Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Tag: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

Wallace Wood — Indie Hero

Original Art and The Artists

Heroes, Inc. #1, 1969

Welcome back to a month long celebration of the “Independents” — Independent creators and projects that continue to impact the comic book medium.

I recently noticed a fellow professional declare Wallace Wood the greatest comic book illustrator of all time.

Unlike most commentary on social media these days, as far as I can tell, no one jumped up and bashed him. Sure you can disagree, or have another personal favorite (Kirby, Williamson, et al) but you end up in the weeds of arguing whether Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb was the greatest baseball player ever.

If Wood isn’t the “best,” he’s still in the top few.

Wood was also a pioneer in the independent comics world, trying new things at a time when he was frustrated with the mainstream commercial publishers.

In fact, shortly after the cancellation of T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, Wood created an interesting series of “adult” oriented characters, primarily for the armed forces. 

Heroes Inc. features the only color version of any of these characters, and introduces the Misfits, self-explanatory name and all.

This comic was “rare” for a while in the 70s, but then someone discovered a warehouse find.

And then another.

Pretty soon, there were likely more than 100,000 copies floating around. It appears that 250K were printed and most were never actually distributed.

I sure hope Woody didn’t get stuck with any of that printing bill.

The Misfits made only two appearances, seven years apart. The second issue of Heroes Inc. made its debut as a “prozine” in 1976.

Steve Ditko and Wallace Wood — Time Of Death

Original Art and The Artists

T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents #7, August 1966

Death in superhero comic books had always been a gimmick. “Robin Dies at Dawn” likely meant he would be back by dinnertime. (In fairness, it’s a pretty good story.)

Imaginary stories, hoaxes, dreams, mad science, robots, time travel, alien resurrection, etc. all kept our featured players in good health. There was not much chance a title character was going to exit from his book permanently.

So back in the 60s, legitimately killing a character was in fact, a groundbreaking novelty. And this T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents story is one of the first. Ditko, Wood and company had spent 6 issues developing the character of Menthor (John Janus), and they shot him to death on this page in Issue #7.

This historic page captures that collaborative methodology of Woody and the Tower artistic team on T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents. Dan Adkins scripted and provided layouts, Ditko penciled the story, and Wood inked it, with assists by Adkins.

The original T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents lasted only last 20 issues, and perhaps, had it survived, John would have been resurrected at some point. But it certainly did not appear that way.

Unlike, say, modern times where killing a lead character is a gimmick once again.

Superman. Dead. Then alive.

Batman. Dead? Nope, he’s back.

Captain America? Reborn. Bucky? Not dead, just hiding in Russia for a few decades.

Etc.

A few months after the death of Menthor, teenaged writerJim Shooter kills off (spoiler alert) Ferro Lad in the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Menthor’s powers derived from a “cybernetic” helmet, so t was no surprise that another character would don the helmet and ultimately become a new Menthor when T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents was resurrected by other publishers. John Janus? Still dead, I believe.

Wallace Wood — Agent of Change

Original Art and The Artists

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #11, March 1967

Wallace Wood made his move.

The frustrated artist, working “Marvel style” on Daredevil — plotting AND drawing — but only paid for the art, heard about a new opportunity. Tower, primarily a book publisher, had decided to take a leap of faith into the comics biz, and Woody was ready to help them.

It was the perfect role for Woody, who had carte blanche to develop the comics as hew saw fit. He was artist, storyteller, art director and defacto editor — all rolled into one.

And with the help of friends/colleagues Len Brown (Topps Mars Attacks) and Dan Adkins, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was born.

Combining a super powered team (think Justice League) with a secret spy organization (ala S.H.I.E.L.D., which had just launched a few months prior) T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents was an effort to capitalize on the secret agent pop culture craze. (James Bond, Man from U.N.C.LE., et al.).

This page is a great example Wood’s crystal clear storytelling and trademark inks.  Adkins is credited in some instances on this story as the penciller, with Wood on inks, and due to the collaborative nature of the creative teams on these stories, it’s often easy to lose the thread of who did what. 

But this looks like pure Wood here, as Dynamo and his “duplicate” (there are actually three Dynamos in this story — don’t ask) are mowed down in a hail of bullets.

I’ve I always wanted to use that phrase.

Who are you going to call?:

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves.

U.N.C.LE. United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

S.H.I.E.L.D: Originally Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division and later Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate. In the MCU film and TV Universe, it means Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

By 1965, the super-spy craze (and acronym obsession) was in full bore in pop culture.
By the time of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents launch, Wood had created two bonafide superhero masterpieces. The Superman parody in Mad Comics and the Daredevil and Sub-Mariner crossover in DD#7 are still considered classics today.

Andrew Pepoy — Wally World

Original Art and The Artists

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 50th Anniversary Special (IDW), July 2015

No one today pulls off a tribute to the great Wally Wood quite like the very talented Andrew Pepoy. 

To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, IDW Publishing asked Andrew to illustrate a cover variant – an homage to the iconic Wood EC cover, Incredible Science Fiction #29. For our version, we substituted Wood’s astronaut with the sexy and villainous Iron Maiden, one of the main adversaries in Wood’s original T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents.

The detail is terrific (especially noticeable in its original B&W form), and while no one can actually replicate Wally Wood, this might be as close as it gets. Home run!

  • Pepoy Published Version
  • Original Wood Published Character
  • Original by Wood
  • Published Version by Wood