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dr_hermes (dr_hermes) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-10-03 01:59:00

Entry tags:

creator: wally wood, era: silver age

Iron Maiden (not the metal group nor the torture device)

Wally Wood's Iron Maiden was a freelance criminal who worked for various eeevyil masterminds and pulled a few schemes with her own gang in the Tower Comics' T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS starting back in 1965. We never learned anything about her past, she was just there in her armor, cloak and gun. "Rusty" had the typically bantering attraction/distrust relationship going on with Dynamo that so often happens between uptight super-heroes and attractive villains. Iron Maiden had a wry awareness about how unworkable an affair between them would be, but she found the big lug very sexy and enjoyed teasing him and trying to bring him over beyond the law. On his side, Dynamo was a bit more confused about his feelings; the fact that Iron Maiden had him framed for treason and put in other sticky spots was something he understandably held against her. Yet they also sometimes covered to let the other escape at the end of an adventure. It was a typical crazy mixed-up quasi-romance. (Comic fans will likely find Batman and Catwoman coming to mind as the classic example.)

I like the way Rusty is frequently shown with a cigarette. By the late 1960s, smoking was becoming rarer in comics except for a few tough-guy heroes at Marvel. It adds to her bad-girl image. She did go to jail a few times (her gang broke her out in one case). The original run of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS ended with her still up to her felonious tricks; since then, copyright ownership was disputed and a number of publishers did their own riffs on the series, but that's outside my area.

Looking over some of these stories, I was struck that this sort of friendly enemy set-up was not original with comics. Thrillers and crime fiction had any number of roguish jewel thieves and cat burglars and con men who robbed unpleasant wealthy people (so it seemed almost harmless) and the police often seemed to like the crook better than the victim. Leslie Charteris' marvelous stories of the Saint from the early 1930s had a lot of this. Scotland Yard bulldog Inspector Teal grew to become friends with Simon Templar, much to the latter's surprise. After a few years, the Saint would be seen having a few drinks or dinner with Teal and even volunteering to help solve a few crimes if he was bored. This, despite the fact that Tenmplar himself was one of the most notorious outlaws in Europe ("the Robin Hood of Modern Crime"). There have been quite a few similar pairings, not to mention all the Phillip Marlowe-type detectives who have a few lifelong pals on the shady side.

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	volksjager 2009-10-03 06:10 am UTC (link)
	Yes. More Thunder agents please ! (Reply to this)

	jkcarrier 2009-10-03 01:15 pm UTC (link)
	I've always dug Rusty... one of the all-time great femme fatales. I'm kind of dreading what will happen now that DC owns her, though. :-/ (Reply to this) (Thread)

	kenn_el 2009-10-03 01:38 pm UTC (link)
	We'll discover that she's Hispanic, bisexual, and has a new armored bikini! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

dr_hermes
2009-10-03 08:27 pm UTC (link)

I imagine DC buys rights to other companies' characters, not because they expect to make good use of them, but to keep them out of others' possible use. There's a chance some little publisher who gets rights to the MLJ heroes or the Charlton characters could conceivably have put out a line of comics which would draw sales away from DC... especially if a hot new artist was involved. Assimilating them into DC prevents that.

The good side of this is that quality archive editions are available that may not be printed otherwise. The bad result is that the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (for example) will just show up in a few panels of the latest cosmic slaughter to be killed.

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	kenn_el 2009-10-03 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	THUNDER would be a decent argument for basing an ongoing book on one of the alternate Earths as well. They could have been DC's SHIELD, but Checkmate seems to have snagged that role. In any case, nice to see Rusty and Len again! My first encounter with THUNDER Agents was as a kid in a barber shop, and none of the books even had covers! Good times. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	thandrak 2009-10-03 01:39 pm UTC (link)
	Please more THUNDER Agents! (Anyone know where to find cheap reprints? They did one, but it was godawfully expensive and I forget what it was called.) (Reply to this)

	aaron_bourque 2009-10-03 07:23 pm UTC (link)
	Ah, not Valda, the Iron Maiden, either. (Reply to this)

psychop_rex
2009-10-04 04:57 am UTC (link)

There was also an old movie - I don't remember the title - with Edward G. Robinson, where he played a tough cop who was out to take down the city's gangsters. He'd been on the job for years, as had the city's big crime boss, and near the beginning of the movie it was revealed that the two respected each other enough that Robinson would occasionally drop by his old enemy's place for a friendly chat. They'd reminisce about old times, then the crime boss would cheefully try to bribe EGR over to his side, and EGR would just as cheerfully turn it down. Then later in the movie, he pretends to take the guy up on it for the sake of taking things down from within, and through the rest of the movie they still have the same amiable sort of relationship. It's an interesting movie.
Yeah, I'd like to see more of Iron Maiden. She's an interesting character.

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