Let's Avenge One Last Time...

Okay, we're going to spend one last blog looking at The Avengers in comics. Not those Avengers, the... Oh, you get it now. This time an in-depth review.

Presenting TV Comic Annual 1967:

So, for starters let's drink in that awesome cover image. That's Steed driving his Bentley (or at least a vague approximation thereof) with a whole mess of other TV Comic characters. Doctor Who is seated next to him (the William Hartnell model, and before any pedants complain he is called Doctor Who in the TV Comic strips, not the Doctor) and Popeye is right behind him. To the left of Popeye is Olive Oyl and to the right is Beetle Bailey. I'd be surprised if you could identify any of the other characters.

For the record the three kids are the TV Terrors (a strip about sneaking in to TV studios and the guard that tries to stop them), the little kiwi-looking gonk on the bonnet is Tivvy (an advertising mascot that originated in Finland and was the TV Times mascot at the time and proved surprisingly difficult to research) and the owl and sheepdog on either wing are Ollie and Fred (they hosted the puzzle pages).

Below the car you can see the Tardis in the distance and a racecar being driven by Mighty Moth. Mighty was an insect flapping around a house owned by "Dad" (the moustachioed chap on the far left of the picture) who would attempt to swat him with predictably disastrous consequences. I remember reading somewhere that it was commissioned as a Mighty Mouse strip before the licence was refused, however I can find no record of that now (and it doesn't seem to make sense apart from the name). Oddly, given that it was unrelated to anything that had ever been on TV, Mighty Moth was by far TV Comic's longest-running strip (it started in 1959 and ended with the last issue in 1984). It was drawn for all that time by Dick Millington, who died earlier this year. He was no stranger to ripping off TV characters, mind, as he was also responsible for The Daily Mail's 90s strip I Don't Believe It.

Also (possibly) worth noting is that this was published in late 1966, by which time William Hartnell had been replaced on Doctor Who by Patrick Troughton so may have bothered some children at the time who had already moved on. A problem that persists with Doctor Who Annuals to this day.

Never mind all that now, let's crack on with the first of two Avengers strips which featured on the inside of that cover. Here Steed and Mrs Peel are heading for a little New Years break in Scotland. 

Sir Jocelyn starts talking about top secret documents before even asking if they'd had a pleasant journey. Which is rude. 

"Oh no! Not Grodolsky! He's that baddy that makes your speech balloons spiky!" Even though it seems like Grodolsky is a returning villain, I'm pretty sure this is his only appearance. we're also introduced to a "boffin". 

Sir J finally asks about the journey (too little, too late, pal) and credit is made to ABC. 

Something's afoot! When the butler doesn't come back from the fusebox, our heroes go investigate and find him unconscious in the cellar... 

Hmm... the plot thickens... Steed sees Grodolsky walking away from Sir J's study so asks to check in the safe. 

The code means nothing so our heroes spy on Grodolsky in the clumsiest way a professional spy could (unless the spy is Bond). 

Sounds like more code... 

After bedtime, Steed keeps an eye on the Professor and Emma watches Grodosky.

Must get one of those doors that spell out onomatopoeia.

When Steed and Emma's paths cross they startle each other.

The visor on the suit of armour slams like in the intro to the 1968-9 series!

It's all gone a bit slapstick. The noise brings Sir J and the butler running.

So that was it! Mystery solved! Or mystery dissolved, I suppose. It was nothing to do with the plans after all. But what about the lights and the beaten butler?

Oh. That's... an explanation, I guess. I feel cheated. Let's just cut to the ball.

Well, the first strip may have defied all reasonable story rules but let's see if the second was any better.

Love a bit of exposition at the start.

The master of disguise seems to be hobbling along in his old man persona. Is he Keyser Soze?

It seems the detectives weren't told he was a quick change artist. Or they're just idiots.

In the show bible for The Avengers it is stated that no actual police ever appear. If you see a policeman in an episode you can be sure they are fake.

The 1967 episode The See-Through Man is about invisibility (sort of, no spoilers) and Macnee himself played Invisible Jones in that movie we don't talk about.

Steed and Mrs Peel speed to the suspected hideout, whereupon...

There's a valuable lesson. And I hope you didn't snigger at the word "queer". You're better than that.

Oh dear. We're not going to get some casual racism are we?

I do love how Steed's English gentleman accoutrements have practical applications for the job. Especially the umbrella.

This disguise chap really likes to stay in character.

Some swift judo moves and one of the baddies is captured. Is he our man?

Time for a car chase!

And some road safety advice!

A waxworks! Such an Avengers location!

Wouldn't it be easier to find a hiding spot? No? Okay.

Steed has a plan to flush him out.

And it seems to have worked!

So what was the plan?

That was all! Steed simply had to stare at each dummy individually for long enough to reasonably assume that if it were a person it would have blinked. Then eventually you'd find him. Assuming he wasn't hiding under a desk or something and you don't spend hours staring at every exhibition for nothing. Good job it was the first one you looked at then, eh? Eh?

It's all very silly but really rather charming.

And with that we leave the comic strip world of The Avengers (not those ones, the other ones) forever. Probably.

The Avengers in Comics 2: Back on the Steed

So, the last time I was looking at the appearances of The Avengers (John Steed, Emma Peel, Cathy Gale et al) in comics. It turned out to be a little more than I expected when I started (as these things always seem to) and along the way I forgot a few important things.

Before that though, I'm indebted to The Avengers Illustrated for providing the sources for some of the images I used in the previous blog and also for this image from the Smash Annual 1968, from the strip Charlie's Choice:This strip by Brian Lewis for the Odhams publication was about a boy with a magic television. Every week characters would step  out of the screen and interact with the real world (usually staying smaller than the screen size). 

On the Avengers TV show itself, John Steed was seen to be a fan of Belgian ligne claire icon Tintin, the boy reporter.

On the left there is a still from the episode The Golden Fleece (1963) reading Tintin au Pays de l'Or Noir (originally collected in book form in 1950) in the original French (it wasn't released in English until 1972 when, as Tintin in the Land of Black Gold, it was partly redrawn to change references to Palestine to a fictional country). On the right is the English-language Tintin in Tibet (1960 in French, 1962 in English) from Man with Two Shadows (also 1963)

In 1964's The Outside-In Man Steed can be seen reading The Secret of the Unicorn (1943/1952) and muttering "Blistering barnacles" to himself! (A catchphrase of Captain Haddock's, in case you didn't know.)

(Captain Haddock is a character in Tintin if you didn't know that.)

(Honestly, you should go and read some Tintin.)

All of those episode are from the third series and Steed's habit does not resurface on screen until series six, when, in the episode Look- (Stop Me if You've Heard This One) -But There Were These Two Fellers... (which, clumsy title and all, is one of my personal favourites) he can be seen reading Le Lotus Bleu at the end.

This was originally collected in 1946 but not published in English until 1983! It features Tintin meeting his friend Chang for the first time and heavy criticism of the Japanese oppression of China in the war years.

There may well be more examples of this but these are the only ones I've found so far (not having seen many of the pre-Peel episodes).

A great fun episode from the show's fifth season (1967) features people being murdered, apparently by a comic-book character called The Winged Avenger (I know, using that word "Avenger" again just makes things more complicated).The artwork for the fictional comic was provided by British comics legend Frank Bellamy. Bellamy will probably be best remembered for his work on Dan Dare for The Eagle (he was hired to revamp and redesign the strip after replacing creator Frank Hampson) and the Thunderbirds strip for TV21 as well as the long-running Daily Mirror strip Garth.

The episode itself has Bellamy's artworks being recreated in reality as copycat killings ensue. Oddly (I discover in researching this), one of the images used is of a drawing of the Winged Avenger slapped on top of a Black Hawk comic from DC. 

But by far the most egregious omission from the previous blog was the comics influence of the episode A Touch of Brimstone (1966). 

An episode deemed too sexy for broadcast on American television back in the day, it involves Mrs Peel infiltrating a seedy criminal organisation modelling itself after the 17th century depravity collective known as the Hellfire club.

The villain of the piece is played to sleazy perfection by Peter Wyngarde, best known for playing TV's Jason King (as well as other sleazier stuff: don't click on this link).

Years later, in Chris Claremont and John Byrne's genre-defining run on X-Men for Marvel, a mind-controlled Jean Grey (feeling some early effects of the Dark Phoenix) finds herself falling in with a bad crowd also modelling themselves after the Hellfire club.

Here is Emma being presented to the Hellfire club by Peter Wyngarde as their new "Queen of Sin!":

And here is Jean being presented to the Hellfire club by "Jason Wyngarde" as their new "Black Queen":The Hellfire club is now a firm part of the Marvel Universe and it's various personnel have had Avengers references (the London branch was once run by "Emma Steed" for example) as well as references to other actors.

You can find plenty of information about Marvel's Hellfire Club (along with Sebastian Shaw and Emma "White Queen" Frost) elsewhere should you be so inclined.

That's all for now. Next time: TV Comic Annual 1967 and the Avengers strips in depth. And this time I mean it.

The Comics Adventures of The Avengers (not those ones)

One thing I love almost as much as comics is old sci-fi/fantasy telly. And if someone asks me what my favourite TV show is I usually say The Avengers.

Rarely does one get a show which oozes stylishness and charm like The Avengers. A standard adventure drama that took place in bizarre world of outlandish deathtraps, clown contract killers, hypnotic toys and sleepy English villages hiding dark secrets. It could only have happened in the 60s and now looks like the perfect bridge between Bond and Batman. And the centre of it all was Patrick Macnee. 

 Macnee died last week at the impressive (and Christopher Lee-equaling) age of 93. It's fair to say that The Avengers would not have existed without him.

The series began with Ian Hendry as a doctor (if not a police surgeon) drawn into a world of drugs distribution by the death of his fiancee by a mysterious stranger, John Steed, who helps him track down the killers and (ahem) avenge her.

Hendry's character David Keel did not last beyond the first series as the writers became more interested in writing for Steed, entirely because of his charming, delightful persona. So in the second series Steed became the focus of the show as he used various other operatives to assist him on his cases depending on their skills (sort of like the Impossible Missions Force). It quickly emerged that the one the public really wanted to see more of was Honor Blackman's Cathy Gale.

She was the tough no-nonsense action hero, ready to use her fighting skills to get Steed out of trouble, which was a neat reversal of what was then the norm for gender roles. And, let's be honest, still is.

And when Blackman left to be in Goldfinger (she is wasted in that movie) after the third series we get the partner for which the series is best known: Diana Rigg's Mrs Peel.

At the end series four the show moves into glorious colour and even when Rigg leaves to be in a much better Bond movie (it's true, accept it) she gets to hand over to her replacement for the final series, Tara King, played by Linda Thorson.

"He likes his tea stirred anti-clockwise."

The show ended in 1969 but was revived as The New Avengers in 1976 with Macnee now teamed up with Joanna Lumley's Purdy and Gareth "magic the beans" Hunt as Gambit. Perhaps not anywhere as good as its forebear it is nevertheless a fun show in its own right. And the pilot episode has them foiling a plot to bring Hitler back to life. *cough*

Macnee also made a cameo as Invisible Jones in the 1998 movie The Avengers. Least said soonest mended.

But this, I hear you cry, is a comics blog. How right you are. And like many long-running TV shows (especially those with a fantastical bent) its history on the comics pages is almost as long as the show itself.

The earliest I have found reference to (though have yet to see evidence of) is a 1962 "annual"-style hardback called TV Crimebusters, which has a strip with Steed and Dr Keel. Apparently the only tie-in merchandise ever to feature Keel, the cover also promises adventures with Dixon of Dock Green, 77 Sunset Strip and others.

The next example is a comic strip that appeared in various regional TV listings magazines in 1964, The Viewer, Look Westward and TV Post (a Belfast-published mag) as well as the Manchester Evening News. It featured Steed and Mrs Gale and seems to have been pitched as a rival to the James Bond strip or Modesty Blaise.

The Avenger sexed up a bit. But doesn't Steed look old? Reminds me of Wilfred Hyde-White.

Next came the legendary TV Comic (which ran from 1951 to 1984) where one could read adventures of Steed and Mrs Peel between October 1965 and September 1966.

And later, Steed and Tara King appeared in stories from October 1968 (less than a fortnight after her TV debut) to August 1972 (well after the series ended).

Like the TV show, these strips started like most other action-adventure stories...

...before embracing weirder, more extreme tales, using the limitless budget of the comics format.

But, in those in-between years, DC Thomson acquired the rights to The Avengers and published adventures in girls' comic Diana between December 1966 and June 1967 in FULL COLOUR! 

The impressive artwork was mainly by Emilio Frejo and still looks very impressive.

It's arguable that this strip starts to show the influence the then-current Batman TV show as one story even involves a hat-themed murderer referred to as the Mad Hatter!

Also published for the first four months of 1966 in another DC Thomson title, June (or June and Schoolfriend as it was at the time), was The Growing Up of Emma Peel. This was the adventures of a fourteen-year-old Emma Knight, kind of like the Young Bond books of the early 21st century.

One strip even sought to show us the "secret origin" of Emma's pants suits.

There are also three Avengers Annuals (1967-69) and two New Avengers Annuals (1977-78), all containing strips...

...but no more Avengers comics until 1990. Unless you count those other Avengers. You know. THOSE guys.

Then Eclipse Comics somehow got the rights to the franchise (I guess no-one else cared at the time) and Slipper favourite Grant Morrison wrote a three-part story, with a back-up story by Anne Caulfield and all art by Ian Gibson (of Halo Jones fame).

The story sees Steed contacting Mrs Peel to help him rescue a kidnapped Tara and having to play deadly versions of board games to do it, in a manner very much influenced by the TV show, which is nice. The art is quirky in a way that suits the overall Avengers style. I suppose I expect something much more interesting from Morrison but this is a fun addition to the canon.

By 2012 Boom! Studios, a publishing house which has done fun things with its licences, acquired the Steed and Peel rights and reprinted the Morrison/Gibson story as though it was new. *cough*

It then commissioned a follow-up from another Slipper favourite, Mark Waid (arguably the most under-rated comics writer of all time) with art by the excellent Caleb Monroe.

More than any other story thus far this one riffs on elements of the TV show and ups the stakes. The inheritors of the Hellfire Club (from the episode A Touch of Brimstone) and the Cybernauts (from... er.. The Cybernauts) are key plot elements and then London is destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Yep, that happens. Or does it (trying to keep this spoiler free)?

Most recently Boom! have kept the franchise going with Steed and Mrs Peel: We're Needed, by Ian Edginton and Marco Cosentino, which has been okay. 

Whilst writing this article I remembered an Avengers (and by that I mean Marvel's Avengers, not the others, Grodd, this was a difficult article to research with Google) Annual I read as a kid where the heroes (Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, Giant Man and Black Panther; not the greatest line-up ever) attend a costume party where someone mistakes them for our Avengers. I now know it was a reprint of Avengers 83 and the guests were writer Roy Thomas and his then-wife.

I didn't get it at the time. In fact, this being one of my first encounters with superhero comics, I didn't understand half of what was going on. One of them could have been called Mrs Peel for all I knew. There is also a mention of Dr Pepper at one point and I assumed he was an Avenger too.

This then reminded me of other unofficial appearances by our heroes over the years. For example when the Toyman made his first post-Crisis appearance in John Byrne and Karl Kesel's Superman 13 he is presented to us by two British agents. I guess the idea of an evil genius exacting revenge through murderous toys just seemed so much like an Avengers plot. 

And in Doctor Who Magazine 173 (1991) a visit to a pan-dimensional birthday party gives us the opportunity to see lots of characters from disparate franchises interact. Here you can see Ace in the background watching Captain Britain hoist up Steed while Emma prepares to hand his arse to him. On the left you can see Professor Kettlewell's Robot and (I think) Absalom Daak punching out a robot from The Mind Robber. Story by Gary Russell, art by Mike Collins and Steve Pini.

I didn't notice this next one at the time, but here is Steed and Peel at a bar with Future Superman in Kingdom Come by the aforementioned Mark Waid and Alex Ross. 

And I once got very excited when reading DC's weird miniseries based on The Prisoner, by Mark Astwith and Dean Motter, when they were spotted at the funeral of an agent.  

Incidentally, according to the official biography of John Steed he went to Eton with James Bond. He didn't like him. And in Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, a younger "Emma Night" is assigned to recapture the titular document from Alan Quatermain and Mina Murray alongside "Jimmy Bond" and Bulldog Drummond.

 She and Bond do not get on... 

However, LOEG Century 2009 we find the older "Em" is in charge of the secret service (and looking a lot more like Judi Dench).

And now that Ralph Fiennes is playing M in the Bond movies I can sort of imagine that Steed is now in charge of British intelligence. And the boss of Bond.

The Avengers influence can be seen elsewhere in comics. There's Wonder Woman's "mod" look that ran from 1968 to 1973. One Diana influences another.

There's bowler-hatted heroes like Big Ben from Warrior, Max Normal from 2000 AD and, of course, Mark Millar's Secret Service agent Kingsman (I have very mixed feelings about that).

There is also a strip from Judge Dredd Mega-Special 6 (1993) by Robbie Morrison and Paul Grist about some familiar-looking shoe fetishists being hauled in by Dredd with the words "There's nothing kinky about THE LAW!" I was unable to source any images from that (which is a shame; but if you can help...) but the story was called....

KINKY BOOTS!

Next time: A thorough review of The Avengers stories from the TV Comic Annual 1968! Please come back!

Addendum: I started writing this over two weeks ago when the opening statement of the third paragraph was true. IT problems (and tedious day job) meant it took me till today to finish. So this is not the timely tribute I wanted. However I found out TODAY thanks to a press release via San Diego Comic Con the DC have announced a crossover between their Batman '66 and Steed and Mrs Peel (the article says it's by IDW not Boom!, which I assume is a mistake but who knows?) and I could not be happier about that. Batman '66 (comics based on the style and continuity of the Adam West-starring TV show) have been a consistently entertaining read based on one of my favourite TV shows (particularly Jeff Parker's writing) and I can't wait to see that world interact with its British contemporary. We live in magical times, y'all!