The Four-Color-Adventure Affair: The Comic Book Life of ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’
As you read this piece, you may have heard something about the new The Man from U.N.C.L.E. film. Good, bad, or indifferent, it’s possible that hearing about it may encourage you to check out the film, whether now in theaters or for download a few months down the road; if you really want to immerse yourself, the online game tie-in may be what you’re looking for. And there may well be a few other tie-ins popping up soon that haven’t yet been announced.
What’s surprising is the lack of comic books among the tie-ins. Especially as there were some interesting results the first time around.
But let’s take a step back first, for those who may not realize that before U.N.C.L.E. was a movie, it was a TV show that premiered on September 22, 1964, on NBC, with this opening:
For those who need a more relaxed introduction to things: With the Cold War raging on and interest in espionage pumped by President Kennedy’s stated attraction for Ian Fleming’s James Bond character, which led to a successful run of films (Dr. No and From Russia With Love, with Goldfinger in theaters just days before The Man from U.N.C.L.E. premiered), there was an interest by NBC in a spy series. Producer Norman Felton, hot off his success with bringing MGM’s Dr. Kildare to the network, had the chance to pitch a spy series, for which he pulled out all the stops.
The genesis of the series included turning to the spy master himself, Ian Fleming, for the development of concepts that would ultimately find their way into the project. Among Fleming’s contributions were the creation of two characters who the series would focus on, Napoleon Solo (who ends up one of the stars in the U.N.C.L.E series) and April Dancer (more on her a bit later on). However, when word was announced of the project, then entitled Ian Fleming’s Solo, Fleming found himself contractually obligated to walk away from the project due to his Bond commitments, which led to Felton teaming with Sam Rolfe, who came up with the transnational U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) and enabled April to be replaced by Georgian partner Illya Kuryakin as the series went through its development cycle.
From this beginning, the series would go on for four seasons, the first of which was shown in black and white and the rest in color. Such was the success of the show over its run that eight of the episodes were expanded into feature-length films by MGM that ran in theaters during the run of the series, with additional acts of violence and cheesecake pumped into these, as well as spawning 23 original paperback novels published by Ace Books, model kits, toy guns, a whole kit-and-caboodle worth of licensed product.
And the comic books.
When one discusses comic books these days, they tend to focus on the “Big Two” (which is a relative term depending on when you’re looking at them through their history), Marvel and DC. During the 1960s, however, there was an additional player that lived (and died) by the licensed properties it did comic books on, Western Publishing, and in particular its subsidiary, Gold Key Comics.
Western, which was the original packager of the Little Golden Books (which in addition to original pieces also did licensed properties for children’s books as well), had a comic book division that was originally a partnership with Dell Comics, which claimed to be the world’s largest comic book publisher during the post-Wertham era; with the number of “funny animal” books Dell went with during that time as opposed to genres that Seduction of the Innocent warned about, like action adventures and superheroes, it’s hard not to see how they accomplished this. When Western chafed at the distribution deal they had with Dell, which got a sweet percentage just for distributing finished titles, they formed their own comic arm, Gold Key, which proceeded to make its mark through aggressive licensing.
“Aggressive” might be understating their efforts, however, in that it doesn’t begin to cover the breadth and depth of titles that Gold Key did during its run. They went out looking for as many properties to adapt as possible, and the producers were more than willing to talk a deal. The ground was particularly fertile early in Western’s publishing era; in those days before the downstream distribution chain had never heard of on demand or home video sales, and television syndication to other stations after the network had their run was not what it is today, with no cable stations and not that many stations per city on the dial, most of which signed off for the night and went dark for a few hours. As a result of this, any potential revenue the producers were offered, they jumped at.
Before Western decided The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was a potential property, Gold Key had done tie-ins with both Walt Disney’s and Warner Brothers’ animation arms, making them the publisher of both Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny comics, as well as chronically further adventures by the Three Stooges, Tom and Jerry, and those unfortunate enough to find themselves in The Twilight Zone. After U.N.C.L.E. ended, they went on to do comic book adaptations of most of the Hannah-Barbera animated shows, the Sid & Marty Kroft Saturday morning TV shows, Star Trek, and Irwin Allen’s TV programs.
While the producers were happy to get Western’s licensing fees, they were not necessarily maintaining their brands tightly. Many threw only the bare minimum of visual references to the artists to work from, often just one picture per character, which meant that at times the books were not always as faithful as they could to their sources. And editorial control over the plots were often just as weak or weaker, which meant characters would not only not quite look the part, but not act it either.
This proved to be a special challenge for the U.N.C.L.E. books, as all titles in the series had covers with collages made up from promo pictures supplied by MGM. With visual dissonance possible just on opening the book, the writing and art teams were facing something more akin to Mission: Impossible (which Dell adapted with a five-issue comic book run in 1969).
Speaking of the teams associated with the run, while the 20 titles in the run (with 2 at the end that were reprints) running close to bi-monthly from 1965 through 1968 had different writers come in and out on the book, the majority were done with the pairing of writer Dick Wood and pencils by Mike Sekowsky. U.N.C.L.E. was one brief sideline in Wood’s long writing career, which stretched through doing work during the Golden Age of Comics for both National and Timely (predecessors of DC and Marvel, respectively), writing the comic book adaptation of the newspaper strip hero Mandrake the Magician for King Features, and doing Twilight Zone and Star Trek for Gold Key. The fact that you get Solo and Kuryakin throwing out extravagant exclamations (where when surprised, in reaction the character goes “Holy [throw incongruous word here]!!!”, the type of lines Burt Ward as Robin made infamous) that never would have come out of the writers’ room at MGM gives some indication as to how closely Wood followed the series.
One could be forgiven for thinking that he wasn’t really feeling the series during the time, especially when you read his other spy comic story, Jet Dream and Her Stunt-Girl Counter-Spies. A squad of female counter-espionage agents whose main cover is as a flying stunt team (shades of Pussy Galore, here), the feature consisted of eight four-page stories, written by Wood with art by Joe Certa, all of which appeared as back-ups in Gold Key’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The series did ultimately break out into its own series, a run that lasted only a single issue before flying off into obscurity.
Penciller Mike Sekowsky had his own “girl spy” issues of a different sort. Best known for his iconic renderings of the Justice League of America, which he was doing while getting pick-up with Gold Key, Sekowsky went on once the comic finished its run to edit Wonder Woman for DC. During his tenure, Diana Prince lost her super powers, had to learn martial arts from the blind sefu I-Ching, and essentially became Emma Peel. Considered daring by some at the time, and a major mistake by many long after, it could be considered at best as indicative of a broad desire at the time to tap into the emerging feminist awareness and to offer women as spies that could carry on the good fight, as something other than seductresses or hapless bystanders.
A desire that the mother-ship just botched badly, with a move that was worse than Sekowsky’s Diana Prince run.
Anxious to strike while the iron was hot, MGM sold to NBC a spin-off, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., which premiered in 1966. For the new series, we finally get to see April Dancer, who Fleming originally came up with in the early development notes. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, most of the heavy work was done by her partner, the British Mark Slate, making the “Girl” of the title more of a damsel in distress than a special asset; this was one of a number of factors that insured that the series ended up with only a single season.
Likewise, MGM also got a Girl from U.N.C.L.E. comic book series on the newsstands that ran as a bi-monthly, mostly in 1967 that ended after five issues. All five were written by Paul S. Newman, who having written more than 4,100 stories for comics (including Gold Key’s adaptation of Yellow Submarine) might not have remembered this gig out of the many he had; as these were pretty unmemorable thanks to the source material not offering much to work with, that’s to be expected.
In fact, by the time Girl from U.N.C.L.E. had aired, audiences were thinking that its predecessor was pretty shopworn by then. With the plots getting more ridiculous thanks to NBC wanting to emulate what William Dozier was giving to ABC, the desire to go “camp” hard tested the audience, which started to desert the program en masse. By the time the network realized that they were running stories that would have made the Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service look like a classic Sean Connery entry, their effort to pivot could not save the series, and the show was cancelled midway through Season 4, airing its last episode on January 15, 1968.
Without doubt, the show could be considered a success during its high watermark. So, too, could the comic book; reported paid circulation figures for 1967 show that The Man from U.N.C.L.E. came in 11 overall for the year, with announced sales that were higher than any title Marvel published during that time. They outsold Marvel’s biggest seller, Amazing Spider-Man by a four-to-three margin, and was 44% higher than the average of all of Marvel’s reported superhero books. The series also moved more issues than anything else Gold Key had on the racks, making it its best performing title for 1967. The only titles that moved more issues were Batman, Archie, and the Superman books (Superman, Action, Adventure, etc.).
Like a lot of things we all want, success is never guaranteed, and rarely with us longterm. By the 1970s, with the comic book audiences willing to try more adult fare and the television landscape changing to allow producers better returns through more syndication options, Gold Key’s licensing model stopped providing guaranteed success. Challenged further by Marvel’s efforts to go with licensing, claiming Star Trek for themselves to tie in with Star Trek: The Motion Picture and having gotten the rights to adapt Star Wars, the opportunities soon disappeared, and Gold Key ceased publishing by 1983.
Looking back, at all of the U.N.C.L.E.-mania that MGM was encouraging during the 1960s, the comics were some of the more interesting ephemera that came out of the series, reflecting how producers used to try and cash in on a hot property back in the day. If nothing else, one can say it wasn’t the weirdest tie-in to the series.
Certainly no weirder than Solo and Kuryakin being guests on an episode of the sitcom Please Don’t Eat the Daisies:
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James Ryan