Showing posts with label spies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spies. Show all posts

Monday, May 12, 2025

Nazi-Punchers GREEN HORNET "Society of the Swastika!"

Let's Cheer on the Hero Who Pretends to be a Villain...

...as he and his aide, Kato, match wits with racketeers and saboteurs, risking their lives so that criminals and enemy spies will feel the weight of the law by the sting of The Green Hornet!







We already showed The Green Hornet and Kato battling Russkie spies in America at the tail-end of their show's run in 1953 HERE and HERE.
But, this never-reprinted story from Harvey's Green Hornet Comics #18 (1944), at the peak of their popularity, shows they fought German and Japanese spies and saboteurs on the home front!
(And, in a couple of cases, behind enemy lines in Europe, as we'll show in the future!)
Illustrated by the co-creator of both Robin the Boy Wonder and The Joker, Jerry Robinson!
The tale's writer is unknown.
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Monday, April 7, 2025

Russkie-Smashers THE FLAME "BattleFront: Main Street"

Though He Was a Revival of This Golden Age Character...

...the 1950s reincarnation took only the character's nom-du-guerre, not the original's secret identity, nor his incredibly-lethal weaponry.
(This new version was Comics Code-approved!)
He was also saddled with a wife who had no idea about what he did in his spare time!





Like Samson, Wonder Boy, Black Cobra, and several other Golden Age characters who were licensed to Ajax-Farrell by the Iger Comics Studio (who wrote and illustrated the original 1940s stories), The Flame was revamped from his previous version to be more kid-friendly/less violent due to the backlash the entire comics business was experiencing from the sordid "Seduction of the Innocent" mania gripping the country by those who blamed comic books on the then-current juvenile crime wave sweeping the nation!
Like the other super-characters, The Flame's revival flamed out after only three issues of crime and Russkie-crushing!

Monday, February 24, 2025

Russkie-Smashers PHANTOM LADY "Television Spies!" 2.0

The Phantom Lady Usually Punched Nazis, but in This Case...
...she did so in a totally-redrawn version of a previous Phantom Lady tale! which now has her taking on Russkie spies!
In the original 1948 version of this tale, the tv images were in full glorious color, and television was just beginning to enter American households, so few people had actually seen a tv screen!
But, by the time of this story in Ajax/Farrell's Phantom Lady #3 (1955), almost half the households in America had tvs, but they were almost all b/w sets.
As a result, the tv screens shown in this version of the story were b/w, the way most Americans experienced video at the time.
Plus, in the original tale, it wasn't made clear if it was industrial spying or international spying!
The artist (or artists) of this tale are unknown, but the writer is probably editor Ruth Roche, as usual.
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Monday, January 13, 2025

Russkie-Smashers OPERATION: PERIL "Time Travelers in 'Amazons of Venus' "

"We must beat the Communists to Venus..."
"...in order to prevent the atomic war predicted by Nostradamus!"
The first Time Travelers tale was a fairly-straightforward 1950s sci-fi story.
But this one goes wayyyy out there with numerous cliches of the era including...
Cavemen and dinosaurs co-existing in prehistoric times!
Venus as a vegetation-covered world ruled by beautiful, half-clad women who keep their males subservient!
Commie spies in business suits...even when they're on another world!
Travel between planets taking about the same amount of time as the average morning commute!
Written by Richard Hughes and illustrated by Ken Bald, this story from ACG's Operation: Peril #2 (1950) expands the strip's concept to include space and time travel by integrating the time technology into a spacecraft provided by the US government.
As a result, the emphasis will switch from Communist threats to alien attacks.
Despite this, the series' title will remain "Time Travelers" for the entire run.
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Monday, July 29, 2024

NoKo Crushers MADAM ZERO "Rockets of the Red Mist"

Perhaps Falwell was inspired by this forgotten  heroine's never-reprinted final tale from Fiction House's Fight Comics #84 (1952)!
Anonymous Commie-buster Madam Zero made only three appearances in her short-lived career!
A mistress of disguise, she always surprised the (also anonymous) secret agent who narrated these stories and who played the helpless "Steve Trevor" to her plain-clothes "Wonder Woman"!
Nothing is known about her real identity, motivations, or even which department she worked for!
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Monday, May 15, 2023

Russkie-Smashers HUMAN TORCH COMICS "Atomic Ray Gun Toy Terror!"

The Human Torch's return to his own title in 1953...
...after several appearances in other books featured this tale about the perils of toy ray guns!
(I kid you not!)
Though this story from Atlas' Human Torch #36 (1953) was illustrated by Dick Ayers, Carl Burgos (the character's creator/original writer-artist) redrew both the Torch and Toro's flaming forms!
Trivia: Though a number of the 1950s Torch and Toro tales were reprinted (with minor modifications) in the 1970s (after the Comics Code loosened up), this story was too violent to reprint until the 2000s!
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Monday, March 6, 2023

Russkie-Smashers T-MAN "Death Trap in Iran" & "Trouble's Double"

What happens when you combine Russkies and Iran in a kick-ass 1950s spy story?
But, that's not all!
There's also this sanitized-for-your-protection, Comics Code-modified reprint from Quality's T-Man #31 (1956), which waters down all the kool hard-boiled elements from the original tale...and makes the Russkies into generic "Communists"!
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