Atlas-Seaboard Comics - August 1975!

There are only two-color comics from Atlas-Seaboard wearing an August date.

THE DESTRUCTOR #4 is a weird, weird comic book. This series began with Atlas-Seaboard's most accomplished creative team (Goodwin, Ditko, Wood), but by the time this vintage urban crime/action/superhero series gets to its fourth issue only Sturdy Steve Ditko remains from the original trio. He's joined by Gerry Conway on scripts and Al Milgrom on inks. We find The Destructor hiding from Combine thugs in a cave somewhere in the Southwest. He dispatches them, but one is destroyed by a mysterious beam. Jay Hunter, our hero, looks up to see some very unusual Ditko creations, The Outcasts. They are The Eye, Kronus, and Sister Siren and they happen to be mutant freaks with telepathic abilities and more, and they are specifically looking for Jay Hunter, because like them he's an Outcast. Or so they say. Just like that, our story turns and the plot threads of the last three issues are largely forgotten as the Destructor is taken to the Secret Citadel. It's a haven built in the 1950's by disaffected folks looking to escape the dangerous world outside. They unwisely worked with an unscrupulous businessman who insists they use nuclear power in their underground city, which leaks radiation, infects their sixty or so children and creates the Outcasts. After killing the businessman and his associates, the parents live out their lives and now thirty years later in 1975, the irradiated progeny are in charge. They want Jay Hunter (strangely called "Jay Raven" in one panel) to join them to protect the city from outsiders. There's a bit of dramatic irony when in a typically strange Ditko panel the Outcasts appear quite devilish when an unaware Jay Hunter agrees to join them. Suddenly there's also a new underground nuclear test that irradiates the city again and our hero the Destructor, blending with the chemicals already in his blood and viola he can suddenly unleash power blasts from his fists. With this new talent, The Destructor agrees to battle for the Outcasts and the story ends. What happens next we'll never know, because this is the last issue of the series.

The Destructor was in many ways, Atlas-Seaboard's most accomplished series, but sadly by its finale it has become a bizarre shadow of itself. The hero has been contorted beyond recognition, and the story's twists and turns are well outside the limits established in the rather intriguing beginnings. I'm not sure The Destructor was my favorite Atlas book, but its fall was easily the most disappointing.

And we must not forget VICKI #4, the final issue of the run for one of Atlas-Seaboard's more successful comics. As a fanboy in 1975, my nascent sense of completism caused me to buy the first issue of Vicki from Atlas-Seaboard. I liked their other offerings and so I took a tumble on this Archie-like book.


I was jarred a bit by the interiors which seemed a bit cruder than I expected. They had a generic quality. It would be several years before I learned that these were reprints of a defunct Tower Comics comic titled Tippy the Teen. As I recall they did make some small efforts to update the stories with changes in clothing style, but there was no masking the overall lackluster nature of the work. They have become a tad scarce it seems, simply because clearly, I wasn't the only one ignoring them on the stands.

More Atlas-Seaboard to come next month. 

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The Life And Legend Of Woody!

This month as I've been diving into the THUNDER Agents and other things by Wally Wood, I've been supplementing my readings with essays from  two sumptuous volumes from Fantagraphics titled The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood. Not a standard biography, though there is some of that here too, these volumes offer up choice remembrances of the great comic artist by those who knew him best. There is a tremendous number of essays by former assistants and even a recorded roundtable conversation by a host of them. These essays and interviews by the likes of Bhob Stewart, John Workman, Steven Thompson, Nick Cuti, Al Williamson, John Severin, Larry Hama, Ralph Reese, Paul Kirchner, Bill Spicer, Bill Pearson, Len Brown, Flo Steinberg, Tom Sutton, Trina Robbins, and Wally Wood himself among many others delve into most all aspects of Woody's career from the EC days and right up to his final porn work for Nuance. There is as you'd suspect a tremendous number of illustrations and even a few complete stories from the earliest days. These are a bit costly I'll admit but I've had a splendid time this month not only reading some vintage stories by Wally Wood, but reading about the development and construction of those stories. 

But we're not quite done yet. More Wally Wood and his legacy tomorrow. 

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Undersea Agent Volume One!

When Tower Comics burst upon the Silver Age comics scene they came with a bomburst - the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. This book designed by Wally Wood had a sleek 60's modern sensibility and is still adored by fans today.

Tower's next offering was less successful. While the company, which also gave us the war book Fight the Enemy and Tippy Teen, would eventually spin off THUNDER Agent titles Dynamo and NoMan, their other initial follow up to that hit was UNDERSEA Agent. U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. was an anagram like T.H.U.N.D.E.R. (The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves). It stood for
United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis. It's top agent was a man with the ideal undersea name Davey Jones.

As long as they appeared (six issues) Davey Jones and the UNDERSEA crew never crossed over with the THUNDER boys. Drawn by veteran Ray Bailey the book looked exceedingly old school and lacked the pizzazz of the THUNDER book. Trying to get some of that glow, the book was revised late in its run and Gil Kane was handed the gig.

IDW Publishing reprinted those Gil Kane stories in a slim but handsome hardback. I wish someone would publish the whole shebang, as the series (warts and all) deserves a larger audience, but I'll take what I can get. I don't quite own all the UNDERSEA Agent books, so some of these are new to me.

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Thunder Agents ClassicsVolume Six!

This is my review of the sixth and final volume collecting up the original run of Tower Comics' T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (including spin-offs Dynamo and NoMan) as collected by IDW. While these reprints are not ideal in every way, they are handsome enough and offer the vintage 60's saga in a handy-to-read format unlike any I've possessed.

These tales are less impressive than their mighty legend, not unlike the beloved EC Comics, but nonetheless they are worthy stories which showcase the strengths and weaknesses of Silver Age comics thoroughly. Wally Wood and company (Dan Adkins and Ralph Reese mostly) are at their best as are Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Chic Stone, Reed Crandall, and so many others. Artistically George Tuska and Mike Sekowsky turn in some strong work but alas the stories lack much of the spy glamour which attaches to the more atmospheric Wood stuff.

Here are the final issues of the classic original run which are included in this latest volume, which sadly does not feature one of these great recreation covers by Ryan Brown. This one is only credited to Wally Wood, though clearly it's been given a brush up. All the new material from the final issues is here right up through the finale which featured only a few pages of fresh material.

There was a delay of many months between issue seventeen and eighteen of the run. The cover of the eighteenth issue is by Reed Crandall and the nineteenth is a composite. 

A full year passes before issue twenty hit the stands. It's almost all reprints with only one new quick story reprising the origins of THUNDER and Dyanano. The cover is by Chic Stone. 

Next week the focus will be on that other Tower super agent. 

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Thunder Agents Classics Volume Five!

I've very much enjoyed reading these vintage stories as IDW has continued the reprints despite the failure o the new material to find a footing. Wally Wood's influence is still evident but his role is beginning to diminish in these stories as the series continues to its inevitable end. This features the first of the THUNDER titles without a Wood-esque cover, but rather a clearly Gil Kane effort (see below).

Dynamo continues to have problems with his powers, specifically his belt. Seems he's always getting captured and NoMan in particular gets weary of having to turn the belt on for him. So in an attempt to improve the belt the powers at THUNDER give it the ability to respond to a word. If Dynamo's similarity to Captain Marvel (now Shazam) wasn't already strong it is made more so when he has only to say "Excelsior" to gain his strength and invulnerability. I can't help but think that there's a nod to Stan "The Man" as well. Later he goes to a distant planet to fight mysterious aliens on their home turf. Dan Adkins is taking a stronger hand in the work at this point. Len Brown's love life is mostly a disaster as always. 

 Andor shows up in a Wally Wood story and his outsider outlook is strengthened by his change to a hippie of sorts, albeit a hippie with powers. Lighting continues to have problems with his own powers and ends up the volume in suspended animation when his body rebels. Raven gets a makeover and thanks to Gil Kane takes part in a wild action-packed adventure that changes his direction. NoMan plows ahead losing bodies by the dozens but still stopping SPIDER, the new gangsters on the scene. 

With the cancellation of UNDERSEA Agent we get a story from that series stuck in to help pad out an issue. It's good and all but out of place in tone and art. 

Here are the issues in this volume.  Issue twelve's cover was apparently based on a Larry Ivie design. Ivie being a person who seems to take a bit too much credit for his contributions to the Agents, though he was present. 

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Thunder Agents Classics Volume Four!

More utterly wonderful THUNDER Agents action in this fourth installment of the reprints from IDW. This one showcases my favorite agent NoMan. The idea of a an old man who injects his mind into an army of potentially immortal androids and who uses a cloak of invisibility is fantastically rich stuff. Of course the other agents are around, especially Dynamo and Lightning.

Apparently Tower Comics hit a snag after the publication of the first NoMan comic and several months pass before we get another trio of comics from the company. I don't know what caused the hiatus, but I doubt it was part of some master plan.

The superhero and spy fads which sparked the creation of the THUNDER Agents was beginning to wane a bit and despite the push to expand with new titles, the folks at Tower might've begun to see the whole enterprise was becoming less tenable. We'd get only two issues of NoMan's self-titled comic, both are here in this one volume, and only one more Dynamo after the one included here.

The artwork in these is a veritable who's who of Silver Age greatness with notable efforts by Gil Kane, Ogden Whitney, John Giunta, Manny Stallman, Chic Stone, George Tuska, Dan Adkins, and of course Wally Wood. The scripting for these stories is largely uncredited, but Steve Skeates does appear many times.

It's perhaps easy to say that the high point of the Agents has already passed by this time in the series, and there's validity to that assessment. But nonetheless these are hearty Silver Age yarns, and pretty entertaining to boot with some lovely artwork as the team battles the forces of SPIDER. 

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THUNDER Secret Files!

The THUNDER Agents are a wonderful blend of superhero and superspy universes enmeshed with a substantial science fiction glamour attached to it all. It is a comic series that is defined by its art as much if not more than any other. The names of the writers of most of the stories are forgotten or disputed, but the artist are much better documented. Wally Wood was given the brief to create the THUNDER Agents and in that mission he brought in such pros as Gil Kane, Mike Sekowsky, and Reed Crandall among others. But it was Wood who defined the series and its characters. 

Not least among these was the evocative Iron Maiden, a villainess in the classic vein, desirous of the wealth that crime can bring but foiled time and again by her attraction to the hero Dynamo. What this voluptuous vixen ever saw in dim Len Brown is anyone's guess, but doubtless she wanted to "fix" him. 

And he needed fixing. Dyanamo is a modern update of Captain Marvel in may ways. When needed the crackle of electricity and a flash of lightning mark the arrival of Dynamo thanks to his nifty belt that allows him for a brief time to become invulnerable and amazingly strong. Very often Dynamo is portrayed as a weapon, deployed into his missions from bomb bay doors and landing troop carriers. He's a one-man army who is constantly captured but always rescued, either by his own wits or more likely the arrival of his allies in THUNDER. 

His greatest ally is NoMan. NoMan is Anthony Dunn, or better to say he was Anthony Dunn before the latter gave up his aged body to inhabit an army of android bodies, each of which is more powerful than his own. He uses a cloak to become invisible at times and is remarkable in that he "dies" in virtually every story he's in. It's a short-lived death as all he has to do it transport his mind into another android and he's at it again. He's effectively immortal in a way. 

Menthor was a villain named John Janus who gets the third of THUNDER's great weapons, a helmet that makes him able to use telepathy and telekinesis among other things. Menthor intends to betray THUNDER but the helmet changes him and Janus becomes a true hero. He's a tragic hero because he is killed in the line of duty, a stunning turn of events in the day. 

The THUNDER Squad is made up of four stalwarts who represent to varying degrees normal folks who serve the agency. There was a fifth member named Egghead but he was killed so quickly that he didn't even make the poster above. Dynamite shows up once a while to help on missions. Weed gets his own series as something of a light-hearted spy story and plays on his insecurity being among all the alpha males in THUNDER. Kitten is often on hand to turn the tables on the enemy who think she is an easy victim. Her looks affect the other agents from time to time. Not least of which is Guy Gilbert who leads the squad before becoming Lightning, a fourth super THUNDER Agent. He is given the gift of super speed but at the cost of time from his own life. 

THUNDER begins in order to fight the Subterraneans, who first appear in the guise of the Warlord who commands an army of zombie soldiers. Soon the greater threat is revealed as all of the planet is threatened by these ghastly folk from deep in the Earth's bowels. THUNDER does eventually defeat them though they keep popping up from time to time. 

One of the more fascinating creations of the Subterraneans is Andor. Drawn above by Dan Adkins (who gave his name to Dynamite) Andor is a human taken as a baby and reared in the underworld . He is trained and given inhuman abilities in order to battle the enemy which turns out to be THUNDER. He turns on his masters and becomes a wandering soul looking for his place in a strange world. He sometimes falls victim to his origins, but usually is able to stand up for himself. He's perhaps the most fascinating ongoing figure in the whole saga. 

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Thunder Agents Classic Volume Three!

THUNDER Agents Classics Volume 3 is a rock solid collection of Silver Age superhero action with a vintage espionage flavor. At this point the agents are firmly developed. The sometimes dim-witted Len Brown as Dynamo continues to succeed, sometimes in spite of his efforts in classic tales by Wally Wood. NoMan, the android able to switch bodies on a whim continues to use his invisibility cloak to good effect in stories drawn exceedingly well by John Giunta. Lightning, a capable agent and former leader of the THUNDER Squad uses the life-destroying speed suit and fights a wide variety of unusual threats in wacky stories by Mike Sekowsky. With the death of Menthor, a new agent is introduced. Raven joins the team, though after the initial story drawn by George Tuska he seems to be operating in a whole other world than the other agents thanks to some wild stories and wilder artwork by Manny Stallmann.

The threat of the Subterraneans, the threat which has motivated THUNDER since the first issue is finally laid to rest after the eighth issue, though echoes of the struggle keep popping up here and there, especially in stories featuring the superhuman Subterranean creation Andor. But that aside, the new menace is S.P.I.D.E.R. This super-organization of human criminals stands as the opposite of THUNDER in many respects as reflected in their name Secret People's International Directorate for Extra-legal Revenue. The switch is not immediately apparent in the tone of the stories since many of the villains formerly associated with the defeated Subterraneans switch over to SPIDER such as Demo, Dr.Sparta, and even the Iron Maiden. New baddies do emerge such as Tarantula and Mayven.

There are some real gems in this particular collection, my favorite story being "The Black Box of Doom" which has the whole team (minus Raven) trying to keep the enemy world powers from getting their mitts on a mysterious but deadly box from space. Other offbeat highlights are some lighter-toned stories by George Tuska in a broader style featuring Weed of the THUNDER Squad which give the books some needed laughs.

Solid entertainment! Here are the covers of the issues in this third volume. 

In the fourth volume we'll see that NoMan gets his own series.

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Thunder Agents Classics Volume Two!

The second volume of THUNDER Agents Classics from IDW is chock full of vintage Silver Age goodness. With artwork by a who's who of the time, the reader can feast on some of the core stories which created the myth of this Tower Comics phenomenon. Wally Wood continues on the lead feature, but finds more help from Reed Crandall, Mike Sekowsky, George Tuska, Gil Kane, John Giunta, and especially Steve Ditko and Dan Adkins. Many of the stories are credited to Steve Skeates, something of a surprise to me.

The real surprise is the key story in this collection which includes THUNDER Agents #5, 6, and 7 along with the debut issue of Dyanamo is a blockbuster tale titled "A Matter of Life and Death" written and designed by Dan Adkins, drawn by Steve Ditko and inked by Adkins and Wood.  This is the story upon which much of the Agents reputation sits, the story which changed the game. Early in the series Egghead,  a member of the THUNDER Squad died with little fanfare, but in this story one of the headline members of the agents meets his maker as Menthor is killed in action.

Unlike the ballyhooed and bombastically hyped "deaths" in modern comics which seem to occur on nearly a monthly basis, this demise was a true surprise. Heroes didn't die in the Silver Age, at least not mainstays like Menthor seemed to be. He was one of the original three THUNDER Agents before the advent of Lightning. Raven would hop onto the scene soon after, filling the void somewhat, but there was no denying the death of Menthor was a big deal in the Silver Age of comics.

Here are the covers of the issues included in the second volume.

Upcoming is the third volume of IDW's reprint series which debuts the weirdness of Manny Stallman and the end of the the threat of the Warlords and their minions. 

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Thunder Agents Classics Volume One

The first volume of IDW's THUNDER Agents reprint series (produced in conjunction with yet another attempt to revive the team some years back) contains the first four issues of the original THUNDER Agents run where we get to meet Dynamo, Menthor, Lightning and my favorite Agent NoMan. There is death, destruction, and international intrigue galore.

To be honest the Agents were a flawed masterpiece in the beginning. Wally Wood's stories are slick and the tone is uptown for sure. But alongside that are stories drawn by veterans Gil Kane and Mike Sekowsky and George Tuska which are much more classic superhero action yarns. Some of the characters are not drawn to model which must've been unclear for the varied assignments at the time. But as the series continues things tighten up nicely. That first issue though almost feels at times like there were two separate Agents projects which just got jammed into the one twenty-five cent comic book.

I enjoy Dynamo, he's such a goofball, and they way that Wood presents him time and again as a weapon, a thing to be deployed is fascinating.  I completely adore the whole concept of NoMan, one of the great comic book heroes. But I've never been a big Menthor fan, until this reading gave me a new appreciation of the arc he goes through. I always forget too, that Lightning is a later addition like Raven to the team. And the Iron Maiden is in the running for sleekest and possibly sexiest character Wally Wood ever drew. It was way cool though to read those stories again after all these years. I put together a collection of the original comics many years ago, but these days I love to read trades and this gives me the chance to comfortably read some classic tales. Here are the covers. 

Coming up in the second volume, the most significant story in Tower Comics history and Dynamo gets his own series.  

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The Spy Who Came In From The Wood!

With this month beginning a bit late, I've altered my plans a bit. I started re-reading the THUNDER Agents from Tower Comics as part of a larger project but became so enthralled once again with the art and storytelling of Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, John Giunta, Mike Sekowsky, among many others that I've just focused on those again. It's been many years since I last read through these vintage Silver Age wonders and they continue to hold up quite well. I'll be brushing off some reviews I did for the IDW reprints some time back and seeing if I still agree with myself. 

Also on tap this month are some reviews and whatnot about Wally Wood that I first did for my now defunct sister blog "Rip Jagger's Other Dojo" which came into service briefly when this one became inaccessible for a time. I want to import the best of those here. 

And I don't rule out a few brand new items of interest as the month tumbles along. Wally Wood was a tragic genius in comic art and the more I read by him and about him, the more fascinated I become. 

See you all as the month unfolds.

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