Mister 8

If you haven’t been reading about costumes at the other COBRAS blogs this month, then you’ve been missing out! Before we get into our plans for this month, let’s recap what we’ve seen so far.

Double O Section kicked things off in style with a week of costumed criminals and heroes of the Eurospy genre:

• Introduction to Costumed Adventurer Week
• Fantastic Argoman
• Danger: Diabolik!
• Fenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankamen
• Flashman
• Satanik
• Kriminal and Mark of Kriminal
• Costumed Adventurer Week Wrap-Up

Spy Vibe followed up with a look at fashion trends that influenced 60s-era secret agent films:

• Mods to Moongirls
• The 10th Victim Costumes
• Nehru Jackets
• Peeling off the Trenchcoats
• Fashion Bonus

Permission to Kill supplemented with a look at caped crusaders from the pages of comics and fumetti:

• Costumed Adventurer Week Introduction
• Superman: Japoteurs (1942)
• Real Costumed Super Heroes
• Avenger X (1967)
• Three Fantastic Supermen (1967)
• Batwoman (1968)
• Diabolik: Track of the Panther (1997)
• Barbarella (1968)
• Judex (1963)
• Superman: Doomsday (2007)

And this week, we’ll be looking, not at films, but at comics! The history of comics is filled with characters that straddled the line between secret agent and superhero. This week, we’ll be spotlighting a handful of them — three single characters and two super-spy groups — and hopefully ending the first COBRAS theme month on a bang, and not a whimper!

Each day, one of the silhouetted figures in the above banner will be uncovered. But feel free to guess as to who they might be in the meantime!

As a preview, for our video clip today, let’s take a peek at one such character that I won’t be covering this week — Spy Smasher! The character was the first superhero published by Fawcett Comics, who also published Captain Marvel (whom some mistakenly refer to as “Shazam,” the secret word that transforms the child Billy Batson into the superhero Captain Marvel). Spy Smasher’s primary M.O. was the smashing of Nazi spy rings. Spy Smasher had no powers, but relied on both gadgets and cunning in his patriotic adventures.

Spy Smasher starred in a 1942 12-part serial, in which he (played by Kane Richmond) took on the Nazi criminal the Mask. The final two chapters of the serial are online and are presented in four parts below:

In addition, Spy Smasher was featured in a flashback in an episode of Justice League Unlimited, fighting, you guessed, it, Nazis!

Join us tomorrow, where we’ll look at a group of characters created by one of the most underappreciated creators in the history of the industry!