What if costumed crusading wasn’t a mission, but just a job? That was Tower Comics’ interesting angle on superheroics.
The hottest popular culture heroes in the mid-1960s were James Bond and Batman, so it was inevitable that publishers would try to combine superheroes with superspies.
And that’s why Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen turned into Agent Double-Five. Then Archie Andrews became, simultaneously, Pureheart the Powerful and the Man from RIVERDALE. Harvey Comics’ Spyman and Dell Comics’ Werewolf combined the two genres directly, as did the…
THUNDER Agents!
Artist Wally Wood created the agents of The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves in 1965, packaging them in a 25-cent line of titles for Tower Comics, a short-lived offshoot of Harry Shorten’s Tower Books.
“The popularity of The Man from UNCLE in particular seemed to have the greatest impact on the book,” observed comics historian Lou Mougin. “And superheroes were the rage in comic books: that went without saying. Well, then, why not a cloak-and-dagger type who wore a costume beneath the cloak?”
“Dynamo was the brawny guy of the group — he had a high-tech belt that could make him invulnerable and super-strong,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “NoMan was a spook type, similar in appearance to a DC character, the Spectre, and with spook-like super powers as well — but again, with high-tech rather than mystical sources for his abilities. Lightning was a knock-off of the Flash, and Raven (no relation) was one of Hawkman. Menthor, who had mental powers (again, from a high-tech source), was a double agent, secretly working for T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s arch-enemy, the Warlord.”
Like the X-Men, THUNDER Agents had the storytelling advantage of a single source for their powers — in this case, Prof. Emil Jennings’ prototype super-weapons.
The THUNDER titles had an odd vibe. These were, in a sense, superhero bureaucrats. Super-powered combat was not so much their chosen mission as part of their nine-to-five jobs. This subtly “realistic” slant, though intriguing, took the edge off their heroics.
“These new characters were humans — employees doing a job,” noted comic historians Michael Uslan and Robert Klein. “If they messed up, they could be fired, and the next guy in line would get the superhero job opportunity. At night, they took off their costumes, packed up their lunch pail,s and headed home on the subway.”
Dynamo, in particular, benefited from Wood’s ability to convey sheer implacable power.
In civilian life, he was Len Brown, an undistinguished mid-level staffer at THUNDER whose stamina happened to be ideal for the strength-boosting Thunderbelt. He was brave, a nice enough guy. But — undoubtedly like some of the people whom you typically meet on your day job — Brown was, let’s face it, just not that bright.
Despite explicitly being warned not to exhaust himself using the Thunderbelt, Dynamo did just that on his first mission in a fight with armored Warlord agents.
Captured and chained by the Iron Maiden, the first thing he blurts out when he awakens is “My belt! Where is my belt?” — thus advertising the source of his powers to THUNDER’s archenemies.
The invisible NoMan has to rescue Dynamo’s belt for him so he can smash his way free, and NoMan does so at the cost of one of his android bodies.
His unimpressed chief scolds Len. “You nearly lost the Thunderbelt on your very first assignment and jeopardized our entire organization,” he says. “May I remind you you’re not in business for yourself. Your ego and vanity must not affect your judgment… You’d better shape up, Brown.”
With his strength and invulnerability, Dynamo resembled Superman, but his situation as the superhero who had to try harder gave him his own subtle appeal — a combination of Superman and everyman.
“T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents got rave reviews in fanzines of the time, and were quickly spun off into new titles. Dynamo and NoMan got their own comics, and another new comic introduced a sister agency, U.N.D.E.R.S.E.A. (don’t ask),” Markstein noted. “But the boom was short-lived. A year or two into the series, sales began to falter — possibly because of a general downward trend in superhero comics as the Batman TV craze faded, possibly because the public was beginning to lose interest in initialized spy agencies, and possibly because Tower’s comics were published in an extra-thick format and consequently cost as much as the other companies’ annuals. The title effectively ended with 19, Nov. 1968, though one more issue, full of reprints, staggered to the stands a year later.”
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