wrecked and Corrigan, Trisha, McQueen, and McQueen's henchman make it to the island. The last of the aliens shows himself, and reveals he's been contemplating destroying his ship since he will likely never escape Earth. When McQueen demands, at gunpoint, the ship's secrets, the alien tricks him into destroying it and the island instead. Corrigan and Trisha escape, but everyone else is killed.

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.

SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 7

MAY 21ST, 1973 - AUGUST 18TH, 1973
AUGUST 20TH, 1973 - NOVEMBER 10TH, 1973
NOVEMBER 19TH, 1973 - FEBRUARY 7TH, 1974
FEBRUARY 9TH, 1974 - MAY 11TH, 1974
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

At long, long last, as we begin this week, Corrigan delves into some of that inter-arc continuity that that strip has been missing. When last we left our intrepid FBI agent, he was in South America following his latest encounter with Doctor Seven. The next storyline opens with Corrigan still there, preparing to head home, when he's drugged at the airport by a pair of kidnappers who fly him to the Caribbean island of eccentric millionaire Sebastian Quint. Quint had abducted ten men of action for a "survival of the fittest" type of competition, to determine which of them will serve as host for his brain when he dies. But after the group is whittled down to the final four candidates, who Quint forces into a gladiatorial match, Corrigan rallies them to fight back together, and they escape.

From Quint's estate, Corrigan heads to civilization on a neighboring island, where he catches his flight home. But aboard the plane is a small-time crook, Slade, who our hero sent up the river some time back and who was in the Caribbean to lure an old associate, Granite, back to the U.S. for a big score. Panicking, Slade tries to bump Corrigan off upon their arrival in the U.S., but fails and is himself killed instead. This leads to Corrigan investigating Slade and learning that he was planning his robbery in the Southestern United States. Corrigan heads down there and matches wits with Granite and with Slade's widow, Amber. In the end, as expected, the G-Man is victorious.

Neither of these storylines sets my world on fire exactly, but they're both decent enough page-turners. However their very existence is enhanced greatly by the inter-arc momentum mentioned above. I know maybe this is weird, but that sort of thing really can elevate an otherwise pedestrian plot for me. Give me three adventures where the main character wraps everything up in a bow at the end, with a clean break between stories, and if the plots themselves aren't riveting, I'll call them mediocre and complain. But give me those exact same plots with threads running between and connecting them -- serializing them -- and I will sing their praises to the rooftops even if they actually are mediocre.

SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 6

APRIL 10TH, 1972 - JUNE 17TH, 1972
JUNE 19TH, 1972 - SEPTEMBER 9TH, 1972
SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1972 - NOVEMBER 25TH, 1972
NOVEMBER 27TH, 1972 - FEBRUARY 3RD, 1973
FEBRUARY 5TH, 1973 - MAY 19TH, 1973
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Corrigan's next story arc perfectly represents simultaneously the most frustrating thing about the Archie Goodwin/Al Williamson run, and some of the best of their work. The frustration kicks things off. As is the case more often than not, we're jumping into a new storyline cold turkey, with no mention of what went on before. When last we saw Corrigan, remember, he had returned to the United States with Lushan, and had thwarted Doctor Seven's plan to find a financial backer for his terrorist organization, Triad. Any rationally functioning brain would expect to see Corrigan dwelling on such a high-profile adventure as the next arc begins. But no, Corrigan has totally moved on. He's now at Cape Meridian to investigate threats against the first U.S. space station -- which is fine on its own, but he should at least be thinking a bit about Seven as the adventure opens.

I know I'm beating a long-dead horse at this point, but it's just such a letdown to read a serialized comic strip that isn't really serialized, especially when I know, from their work on STAR WARS in the eighties, that Goodwin and Williamson are more than capable of producing just such a beast. Why they treat Corrigan in such a painfully episodic fashion is beyond me.

But on the plus side, as I mentioned above, the rest of the arc is actually quite good. The space station is bombed and three astronauts are trapped in a capsule orbiting Earth, with twenty days of oxygen and no way to make it home. What follows is a tense sequence as scientists on Earth rush to complete a rescue craft while Corrigan works to uncover the bomber, who he knows is operating from within NASA, before he can strike again. And the conclusion is somewhat surprising and exceptionally suspenseful.

SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 5

OCTOBER 19TH, 1971 - JANUARY 30TH, 1971
FEBRUARY 1ST, 1971 - MAY 1ST, 1971
MAY 3RD, 1971 - JULY 31ST, 1971
AUGUST 2ND, 1971 - OCTOBER 16TH, 1971
OCTOBER 18TH, 1971 - JANUARY 8TH, 1972
JANUARY 10TH, 1972 - APRIL 8TH, 1972
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

It may suffer the same issues of light continuity and no real stakes that I've spent the past few weeks complaining about, but Corrigan's next adventure does at least venture into some unique territory for the character! In this one, the U.S. State Department gets wind of a plane found in South America, belonging to a believed-dead scientist who the government would like to have back -- or at least, whose research they would like! Corrigan is placed on temporary assignment with the State Department to investigate -- but the Soviet Union has also learned about the plane, and dispatches an operative to team up with Corrigan in his search.

The Soviet operative turns out to be the beautiful Colonel Tanya Greb, and she joins Corrigan, his pilot Parez, and Professor Stone (an archaeologist from a previous Goodwin/Williamson arc) to investigate. Stone is along due to the fact that some dinosaur bones were improbably found in the plane, and carbon dating says that they're only a couple hundred years old. So as you might imagine, before long, the group finds their way into a land lost to time -- a prehistoric jungle in the rainforest, where dinosaurs still live!

The ensuing adventure sees our heroes locate the missing scientist, Professor Branveldt, work to repair their crashed helicopter while evading T-Rexes in the jungle, and eventually escape via raft as the entire lost world collapses around them. This arc is about as far from the standard law-enforcement procedural that we usually get from Corrigan, and veers far into high adventure territory -- and I love it for that. I don't think all of the strip's woes are suddenly solved here, but at least we have a nice diversion into some uncharted territory to liven things up for a bit.

SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 4

SEPTEMBER 1ST, 1969 - NOVEMBER 15TH, 1969
NOVEMBER 17TH, 1969 - FEBRUARY 7TH, 1970
FEBRUARY 9TH, 1970 - MAY 2ND, 1970
MAY 4TH, 1970 - JULY 25TH, 1970
JULY 27TH, 1970 - OCTOBER 17TH, 1970
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

Corrigan's next adventure begins as he and his wife, Wilda, vacation in the Riviera while he recuperates from a gunshot wound sustained in the prior arc. But the couple's romantic getaway is quickly interrupted when Kasim, the prince of a nation called Turistan, becomes smitten with Wilda and kidnaps her to become his bride (he needs to marry posthaste in order to ascend to the throne). Corrigan follows them back to Turistan in a chartered plane, but runs out of fuel and lands near the castle of Sarkhan, Kasim's sinister cousin. Phil is captured by Sarkhan, but a beautiful servant named Yasmina, secretly loyal to Kasim, helps him escape.

Meanwhile, Kasim has realized the error of his ways and wants to return Wilda to her husband -- but his palace is attacked by Sarkhan, plotting a coup with the aid of a mercenary troupe. Corrigan and Yasmina arrive, and Corrigan helps Kasim defeat his cousin, returning control of Turistan to its rightful prince, who finds in Yasmina the wife he had wanted.

It's a bit weird, but there's sort of a FLASH GORDON vibe in this one. Desert palaces were not an uncommon sight in Alex Raymond's run on that strip, and Wilda's predicament here echoes Dale Arden's periodic imprisonments by Ming the Merciless -- occasions during which he would typically dress her in skimpy attire and lust after her, trying to force her into marriage. But beyond that, there's nothing particularly special about this arc. We're getting back to the rut I noted a couple weeks ago, where there's no continuity to speak of and it never feels like anyone is in any real danger, which means the strip itself feels like it's going through the motions.

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.

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.

SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN PART 1

JANUARY 20TH, 1967 - APRIL 8TH, 1967
APRIL 10TH, 1967 - JULY 1ST, 1967
JULY 3RD, 1967 - SEPTEMBER 9TH, 1967
By Al Williamson & Archie Goodwin

No, your eyes don't deceive you! Though we're continuing the adventures of the man we've known over the past three weeks as X-9, the title of the strip has changed. Per the introduction to IDW's first volume of SECRET AGENT CORRIGAN strips, around the time Al Williamson and Archie Goodwin came aboard as the strip's creative team, King Features Syndicate changed the strip's name as well, in the interest of drumming up some new readers for a feature whose circulation had never been exceptionally high. I don't know if the name change had any impact on that circulation, but I can say with certainty that the Williamson/Goodwin team makes this strip instantly more enjoyable and simply more readable than it was thirty years earlier under Alex Raymond, Dashiell Hammett, and Leslie Charteris.

Certainly this is due in part to the passage of time and changing tastes and attitudes among the readership. The strips of the sixties are more in line with the sort of stuff I compared the vintage X-9 material to last week -- the faster-paced stuff like SPIDER-MAN and DICK TRACY. Where the 1930s X-9s typically featured four panels and copious words, these strips are generally three panels as a rule with much fewer word balloons and captions. On one hand, that makes them less dense than the older stuff, but at the same time, it also makes them way easier to read.

Plus, these strips are scripted by Archie Goodwin, a comic book writer by trade, so he knows how to tailor his words to a sequential art medium, unlike novelists Hammett and Charteris. That helps immensely to make this stuff more palatable and much more fun to read. In fact, let me put it this way: over the past three weeks, it took me multiple sittings to get through every X-9 storyline, even the shorter ones. But for today's post, I read four arcs in one sitting of about an hour -- and I don't feel as if anything was rushed past in the process.

SECRET AGENT X-9 PART 3

APRIL 21ST, 1935 - July 27TH, 1935
JULY 29th, 1935 - SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1935
SEPTEMBER 23RD, 1935 - NOVEMBER 16TH, 1935
By Alex Raymond w/Leslie Charteris

X-9 parts ways with his sidekick, Sidney George Harper Carp, as this arc begins. Carp is headed "down south" to look into some investments, while X-9 returns to Washington for a new assignment. And thanks to the departure of Dashiell Hammett, it feels like a new beginning for the strip. Immediately, Alex Raymond rectifies some of Hammett's prior mistakes. For one thing, we finally actually see X-9's boss, "the Chief", showing at long last that our hero really does report to someone in the government. The Chief takes statements from some Texas Rangers who are on the trail of a group of bank robbers called the Iron Claw Gang, and a young man they kidnapped, Philip Shaw -- the son of a banker who was killed in a robbery.

In Texas, X-9 learns that the robbers are after some untapped oil mines which Shaw and his father owned. But Shaw doesn't know where they are -- however, he tells the robbers that there's a map hidden in the bank. Carp returns around this point; through sheer coincidence he happens to be in the vicinity of the robbery. X-9 also has an assistant for this case, a beautiful Federal agent named Ruth Meredith. It's kind of funny; every storyline so far has featured an attractive girl -- but unlike, say, the Spider-Man strip, where Peter Parker would be floored by every chick he met and frequently wind up making out with them, X-9 remains entirely chaste at all times. It's like the strip wanted to introduce a new love interest in each arc, but couldn't actually do anything with them due to the moral standards of the time. It's weird.

That said, young Phillip Shaw does fall for Ruth when she and Carp show up to save him from the gang, and the two become a duo for the remainder of the storyline, jumping in and out of trouble at every turn as they try to reunite with X-9. (Which, by the way, is kind of refreshing to see in something from this era. Ruth comes across as a pretty confident and capable operative, not needing to be rescued by anyone -- and in fact doing some rescuing herself -- as she tries to protect Phillip.)

SECRET AGENT X-9 PART 2

DECEMBER 17TH, 1934 - MARCH 9TH, 1935
MARCH 11th, 1935 - APRIL 20th, 1935
By Dashiell Hammett & Alex Raymond

Secret Agent X-9's next storyline is easily the most 1930s-ish piece of fiction you'll ever find, if for no other reason that than it features a spunky newsboy named -- wait for it -- "Harmonica Slick" abetting our hero. The arc focuses on a girl named Jill, the center of a bitter custody battle between her working-class mother and her wealthy aunt. The aunt had previously disowned her son for marrying a simple factory worker, but now that he's dead, she wants the fruit of his loins to raise in a life of privilege. But naturally, Jill's mom would like to keep her daughter.

Enter X-9 (still going by the name of Dexter, though he made clear in the very first story arc that it was merely one of may aliases he's used). For reasons never explained, he arrives to sit in the gallery at the hearing -- and it's fortunate that he does, for Jill is soon kidnapped by mobsters working for the notorious "Rocks Greer". Greer wants to hold the girl for ransom, and X-9 sets off on the crook's trail with Harmonica Slick by his side. Eventually, after several harrowing chases and narrow escapes, X-9 catches up with the criminals and rescues Jill -- but Greer escapes.

I can't say there's much to write home about here. The story is fine, and I'm sure it was probably of more interest to the people of 1934, since from what I've gathered over the years, they ate this sort of thing up (orphans and kids playing the harmonica, I mean). But, as with the prior two storylines, it's pretty unspectacular. Indeed, thus far the only saving grace to the strip has been Alex Raymond's artwork. I mentioned last time that I'd discuss it this week, so let's do so now.

SECRET AGENT X-9 PART 1

JANUARY 22ND, 1934 - SEPTEMBER 11TH, 1934
SEPTEMBER 12TH, 1934 - DECEMBER 15TH, 1934
By Dashiell Hammett & Alex Raymond

Secret Agent X-9 begins his newspaper run in grand fashion, with a storyline that runs over nine months and sees him tangling with a local mob as he works to solve the murder of a wealthy magnate.

Strangely, I'm not sure yet exactly what X-9 is supposed to be. I mean, obviously he's a secret agent. He spends this storyline going by the name of "Dexter", but he mentions more than once that it's an alias and says at one point that he's used so many names, he doesn't remember what his real one is. He reports to a mysterious "Chief" and a quick flash of his ID is all it takes for the cops to immediately snap to attention and begin taking orders from him.

It all adds up so far, right? He's clearly some kind of super G-Man with top security clearance. But if that's the case, then why does the soon-to-be-murdered Mister Tarleton Powers ring him up at home and ask him for protection like he's a common private detective? Is that part of his cover? It's never explained. But in any case, it's a good thing this random old guy does call our protagonist, because he's quickly swept up in the murder investigation, which leads him to uncover a plot by local gangsters, led by "The Top", to hijack a shipment of gold bullion coming into the United States.