Comic Strips Archives

Secret Agent X-9!

Comic Strips, Serials, Spy-Fi Comments Off

Apr 292013

Phil Corrigan, alias Secret Agent X-9, was a popular comic strip character of the 30's and 40's (though the feature ran well into the 90's) created by the acclaimed mystery writer Dashiell Hammett and artist Alex Raymond (who would later go on to create Flash Gordon, and then Rip Kirby for the same newspaper syndicate). Universal Studios produced two movie serials based on the character, both simply titled, Secret Agent X-9; the first in 1937 and the second in 1945.

The 1937 serial has Agent X-9 functioning pretty much as a standard movie G-Man, chasing after a ring of international jewel thieves. It’s a very decent serial; Scott Kolk makes an adequate X-9, and Jean Rogers (Dale Arden in Flash Gordon) is a lovely leading lady. Unfortunately, it’s not really a spy story. Instead, it’s pure, Depression-era, cops and robbers melodrama.

The 1945 serial, on the other hand, is a genuine espionage adventure. This one stars a young, up and coming Lloyd Bridges as Phil Corrigan, Secret Agent X-9. The charismatic and talented Bridges was a far better actor than most other serial heroes, and his nascent star quality really infuses the 13-chapter serial with energy. Unlike some other chapterplays of the era, you don’t get bored between fistfights and car chases.

The story is set in 1943 on the aptly-named Shadow Island, a small isle of intrigue somewhere off the coast of China, which the Japanese have allowed to remain neutral. Of course, secret agents from all over the world descend upon the island, which is portrayed as a sort of South Pacific Casbalanca. Shadow Island is run by a saloon owner named Lucky Kamber (Cy Kendall), but he’s only allowed to operate at the sufferance of a sly and slinky Japanese agent called Nabura (Victoria Horne in faux Asian make-up).

The plot revolves around the accidental discovery by a Japanese scientist (Benson Fong, Charlie Chan’s #3 son) that aviation fuel can be manufactured cheaply by mixing an artificial chemical called 722 with water. Seeing the obvious benefits for Japan’s war plans, Nabura devises an intricate plan to steal the formula for 722 from an American scientist in the States. Fortunately, Australian spy Lynn Moore (Jan Wiley) learns of the plan and, in response to her report, American Intelligence sends Phil Corrigan to Shadow Island to foil the plot. Soon after X-9’s arrival, he finds himself not only teamed with the pretty Aussie agent, but partnered with a very competent Chinese operative named Ah Fong (the great Keye Luke, Charlie Chan’s #1 son). It’s a good thing, too, because X-9’s got his hands full.

Shadow Island swarms with suspicious characters. Among the various factions maneuvering on Shadow Island are a mysterious French couple – Hotel owners Papa and Mama Pierre – whose motives and loyalties are unknown, and an enigmatic gentleman known only as Solo (Samuel S. Hinds) who sits for endless hours at Kamber’s bar playing tiddley winks. Additionally, there’s a Japanese submarine (and its crew) standing by to facilitate Nabura’s scheme, and a "civilian" German freighter commanded by Herr Kapitan Graf, in port.

Needless to say, double (and triple) crosses, gunfights, brawls and shadow skulking are the order of the day on this island of spies, and X-9 has to keep on his toes if he’s going to foil Nabura’s machinations. The serial is briskly-paced (unusually so, for a Universal serial, which tended to be more leisurely than those produced by studios like Republic and Columbia) by directors Lewis Collins and Ray Taylor, and has fairly high production values. The pre-WWII setting is fascinating, and the cliffhangers are all pretty exciting. The final chapter is satisfying, too – not always the case with these Saturday matinee chapterplays.

VCI Entertainment offers both Secret Agent X-9 serials on DVD. Both look good, but the 1945 serial looks particularly fine for its age. There’s some occasional, minor print damage here and there, but the transfer is very solid for the most part. The VCI disc also includes a commentary over the first chapter by mystery writer and comic strip historian Max Allan Collins, an interview with Bridges’ son, Beau Bridges, a still gallery, and trailers for other VCI serial discs.

I'm a big fan of old serials, and the 1945 Secret Agent X-9 is one of my very favorites. Not only is it a great serial, but a fun spy movie, too.

Forgotten Books: The Complete Color Terry and the Pirates, Volume 1 – Milton Caniff

Comic Strips, Forgotten Books, Milton Caniff Comments Off

Dec 142012

(This post first appeared on May 20, 2007, in slightly different form.)

This volume collects the first nine months or so of the TERRY AND THE PIRATES comic strip, both the color Sunday pages and the black-and-white dailies, which follow two separate continuities at this point in the strip’s history. The dailies explain, sort of, why Terry Lee and Pat Ryan are in China to start with. Pat’s an adventure writer (although he’s too busy adventuring to ever write about it), and Terry is there to look for a lost mine left to him by his vagabond grandfather. Although Caniff doesn’t specify this, I get a sense that Terry may be an orphan, which is why Pat, a family friend, has taken the youngster under his wing. The search for the mine involves them with the first of the beautiful women who inhabit the strip throughout its run, riverboat captain Dale Scott. Later on our intrepid heroes run into a more well-known Caniff female, heiress Normandie Drake.

Meanwhile, over in the color Sundays, Caniff is in the process of introducing his most famous character of all, the female pirate Lai Choi San, better known as the Dragon Lady. Terry and Pat are captured by the Dragon Lady and taken to her stronghold, where they get mixed up in a mutiny led by the Dragon Lady’s second-in-command, who is also in love with her and jealous of the attention she pays to Pat. If you’re familiar with the Dragon Lady, though, you know she’s not going to let her heart overrule her mercenary nature. She’s always got some sinister scheme going on.

The hardboiled action and sexual tension of these yarns is what really sets them apart from other comic strips of their time and makes them the groundbreaking classics that they are. The art starts off rather crude but rapidly improves, although by the end of this volume it still had not reached the heights of excellence that it would over the next few years. You can already see the cinematic framing, the detail, the use of silent panels and darkness and light that really set Caniff’s work apart, though. This is wonderful stuff if you’re a comic strip fan, and I highly recommend it.

One word of warning: Connie, the Chinese sidekick of Terry and Pat, is about as politically incorrect a character as you’ll ever find, especially in his heavily-accented dialogue. At the same time, he’s right there to save the day on numerous occasions and despite being the comedy relief usually functions more as a third hero than a sidekick, so I’d advise modern readers to look past the surface stereotyping.

Forgotten Books: Rick O’Shay, Hipshot, and Me – Stan Lynde

Comic Strips, Forgotten Books, Stan Lynde, Westerns Comments Off

Jun 152012

I've mentioned before that RICK O'SHAY was one of my favorite comic strips when I was a kid. I was referring just to the Sunday episodes, though, which always appeared in full color on the front page of the comics section in our local newspaper. You see, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had two editions, a morning and an evening, and different comics ran in each edition. The Sunday paper ran a mixture of comics from both editions. So I never saw any of the O'Shay dailies until much later in its run, except for those occasional times when I came across an out-of-town newspaper. But I loved the Sunday strips, which were stand-alones instead of being part of the daily continuity. I always read them before I went off to Sunday School, and before I could read, my dad read them to me.

So Stan Lynde's RICK O'SHAY, HIPSHOT, AND ME held quite a bit of nostalgia value for me, in addition to being very entertaining in its own right. After a fairly brief autobiographical essay, the book reprints the first two weeks of the daily strip, to show it all began, and then ten complete storylines ranging from 1959 to 1977, including the last work on RICK O'SHAY that Lynde did.

One thing that came as a complete surprise to me because I'd never read the daily strip was that in its early years RICK O'SHAY was set in modern times. The settlement of Conniption was a former ghost town that looked like Western, the citizens rode horses and dressed like the Old West, but there were also TV sets, movies, automobiles, machine guns, etc., sort of like the setting of so many of those Roy Rogers movies I also loved. It wasn't until more than halfway through the strip's nearly 20-year run that Lynde changed the actual setting to the Old West. Also, it was much more of a humor strip early on, before developing into a fairly straightforward Western adventure strip in its later years (although with practically every character name being a pun, there was humor all the way through).

For me, the highlight of this volume is "Trackdown", an epic storyline that ran for six months in 1974 and '75. It's probably the grimmest and grittiest that RICK O'SHAY ever got, with Rick turning in his badge so he can pursue the men who ambushed his friend Hipshot across the border into Mexico. Lynde's ink bill must have gone up during those months, because the strip is darker than ever before, in the literal sense, and in places the use of light and shadow reminds me very much of the great work of Milton Caniff.

Lynde was an early self-publisher. This oversized paperback from 1990 was published by his own company, Cottonwood Graphics, and it's still in print. I really enjoyed revisiting Conniption and reading some new (to me) adventures of Rick and his sidekick, the gunfighter Hipshot Percussion, who is one of my all-time favorite comic strip characters.

After leaving RICK O'SHAY, Lynde created another Western adventure comic strip, LATIGO, which our newspaper did carry. I read that faithfully all through its relatively short run and enjoyed it. Dean Owen wrote four LATIGO tie-in novels that were published in paperback. I used to have all of them but never got around to reading them. Lynde did some single-panel Western gag strips that were pretty good, self-published a few Western comic books, and eventually turned to writing Western novels, many of which are available on Amazon as e-books. I have a few of them and plan to read them soon. There's a pretty good chance I'll enjoy them . . . even if they're not quite like reading the Sunday "funny paper" with my dad.

New This Week

Comic Strips, Matthew P. Mayo, Max Allan Collins, mystery fiction, New This Week, Paul Cain, Westerns Comments Off

Mar 262012

As I mentioned, last week was unusual. This week I have only three new books to talk about . . . but they look like good ones.

Paul Cain – THE COMPLETE SLAYERS. This is a beautiful limited edition from Centipede Press that reprints Cain's novel FAST ONE (in its original form as published in BLACK MASK) and all of his shorter fiction. It includes a lengthy biographical introduction by editors Lynn F. Myers Jr. and Max Allan Collins that reveals quite a bit of new information about the mysterious Paul Cain, including his real name. The book is signed by Myers, Collins, and artist Ron Lesser, who provided the great cover and several interior illustrations.

Max Allan Collins (again) – DICK TRACY: THE COLLINS CASEFILES, VOLUME 1. This handsome trade paperback reprints the first three storylines by Collins when he took over the writing duties on the Dick Tracy comic strip in 1977. Tracy is a longtime favorite of mine, but I haven't read these stories yet and I'm looking forward to them.

Matthew P. Mayo – WRONG TOWN. This is a new e-book edition of a Western novel originally published a few years ago in England by Robert Hale as part of the Black Horse Western line. My review of it will be coming up in a few days.

Wednesday Cover: The Spirit

Comic Strips, Comics, Wednesday Cover Comments Off

Mar 072012

Yesterday was the late Will Eisner's birthday (March 6, 1917 – January 3, 2005). Eisner was an amazing cartoonist, writer, innovator and teacher. Obviously, his most famous creation, The Spirit, was a huge inspiration to me and influence on my work - especially Femme Noir. In fact, the initial spark of an idea for Femme Noir was to create a "female Spirit" (though I think the character evolved beyond that). I am grateful that I had the opportunity to meet Eisner and shake his hand, and I also treasure the extraordinarily kind note he sent me years ago regarding one of my projects.

I met Eisner at the Capital City Distribution trade show in '94, just prior to the release of The Crow motion picture (the first one). Publishers Kitchen Sink Press had both Crow creator James O'Barr and Eisner at their booth. There was a huge line for O'Barr and not a single person talking to Eisner when I happened to walk by. I was shocked by how little attention the man was receiving from the crowd - but also pleased at the opportunity the situation presented. I went over to Eisner, thanked him for all he had contributed to the medium and for all the joy he had given me with his work.

As we shook hands, he graciously thanked me.

I feel so fortunate that I had the opportunity to tell him how much his work had enriched my life. A year or so later, I sent him a copy of the short-lived crime fiction/crime comics magazine that I created and edited, Noir, on a whim. I was pleasantly surprised when he took the time to send me a short, complimentary note on the first issue. I was walking on air that entire day.

From 1983 to 1992, Kitchen Sink published a regular Spirit reprint title, and Eisner managed to create a new cover illustration for every issue. The cover above, from Issue #38, is one of my favorites.

Comic Strippers!

Comic Strips, Dick Tracy, Pop Culture News Comments Off

Jan 302012

Last year, my pal and Femme Noir partner-in-crime, Joe Staton, landed the penciling gig on the Dick Tracy newspaper strip, and has continually knocked it out of the park artistically. If you haven't been following it in your paper (assuming there's a paper in your town that carries it) or online, you've really been missing out.

Yesterday another artist pal of mine, Terry Beatty, with whom I worked on the Mickey Spillane's Mike Danger comic book some years ago, took over the art chores on another long-running classic comic strip, The Phantom (Sundays)! The first installment (above) looks beautiful, and I know that Terry (and colorist Tom Smith) are only going to get even better as time goes by.

It's a shame that so few newspapers carry adventure strips these days, but it's good to know that two of the most legendary American comic strips survive in the talented and capable hands of my friends!