Omschrijving
Collected for the first time, the secret agents in
Marvel’s spy comics from the 1950s keep Cold War
America safe from Red agents and saboteurs.
Shortly after launching his men’s adventure line of comic books
in 1949 (and just before he published his first war title), Atlas
publisher Martin Goodman found, in the middle ground between
crime and men’s adventure, the sneakier, conspiratorial sub-genre
of spy comics. The first title was Spy Cases (soon followed by Spy
Fighters and Kent Blake of the Secret Service) and the contents
were Cold War noir stories, as Doug Grant, Secret Agent, protected
America’s interests, fighting commies from behind the Iron Curtain.
Led by superlative action/adventure artwork by Al Hartley (later
Bill Savage) and supported by Atlas titans including Gene Colan, Bill
Everett, Russ Heath, Jerry Robinson and Joe Maneely, America ferrets out sinister threats in thrillers like: “The Traitor!,” “Discs of Death,”
“Frame-Up in Red,” and “The Case of the Missing B-29!”
All spy comics had healthy runs and by 1952, the Korean War made
its presence felt in every adventure title. Patriotic, but also subtler,
darker and more sinister than the familiar costumed hero titles, the
spy genre is a little-seen aspect of Marvel’s deep history.