Literature Review
THUNDER Agents premiered in 1965 and was an attempt to cash in on two of the biggest trends in popular culture at the time: super heroes and spies. (If the creators could have found a way to work Beatles music into the series, I’m sure they would have.) It was published by Tower, a newcomer to the industry, one of the short-lived companies who tried to stake out a position in the market due to the heightened interest in super heroes. They and the series only lasted about four years, shuttering quietly in 1969 after 20 issues of THUNDER AGENTS and assorted other comics. One of the things that set the Tower releases apart from much of the market was the fact that they insisted in releasing their books in the oversized “annual” format and priced at a quarter, more than twice what a regular comic book cost at that time. This can’t have helped them in terms of parting kids from their loose change. But it does mean that every issue of THUNDER AGENTS was a cornucopia of good art and fun stories.
THUNDER AGENTS opened on a simple premise: mankind is under siege by a mysterious figure known as the Warlord, who possesses an army of shock troops and super-scientific technology. it will turn out in the issues ahead that he was the leader of a subterranean civilization that desired the surface world. To meet this threat, the nations of the world had formed T.H.U.N.D.E.R.: The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserve. THUNDER was the GIJOE to the Warlord’s Cobra Commander. The organization was well-financed and began to develop super-weapons of their own to counter the Warlord’s schemes. But before anything more than the prototype devices could be created, Professor Jennings is killed in a Warlord attack–leaving THUNDER with a trio of devices designed to give its operatives superhuman abilities, but no way to duplicate or mass-manufacture them. As such a trio of THUNDER’s operatives are selected to be the group’s super-agents and put their lives on the line to use Jennings’ discoveries to battle back the enemy.
The most popular of the THUNDER Agents, and Wood’s favorite (and the character whose strip he most often worked on) was Dynamo. He’d intended to be called Thunderbolt, but the release of Charlton’s character of that same name scotched those plans. Dynamo was Len Brown (named after his scriptwriter by Wood), a working class stiff who was nonetheless a secret agent for THUNDER who was given a transformative belt that would give him superhuman strength and durability for 30 minutes at a go. Wood cast him very much in the style of the early Joe Shuster Superman, and delighted at having Dynamo tear through a horde of enemies or evidence his spectacular strength and durability. The second THUNDER Agent was perhaps the most unique.
This was NoMan, himself an ancient scientist, the head of a program to develop artificial android bodies. His mind was not only transferred into one of these bodies, but it could switch freely between them–making him functionally immortal so long as he had another android form to move his consciousness into. NoMan was also given an invisibility cloak from the stash of gizmos that Professor Jennings had developed, to increase his effectiveness (although only one android body could wear the cloak at any given time–so if it got pulverized, as NoMan’s bodies generally tended to be, the cloak would need to be retrieved.)
THUNDER AGENTS opened on a simple premise: mankind is under siege by a mysterious figure known as the Warlord, who possesses an army of shock troops and super-scientific technology. it will turn out in the issues ahead that he was the leader of a subterranean civilization that desired the surface world. To meet this threat, the nations of the world had formed T.H.U.N.D.E.R.: The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserve. THUNDER was the GIJOE to the Warlord’s Cobra Commander. The organization was well-financed and began to develop super-weapons of their own to counter the Warlord’s schemes. But before anything more than the prototype devices could be created, Professor Jennings is killed in a Warlord attack–leaving THUNDER with a trio of devices designed to give its operatives superhuman abilities, but no way to duplicate or mass-manufacture them. As such a trio of THUNDER’s operatives are selected to be the group’s super-agents and put their lives on the line to use Jennings’ discoveries to battle back the enemy.
The most popular of the THUNDER Agents, and Wood’s favorite (and the character whose strip he most often worked on) was Dynamo. He’d intended to be called Thunderbolt, but the release of Charlton’s character of that same name scotched those plans. Dynamo was Len Brown (named after his scriptwriter by Wood), a working class stiff who was nonetheless a secret agent for THUNDER who was given a transformative belt that would give him superhuman strength and durability for 30 minutes at a go. Wood cast him very much in the style of the early Joe Shuster Superman, and delighted at having Dynamo tear through a horde of enemies or evidence his spectacular strength and durability. The second THUNDER Agent was perhaps the most unique. This was NoMan, himself an ancient scientist, the head of a program to develop artificial android bodies. His mind was not only transferred into one of these bodies, but it could switch freely between them–making him functionally immortal so long as he had another android form to move his consciousness into. NoMan was also given an invisibility cloak from the stash of gizmos that Professor Jennings had developed, to increase his effectiveness (although only one android body could wear the cloak at any given time–so if it got pulverized, as NoMan’s bodies generally tended to be, the cloak would need to be retrieved.)
The third THUNDER Agent was John Janus, a top-of -the-line cadet who earned the right to wield Professor Jennings’ mental command helmet in the guise of Menthor. But it turned out that THUNDER’s screening process wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Janus was secretly an agent of the Warlord, infiltrating the organization to destroy it from within. (his name might have been a tip-off to them.) However, whenever he would don the Menthor helmet, his demeanor would change, and he’d become a thorough good guy, dedicated to bringing down the Warlord and his forces. This dual personality was swiftly abandoned in subsequent stories, which is a shame–it was probably the most interesting thing about the character. He was the least successful of the initial THUNDER Agents, and in a shocking turn of events for the time, he was killed off for real in issue #7, giving his life to protect his fellow super-agents from harm. The fourth strip in the initial book was THUNDER Squad, which featured a non-powered team of THUNDER Agents very much in the mode of the Challengers of the Unknown or the Howling Commandos. There were five of them, each one a broadly-drawn type: Guy, the leader, Dynamite, the kinda dim big guy, Egghead, the brain, Kitten, the girl, and Weed, the slightly weaselly safecracker and escape artist. Their series was the least popular thing in the magazine, and so in issue #4, Guy was given an acceleration costume that turned him into the fourth super-agent, super-swift Lightning.
The thing that really set THUNDER AGENTS apart from the other titles on the stands in the mid-1960s was the quality of the artwork. Led by Wood himself, this first issue included contributions from Reed Crandall, Gil Kane, George Tuska, Mike Sekowsky, and Dan Adkins, and future issues would include stories by Steve Ditko, Manny Stallman, Ogden Whitney, Paul Reinman and many others. The focus here was on art over story–the THUNDER Agents stories tended to be less wordy than the Marvel books of the same period. This first issue laid out the origin of each of the main THUNDER Agents in solo adventures, then brought them all together for the climax (in the manner of a Justice Society story in ALL-STAR COMICS) to rescue the fallen Dynamo, who had been captured by the Warlord’s right-hand woman, the Iron Maiden. She was one of the best-remembered female characters from this age, a true femme fatale who contended with Dynamo and the THUNDER Agents on several occasions and was popular enough on her own that she could have headlined her own series. Needless to say, this initial issue made me a full-on fan of the THUNDER Agents, and I went on to collect the entire series over the course of the next couple of years. This was a great comic book end to end.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents
Run: 20 issues
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. is an acronym for The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves. They were founded after World War II to deal with secret, subversive threats that the above-board United Nations forces couldn’t handle.
Our adventure begins when agents of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. try to save a brilliant scientist, Dr. Jennings, from “enemy agents.” They fail, but Jennings left behind a bunch of fancy gadgets, including a power belt, a cloak of invisibility, and a mind control helmet. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. distributes these gadgets to its finest agents, creating a small super-powered army to fight foes like the Subterraneans, an underground civilization rightfully upset about atomic weapons testing destroying their city, and S.P.I.D.E.R., an evil counterpart to T.H.U.N.D.E.R..
Jennings also left no instruction manual, so the agents have to figure things out as they go along, which is always fun.
Each issue featured multiple stories starring different agents, including:
Menthor
Menthor, despite the stupid name, had the most potential as a character. He was originally a double agent sent by the villainous Warlord, but the power of the mind-reading helmet he was given tapped into the goodness within him, turning him into a good guy whenever he put the helmet on. When he took it off, he forgot everything and reverted to low-level lackey John Janus.
Unfortunately, they squandered this concept’s potential right away. By Issue 2, Janus became a real good guy and defected to T.H.U.N.D.E.R.. He apparently wasn’t all that popular among fans as he was killed off at the end of Issue 7. His death was pretty brutal by 1966 standards, too: he was shot multiple times and then electrocuted. Yowch.
But did he smell minty fresh?
Raven
After Menthor’s death, he was semi-replaced by the Raven, a mercenary who joined mostly to get his hands on some flying tech that he could sell to the bad guys. After being rescued by the agents, he instantly reformed. That sounds familiar.
Raven’s stories are bizarre compared to the other features in this comic: the art style and tone are markedly different. His first foe is Mayven, a woman who controls child-shaped dolls that explode. If you’re into the weirder ’60s art styles, this may be the feature for you.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad
The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad is basically Mission: Impossible with fewer Black people — in other words, they’re spies, not superheroes. The team did not have powers, but they did have some amazing names: Guy, Egghead, Dynamite, Kitten, and Weed. Weed.
Dynamo
Run: 4 issues
Len Brown — which is also the name of the writer who co-created the book with Wally Wood — was a young T.H.U.N.D.E.R. agent who became the recipient of a power-bestowing belt. Said belt granted him superior density, strength, and durability for up to half an hour at a time.
While Dynamo is physically the strongest, he is young and hot-headed and therefore susceptible to mental attacks. He could also be lazy, and he was perpetually embroiled in a love triangle (or rather, a love pentagon) with good-girl secretary Alice and various femmes fatale.
I count references to Shazam, Stan Lee, and Get Smart all in these three panels. Amazing.
But, showing off his flexibility, Dynamo was a convincing subject for more serious stories, including one from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in which his constant battling results in PTSD (“combat fatigue,” as it was called then). Fortunately, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. has a cure for that.
NoMan
Run: 2 issues
The hero known as NoMan was originally an elderly scientist, Anthony Dunn, in poor health. He figured out how to transfer his consciousness into a blue-skinned android, transforming him into a hero. He could now move at will between different android bodies, making him basically immortal, and turn invisible thanks to a cloak developed by the late Dr. Jennings.
This origin made for some compelling moments of angst, wherein NoMan regretted his lost humanity and wished to be normal again. In a couple stories, both in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, this resulted in drastic action, like the time he kidnapped a young woman in the hopes of marrying her and thus feeling more human — this despite the fact that he is really in his 70s. Kidnap someone your own age, you creep.
(I am kidding. Do not kidnap anyone.)
Undersea Agent
Run: 6 issues
This is the weakest link in the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents universe. It had nothing to do with the rest of the books, except a tortured acronym. (U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. stands for United Nations Department of Experiment and Research Systems Established at Atlantis.) It’s lightly implied that there’s a rivalry between the two organizations: when Undersea Agent 1 gains electromagnetic powers in Issue 2, U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. is happy about it because it means they finally have a superpowered, T.H.U.N.D.E.R.-style agent of their own.
Undersea Agent 1 (and, for all intents and purposes, the only Undersea Agent) is really Lieutenant Davy Jones, who is stationed at an underwater base (in Atlantis, natch). From there, he and his borderline-useless sidekicks fight aliens, innocent wildlife, and would-be world conquerors with names like Doctor Fang.
What’s his name, again?
I’m not showing you Doctor Fang because he is a bad, bad racist caricature. While the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise isn’t awash in overt bigotry, it is the ’60s, and it does come up now and then. So if you want to experience the franchise without that risk, you might want to stick with the reboot.
Several publishers have tried to revive T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents over the years. Perhaps the most high-profile attempt was DC’s, which came out in 2010. Unfortunately, this reboot was written by Nick Spencer, the same genius who would go on to make Steve Rogers a Nazi while mocking trigger warnings and other hallmarks of left-wing activism.
of new characters. I find this approach irritating, which is why I never watched beyond the first Mission: Impossible movie. On top of that, they darkened the premise considerably: every agent’s powers are now slowly killing them instead of just Lightning’s. This isn’t implausible, given Needless to say, Spencer’s involvement dampened my interest in the reboot immediately, and I only read the first three issues to get a feel for what it’s like.
It was fine, I guess?
They went the Mission: Impossible route of setting things in the present day and discarding most of the original cast in favor how little they knew about Dr. Jennings’s inventions going in, but I didn’t care for this dark interpretation of the source material. So even if I didn’t dislike the writer, I would have bailed on the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents reboot pretty fast.