James Bond’s attaché case, in the novel and film of From Russia With Love, was a Pandora’s Box.
Once he opened it, out poured hundreds of offensive and defensive gadgets that we later saw on any number of movies and such TV shows as The Man from UNCLE, The Girl from UNCLE, Secret Agent, Mission Impossible, Amos Burke Secret Agent, Honey West, The Wild, Wild West, and more.
“The complicated bag of tricks amused Bond, but he also had to admit that, despite its eight-pound weight, the bag was a convenient way of carrying the tools of his trade, which otherwise would have had to be concealed about his person,” Ian Fleming wrote in his 1957 novel From Russia With Love, undoubtedly unaware of what he was spawning.
Marvel’s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, was a feature composed almost entirely of such clandestine gadgets, invariably designed by Tony Stark, who was quite a busy man.
The craze spilled over into the closely linked feature Captain America, courtesy of artist Jack Kirby’s ingenuity. Cap relied on his handy long-distance mini-cruiser, his hypnotic wave-jamming circuitry, his glove supply of shock pellets, his transparent inflato-suit, his built-in parachute, his wrist-blaster (“It feels like I’ve been wearing a finger splint,” Cap carped), and his underwater oxygen cylinder (shared with 007 in Thunderball).
Not to be outdone, Cap’s girlfriend Agent 13 sported a capsule of powdered corrosive in one false nail and a micro-flamethrower in another.
Some purists probably objected, but I thought Cap’s gadgets were fun. For a while there, the Star-Spangled Avenger rivaled the Man of Bronze’s utility vest and the Masked Manhunter’s utility belt.
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