19 March 2011

Dell Four Color # 1231 DANGER MAN

This issue from November 1961 features a one shot story about John Drake, Danger Man.


The show ran for 39 episodes in 60-61. Drake was not so much a secret agent as a globe trotting trouble shooter. Patrick McGoohan played Drake, an American employed by NATO.

After a hiatus of 3 years, and with the James Bond fad heating up, the show was brought back. Oddly, McGoohan played Drake now as an Englishman working for the British secret service. The shows were now an hour long, instead of a half hour, and the tightness of script suffered. It was renamed SECRET AGENT for the US market.

Drake plodded along as a TV 007 for a couple more years. Then he may or may not have been taken to the Village...but that's another discussion.

The interior artwork is by Tony Tallarico .The animals on the cover are reminiscent of Norm Saunders.

Marvel likes to take credit for the double page panel, but as I've shown in a previous post, Dell was doing them as early as 1943. Here is a nice double page panel from this issue.
 
The comic was 32 pages...that's alot to do a story from a 30 minute TV show format, so padding is evident. Here are THREE full pages panels.
 
This issue also contained an "infopage" on the back cover










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