Mister 8

Greg Hatcher at Comics Should Be Good has written a nice overview of James Bond comics, with a few other tidbits about album and paperback art thrown in for good measure. He also points out this lovely-looking book by Alan Porter which will debut next week:

James Bond: History of the Illustrated 007

Soon, very soon, we’ll be writing about other secret agents, but here’s another Bond bit, a commission by comic artist Tim Sale. This one’s from the collection of Bill Nolan, who shared the art on ComicArtFans.com. According to Nolan’s write-up, this was an anniversary present for his wife, the “Jen” noted at the bottom.

Tim Sale is, of course, the famed comic artist and often partner of writer Jeph Loeb, together responsible for acclaimed comic series like Batman: The Long Halloween and A Superman For All Seasons. What’s great about this piece is that Nolan also supplies an in-process pic of the pencils, so we can see the behind-the-scenes of how Sale creates the pin-up.

Pencils by Tim Sale

Finished Tim Sale Art

This was the second John Drake comic published in the United States, after Dell Four Color #1231, which featured a Danger Man story. Though I own them both, I’ve chosen to highlight the Secret Agent issue because…well, because it seems the artist of this comic had photo reference so the images actually look like Patrick McGoohan. The Dell issue occasionally resembles McGoohan, but more than often looks like a generic Irishman, and a chubby one at that.

Art is listed on several websites as being by Bill Ligante. Writer unknown. Published in 1966.

Gold Key Secret Agent #1 Cover

Gold Key Secret Agent #1 Inside Cover

Gold Key Secret Agent #1 Page 1

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Gold Key Secret Agent #1 Inside Back Cover

Gold Key Secret Agent #1 Back Cover

There’s a second issue that followed this one, but I don’t have a copy. I’ll see if I can eBay one on the cheap in coming weeks.

The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, art by Dean Motter

What follows is an attempt to briefly chronicle a history of The Prisoner in comic books. It will, by necessity, be incomplete, because I don’t want to quote whole articles from publications I respect, nor do I want to give away all plot points to Askwith/Motter’s The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, in hopes that readers will seek it out. Instead, consider this a touchstone for learning more about the history of Prisoner comics, both published and unpublished.

Our story starts with Prisoner fan and Marvel editor Marv Wolfman (who recently eulogized McGoohan on his blog), who secured the rights to the Prisoner license in the mid-1970s. Wolfman had planned to script the book himself but had to delegate to someone else when he became editor-in-chief. The writer getting the nod was Steve Englehart, who was also a fan of the show. He inherited Wolfman’s artist, the great Gil Kane. Kane didn’t have much time on his hands either, so layouts were done by Joe Staton.

In the Marvel style, art was produced before the full script. However, by the time Kane’s 18 pages worth of pencils were produced, Englehart had a falling out with Marvel, and was poised to leave the company. He had one piece of unfinished business before leaving, though. As he wrote in an essay published in the magazine Comic Book Artist, “I’d been waiting a long time to write The Prisoner, and by God! I was going to write that issue.” Marvel told him he had to turn in the script the following day, and Englehart worked into the night to finish it. Script and art for the first issue completed, Marvel still declined to publish. Said Englehart: “Marvel got cold feet because I was a radical who’d resigned over honor, and here was a script about a radical who’d resigned over honor.”

Englehart and Kane’s adaptation of the first episode of The Prisoner remained unpublished though Topps Comics came close. Englehart worked with inker Steve Leiahola to complete the splash page of the issue for a booklet for the Bay Area Con:

Art by Gil Kane, inks by Steve Leiahola

In 2002, Heritage Comics sold all 18 pages of original art to Kane’s Prisoner adaptation. Their auction carried the following description:

Gil Kane – Original Art for “The Prisoner” – Complete 18-page story (Marvel, unpublished). An instant hit upon its debut in 1966, “The Prisoner” was the story of Number Six, played by Patrick McGoohan, a secret agent trapped in “The Village”. A popular show to this day, there were at least two abortive efforts to bring the show to the four-color page before DC eventually succeeded in 1988. According to Steranko’s Mediascene Magazine (Nov.-Dec. 1977), the idea of creating a comic adaptation of the popular TV show came via a proposal by Marv Wolfman, leading eventually to a work-up by writer Steve Englehart and artist Gil Kane. The project was reportedly shot down and reassigned to Jack Kirby, who produced a more finished, yet ultimately unproduced book. To our knowledge, although the Kirby pages have surfaced from time to time, this is the first time the Gil Kane effort, long assumed to be lost, has ever been seen by the public. Offered here are 18 pages of tightly finished pencils with indications for the placement of word balloons and various editorial notes and markings. Each page measures approximately 17.5″ x 11.5″, and all are in excellent condition. This was Kane at the height of his creative output, and his total mastery of the form shines through on every page. We are pleased to be able to offer this newly-found treasure to Kane’s legion of fans.

Some samples of Kane’s art can still be seen on the auction page. Here are but a pair of those pages, the rest can be seen for free by registering with the Heritage site.

Arrival by Gil Kane

Arrival art by Gil Kane

Following the deep-sixing of the Englehart/Kane story, Stan Lee turned the duty of adapting The Prisoner over to old collaborator Jack Kirby (If you don’t know who Jack Kirby is, do yourself a favor and Google his name. We’ll wait, don’t worry. Now try to imagine the 20th Century without him.). Comics scholar Charles Hatfield picks up the trail there, in his wonderful essay, “Once Upon a Time: Kirby’s Prisoner,” for the Jack Kirby Collector.

Kirby had earlier included a Prisoner homage story in his renowned run with Stan Lee on the Fantastic Four, that saw the titular heroes banished to a town run by Doctor Doom. The mood of the show, and the sci-fi modernist designs, seemed especially suited for Kirby’s art, as did the heavy-browed visage of McGoohan, who resembled Kirby heroes of the 1950s. Like Kane before him, Kirby completed a full issue of the Prisoner before Marvel abandoned it, reportedly due to the lack of action in the mostly expository issue.

Kirby’s art too has surfaced. The first six pages were inked by Mike Royer, and the rest exist in pencils only. Many pages have appeared in Kirby Collector, while others, like those below, regularly make the rounds of the “blogosphere.” Owner / original scanner unknown:

The Prisoner by Jack Kirby

The Prisoner in the Village by Jack Kirby

Number 6 interrogates a waitress, art by Jack Kirby

The resignation scene by Jack Kirby

Meet Number 2, art by Jack Kirby

Angelo Muscat, drawn by Jack Kirby!

Not until 1988 did an official Prisoner adaptation see print, at the hands of writer Mark Askwith and writer/artist Dean Motter (of Mister X fame), for DC Comics. Titled, “Shattered Visage,” this adaptation was set twenty years after the dismantling of the village, where Number Six is rumored, at least among intelligence circles, to still live. The memoirs of the last Number Two (as “played” in the comic by Leo McKern) have been published as The Village Idiot, supervised by government officer Thomas Drake. Drake’s wife Alice is setting out on an around-the-world yacht trip, but when the boat runs aground on the island holding the Village, the story takes a turn for the…enigmatic? Metaphorical? Multi-layered? Complex? Perhaps we’ll just say that the comic, in it’s playful spirit, serves well as a sequel to Fall Out.

Obscure references to the original series, and to other spy fictions, permeate the story, which includes a cameo by my favorite Number Two, Georgina Cookson. I’m not completely sold on the ending of the tale, but find it a fascinating and rewarding read. Motter told Comic Book Artist Magazine of his feelings about the story, and the original series:

When I was first approached I remember thinking: “I can do the story of a man with no name trapped in an architectural nightmare where nothing is as it seems.” Hell, I had been riffing on that theme in my own Mister X for a couple of years! While the influences of Kafka and Orwell were usually capricious in Mister X, they seemed more ephemeral in The Prisoner TV show. Though Timothy Leary, The Beatles, Lewis Carroll, and Ian Fleming are often cited as the program’s Zeitgeists, I think it has always been obvious that the ordeal of Number Six had really more in common with Animal Farm, 1984 and The Castle. Indeed, each episode opened more like Metamorphosis than a 007 adventure. In any case, much more thought went into that discussion by McGoohan et al. long after the series ended.

Still available fairly inexpensively, The Prisoner: Shattered Visage still generates discussion among fans. Recently, a group of fans began publishing an audio play of the comic.

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For what it’s worth, my favorite two pages are these:

Shattered Visage, art by Dean Motter

Digital watch! Art by Dean Motter

Other tributes and homages to the Prisoner abound, in Grant Morrison’s Invisibles, for instance, and Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Evan Dorkin re-posted an old cartoon, “Prisoner of Second Ave.”…

Art by Evan Dorkin

…Along with a brief tribute:

Ah, it comes to all of us and 80 is a fine number to hit at the end of it all, but this one hurt. I’m a big mark for McGoohan, onscreen he just keeps your eyes and holds them, and while his acting style is certainly affected and clipped and a bit odd, I love it. I always wished he worked a bit more than he did, but maybe seeing him in more dreck, which is what mostly gets made, would have diminished his enigma. Then again, a few minutes with him in mediocre stuff like The Phantom (which I like, but it’s hardly great stuff) or Silver Streak, and it’s like good special effects in a so-so film, at least you got to see that happen on the screen. Although if he was in some really topnotch stuff, it could’a been real magic. If he cared for that, which he didn’t. He did what he wanted, how he wanted, he was a free man. His button said Number 6, but he was Number 1, baby.

I haven’t heard of any new sanctioned Prisoner comic strips on the publishing horizon, but to close, I’d like to point you in the direction of the blog of Clayton McCormick, who is also revisiting the Village in a free online comic:

Art by Clayton McCormick

We’d be remiss too, if we didn’t mention our own future comic effort…but it seems a little awkward to declare, I am not a number, I am Mister 8!

Be seeing you!

EDIT 07/28/2009:

For the purpose of presenting a complete account, I want to add the most recent comic adaptation of the most recent version of the Priz, created by AMC. It’s available for download at the AMC website as a PDF.

culpable

/kulpb’l/

1. deserving blame.
2. describing a weekend in which your esteemed host got to meet I Spy star Robert Culp.

This weekend was the New York Comic Con, and my wife and I made the drive down…partially because I enjoy comic books (obviously) and partially to meet with a client for whom I do web design. I made some pretty good purchases, and saw a few things that I thought you folks might be interested in seeing.

First was the booth for the Geppi Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, Md. What first caught my eye were these Gilbert James Bond toys:

Gilbert Bond Toys

And then I noticed this picture amongst those on the booth wall:

Geppi spy corner

…a corner of an exhibit completely dedicated to ’60s spy toys and memorabilia! The Geppi Museum’s website states that their mission is to: “[present] the story of popular culture since the nation’s earliest days in an entertaining and educational fashion so that our guests have the unique opportunity to walk through a timeline that parallels and is entwined with history as a whole.” If anyone lives near Baltimore, please check it out and let us know how you liked it.

Clifton - Jade

Second is a series of translated reprints that I’d like to which I’d like to call your attention. Cinebook is dedicated to bringing Franco-Belgian comics to English speaking countries, and had on-hand at the convention a number of books that were simply beautiful to look at. A few of them were secret agent related, including Clifton, a series of comical mysteries starring an ex-spy turned Scotland Yard detective, and IR$, about a rogue internal revenue agent (I opted for neither of these, but instead Blake & Mortimer, an adventure book with a beautiful style, similar to Hergé). The folks behind Cinebook are enthusiastic about their product and put out great quality work. I highly recommend them based on my purchases today.

Robert Culp signs an I Spy script

Third, and perhaps most awesome. While looking for an artist and wandering the labyrinthesque aisles of the comic con, I rounded a corner and spotted Robert Culp, the 78-year-old actor who played Kelly Robinson on the classic espionage show I Spy. While other comic book dorks gathered around William Katt (The Greatest American Hero, on which Culp played FBI agent Bill Maxwell), I had my picture taken with, and purchased an autographed I Spy script from Mr. Culp.

In honor of the sheer serendipity at finding Culp so unexpectedly, I’m making this I Spy week here at Mister8.com. To get you in the mood, here’s a three-hour interview that Culp did with the Archive of American Television, where he spends a good amount of time talking about I Spy (thanks to Wes Britton for letting me know about this!):

…I also picked up some free things from the Marvel booth, including some nifty magnets of the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo that I’m thinking of giving away in a contest here. I know, I know…giving away freebies in a contest? We’re in an economic downturn…what can I say? Stay tuned this week for details on how to win, if you’re interested. Hopefully, it will be the first of many contests to come!

Here’s the first story in Gold Key’s I Spy #2, with story probably by Paul S. Newman and art by Alden “Al” McWilliams.  Newman was a native of New York, whose work spanned multiple companies, though he’s best known for his work on another Gold Key (though it started at Dell) book, Turok. Connecticutian McWilliams worked mostly in sci-fi, though he’s also known for the daily spy strip Dateline: Danger!.

I Spy Cover

I Spy Inside Cover

I Spy Page 1

I Spy Page 2

I Spy Page 3

I Spy Page 4

I Spy Page 5

I Spy Page 6

I Spy Page 7

I Spy Page 8

I Spy Page 9

I Spy Page 10

I Spy Page 11

I Spy Page 12

I Spy Page 13

I Spy Page 14

I Spy Inside Back Cover

I Spy Back Cover

Last time out, we brought you the lead story from 1967’s Gold Key I Spy #2. This time, we wrap up that issue by presenting the back-up story, “The Tell-Tale Camera,” story by (according to The Grand Comic-Book Database) Paul S. Newman and art by Alden McWilliams.

Gold Key Comics’ I Spy #4, February 1968, story by Paul S. Newman and art by Alden McWilliams (for more on this duo, see the first posting in this series). Part I is below, and stay tuned for part II next Monday!

Mister 8, the comic, will be delayed this week as I recover from some sickness that hit me over the weekend. I’m all better today, but now am going to meet a government investigator doing a security check on my old college roommate, who I think is about to move up a Q level or something.

Despite not being a criminal, as far as I know, it’s sort of alarming to pick up the phone to hear someone on the other end introduce themselves as a “special investigator.”

In the meantime, this is part two of a story that we began last week. Gold Key Comics’ I Spy #4, February 1968, story by Paul S. Newman and art by Alden McWilliams.

For today’s Monday Masterpieces installment, I want to focus on someone whom I really do consider a modern “master” of comic art, who coincidentally has worked on a number of espionage-related projects…Chris Samnee.

I first discovered Samnee’s art in his collaboration with Greg Rucka on Queen & Country, and met him at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC, where I bought both a commission sketch and a copy of his and Ande Parks’ Capote in Kansas, which I later used in teaching English 102 classes (for these and others, check out the Chris Samnee Amazon listing).

It’s easy to point out the number of things I like about Samnee’s art…his proficiency in chiaroscuro, his realistic proportions, his use of negative space, his skill at drawing clothing, his ability to represent action in static images…but I think what I like most about him is that he seems to like what I like (seriously…who would even think to draw the Greg Sanders / Saunders version of the Vigilante, that classic Prairie Troubadour turned superhero riding a motorcycle straight out of the golden age?). Above all, I think we share the same favorite artist: Alex Toth. And if he’s not Samnee’s favorite, then he was at least an influence.

You can read Samnee’s work in Queen & Country, and again with Rucka in the superhero/spy DC series Checkmate, but what I want to bring you today are some of my favorite sketches from Samnee’s blog, where he regularly updates with new art and behind the scenes glimpses of his process. I’m limiting my choices here to those that are secret agent-related, but the blog contains a plethora of beautiful drawings in numerous genres.

Click on each picture to see the original blog posting from which I took the sketch.

Nick Fury

Zephyr and Casanova

Madmoiselle Marie

Bad Samaritan wardrobe design

Sidney Bristow

Queen & Country cast