Spy Hunters #3
When I still had my collection, I had complete runs of both Spy Hunters and its companion magazine Operation Peril. I remembered them being dull with occasional bright spots in the art. It seems I remembered them accurately. I like spies and spy stories but a lot of early 50s spy comics were written like war comics. The mystery and intrigue served mostly to set the scene for a big military confrontation. That's the case with the first and last stories here. I preferred the approach DC took in Danger Trail, with more sneaking around and less blowing things up (the art was better, too).
As for the book in question: The cover is dramatic enough, but I'm puzzled that the Commies are on both sides of the fence. Maybe that's the idea. The sign, by the way, reads "Beware! Danger Zone!" At least I got something out of those three years of Russian in high school. I also remember how to say, "The happy life at the rocket factory," a phrase which I'm sure to need someday.
"Adventures of a Spy" is a bit disappointing. I agree with K1ngcat, Charles Sultan's artwork isn't up to his earlier standard. It looks like he wasn't giving it all he had. He seems to have tried to slick up his Eiger Shop style and lost some personality in the process. The story isn't terrible but a couple of items made me cringe, notably the Chorea/Korea and K/T clues. Okay, Chorea/Korea is clever but why on earth would top spies use such easily-solved code phrases? And K/T...wouldn't they at least use a code name rather than their own initials? Easy, big fella, it's only comic books.
"Date With Danger" is more interesting even though--or perhaps because--the Commies jump to the conclusion that Dr Osborn is the head of the local Comintern after listening to his recorded speech about birds. Surely somewhere in the speech it would have become obvious that he wasn't referring to the Comintern. The whole thing is hard to swallow (get it? swallow? hyuk hyuk). Incidentally, to answer K1ngcat's question, the Comintern (Third Communist International) was a real thing. To quote Wikipedia:
The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the state"[...]The Comintern held seven World Congresses in Moscow between 1919 and 1935. During that period, it also conducted thirteen Enlarged Plenums of its governing Executive Committee, which had much the same function as the somewhat larger and more grandiose Congresses. Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dissolved the Comintern in 1943 to avoid antagonizing his allies in the later years of World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom. It was succeeded by the 1947 Cominform.
By the time this comic came out it was the Cominform, though as I kid I heard about the Comintern all the time but never was informed about the Cominform. Besides, if they'd used Cominform the story wouldn't have worked, now would it? Unless Osborn had been giving a speech about brassieres. No, wait, that was Maidenform. Oh, now I'm all mixed up. Robert Pious' figures are a bit weak but his art has a nice shadowy noir look. At first I didn't understand what happened in the climactic bird attack (our page 25 panel 3). The birds are colored so dark that I didn't see them. It would have helped both to make the birds a lighter color and not to have the heavy shadow on the upper bird.
"Sleep of Death" reminds us that fascism always postures as defender of the good old days before they (the immigrants/the Jews/the Muslims/the Gays/the Woke) messed everything up. It's always the same old baloney, but no matter how often it's served some people just won't learn from history. That said, the would-be Leader here switches gears from demagogue to old-school would-be ruler of the world. I'm not sure exactly how he intended to take over the country after it was gassed, given that he has a small force and does not seem to have the support of A Certain Foreign Government.
If you stop a moment to consider what was going on when everybody in town was gassed, our hero would have found complete chaos when he came down from the Empire State. Those aboard every kind of moving vehicle, doctors performing surgery, workers building skyscrapers, chefs preparing meals, even people simply crossing a road--everyone would have been in deep doo-doo. Thousands of deaths, easily. But all's well that ends well. I still don't trust Virginia. Doesn't she bear some responsibility for her father's earlier successes?
"Jeopardy in the Jungle" reminded me of my early days as a Navy brat. When I was 5 or 6 years old we lived two years in the Philippines. One day while we were riding on a train my dad pointed to the distant hills and told us that Huk guerrillas were hiding there. Like many another kid, I heard gorillas and imagined Huks were scary apes armed with human weapons. There was no Huk activity while I was there so my theory was never tested.
Leonard Starr's art is by far the best in the book. It makes the story look better than it was. I knew Calvera was the surprise bad guy from the first page. He may as well have carried a sign saying, "It's me, dummy!" One thing isn't clear: was Tania sandwiched into the packing case alongside the hydraulic press or was she alone? If the latter, wouldn't Greg have noticed the press only weighed a bit over 100 pounds and bounced around in the box?
As was already pointed out, a jolly fat comical Chinese cook with a cleaver named Chops seems just a wee bit derivative. However he got to be the one who spotted the clue identifying Calvera as the bad guy, so good for him. He also turned pink for a page before returning to the ravages of carotenosis. You gotta lay off those carrots, Chops!
About those ads...Jim Prentice made a bundle off those "electric" sports games between the mid-30s and 1963, when he sold the company. He designed and sold other games and novelties as well. I never played Electric Football. A friend had Foto-Electric Football, which at first I thought was the same as this game. It wasn't. In Foto-Electric Football each player secretly chose a big card with a football play diagrammed on it. The cards were slid face down, one atop the other, under a sliding cover on the game base. Inside was a light bulb. As the cover was slid back the light revealed the plays. If the ball carrier line crossed an opponent's line a tackle was called. It wasn't as complicated as it sounds, and we had fun. That must have been some chintzy 16mm projector to use a household light bulb. $7.99 was a fair amount of money back then, but a 16mm projector suitable for "club meetings and parties"? The "Chug-a-Moto" was just a riff on the old playing-card-in-the-spokes noisemaker. But Lionel trains...now we're talking!
Author
Topic: Reading Group #281 Spy Hunters 3 Undercover Girl 5 (Read 2408 times)
