Candy and Jonesy and Go-Go and Animal

When Jack Mendelsohn reused old scripts as a writer for Tippy Teen and her friends Go-Go and Animal at Tower, he reused his own from Quality in the Fifties—not only for Candy but for the shorter-lived Jonesy.

Go-Go and Animal 3 seems a good place to stop, as so far I haven't seen any such reruns in #4.

Jack Mendelsohn's
Go-Go and Animal 1-3 scripts
reworking his Candy and Jonesy ones

Aug/66	1	cover gag
		from JONESY 4 (Feb/54)
		Come as You Aren't
		from "Come as You Aren't" CANDY 35 (Feb/53)
		Dance Clown Dance
		from "Go, Man, Go" CANDY 56 (Oct/55)
		Violin Violation
		from 5th Candy story CANDY 40 (July/53)
		Fortune Hunting
		from "Fortune Hunting" CANDY 45 (Dec/53)
		Rags to Riches (ANIMAL)
		from "Rags to Riches" JONESY 8 (Oct/54)
Oct/	2	Getting the Shakes (ANIMAL)
		from "The Shakes" CANDY 33 (Dec/532)
		Disk Jockeying
		from "Disk Jockeying" CANDY 49 (July/54)
		Donkey Business (EGGHEAD)
		from GABBY story "Donkey Business" JONESY 7 (Aug/54)
		The Hard Sell (ANIMAL)
		from "The Hard Sell " CANDY 36 (Mar/53)
Mar/67	3	Outside Wire (ANIMAL)
		from "Outside Wire" CANDY 30 (Sept/52)
		One Track Mind (ANIMAL)
		from "One Track Mind" JONESY 8 (Oct/54)
		Stage Struck Out (TIPPY)
		from "Egg Hamlet" CANDY 42 (Sep/53)
		Gift 'Til It Hurts
		from "Seasonal Employment" CANDY 54 (May/55)

A "New" Writer at Atlas

For about half a year there was a Camelot-like moment in 1953 in which writers as well as artist were routinely credited at a comic book company. Trojan gave the credits on the inside-front-page tables of contents on their anthology magazines.

The main four writers were Paul S. Newman, Jack Miller, Martin Smith, and Richard Kahn. A while ago SangorShop asked me if I could extrapolate Smith's stories for other companies from these. So far I haven't, but serendipity led me to find some of Richard Kahn's work at a company where he hadn't been known to write—Timely/Atlas/Marvel-to-come.

Noticeable connections among these Kent Blake spy stories at Atlas ishown in this tier from #4 are "A few minutes later!" and the drawn-out "Argghhh"; I'd made a list of characteritics for "Writer KB" and found it matching the new one I was making up for Kahn.

The writing for the next batch of Kent Blake stories seemed likely to be by the same writer, but suddenly, as Blake goes back into uniform and to Korea, the sound effect "Pi-toon" for cannon fire turns up frequently, and I haven't seen in in Kahn's later war stories for Trojan—so I'm still considering those Blake stories.

The artist on these stories is Tom Gill.

Richard Kahn scripts on
Kent Blake of the Secret Service—Part 1?

Sep/51	3	Terror in Tibet
		The Stolen Plans
		Nightmare in China
Nov/	4	Terror Underground
		Jaws of Justice
		The Limping Man
Jan/52	5	Condemned to Death
		The Man with Two Faces
		Dangerous Vacation
Mar/	6	Tunnel of Death
		Blood on the Sand
		Deadlier Than the Male

No "Created by Bob Kane" Credit Here

Here's a book based on a comic strip by Bob Kane before Batman. The Gottfredson-influenced "Peter Pupp" appeared in the early Jumbo Comics in the 1937-39, supplied by the Eisner-Iger Syndicate.

The children's book Adventures of Peter Pupp (Play Action Books) came out in 1944. The writer and artist were Iger staff members: writer Ruth Roche (whom most probably remember as the adapter of Frankenstein in Classic Comics) and artist David Icove.

Future Man to Karzz to Jorzz

Three Otto Binder pieces bear some resemblances. The later ones certainly weren't rewrites, but when Binder sat down to write anew, evidently he was inspired by his earlier work. The resemblance of the first two is old news, but I just read the third and had to compare it to the second to reassure myself that it is indeed a new novel.

In "Menace from the Future World" in All Winners 21 (Winter, 1947), Future Man, who has mental powers, fights the All Winners Squad, who are led by Captain America. To clear 20th Century Earth for his people of 1,000,000 A.D. Earth to inhabit, Future Man intends to use super-science weapons of extermination on five continents.

In The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker (1967), Karzz, an alien from the future, fights the Avengers, who are led by Captain America. He's hidden world-wrecking super weapons in four corners of the globe, as he wants to create an alternate time-line where 70th Century Earth never stands in the way of his galactic conquests.

In The Mind from Outer Space (1972), the alien Jorzz, a free mind with mental powers,is after segments of a super-science secret hidden 35,000 years earlier in four corners of the globe, one that will enable him to conquer the galaxy as he had planned to before he was disembodied back then. The heroes from a scientific think tank fight him with technological super-powers.

The heroes jokingly refer to Jorzz a number of times as "Mister Mind."

The Bernstein Black Rider

Some of Robert Bernstein's scripts for the costumed Western hero Black Rider at Timely/Atlas are credited—artist Jay Scott Pike added Bernstein's name when he signed his art. (Ernie Hart's Fifties writing credits also come from Pike's adding the scripter's name.) However, Pike didn't credit all of Bernstein's scripts on his stories, and there were other artists who didn't go to that trouble.

Black Rider was suspended with #18, and when it returned almost two years later there was a new writer, whose distinctive gunshots—"Whram"—don't identify him but show him as the main writer of Kid Colt at the time too.

Black Rider Written by Robert Bernstein

Jan/51	12	The Town That Vanished
		Marked for Murder
		Trek of Terror
		Hot Lead Reunion
		Six-Gun Salute
Mar/	13	The Terrified Tribe
		The Deadly Double-Cross
		The Secret in the Sand
		The Strange Man
May/	14	The Horror Castle
		The Tree Pirates Strike
		Close Shave
		The Metal Menace
Jul/	15	The Poiusoned Bottles
		The Silent Scream
		The Sign of the Wolf
		Returns from the Dead
Sep/	16	Dear Black Rider...
		Three-Cornered Feud
		Mass Murder in Montana
Nov/	17	Black Rider's Vengeance
		Mirror of Death	[credited]
		The Biggest Liar in Tombstone
		The Ghost on Four Legs	[credited]
Jan/52	18	The Indian with Two Hearts	[credited]
		Tombstone Termites	[credited]
		The Ferry at Killer's Creek	[credited]

in Two-Gun Western

Apr/52	13	Doomsday Gang	[credited]
Jun/	14	The Mountain of Doom	[credited]

in Wild Western

Feb/51	14	The Day Black Rider Died
Apr/	15	The Man Who Died Twice
Jun/	16	The Texas Tigress
Aug/	17	Brand of Terror
Oct/	18	The Murderers of Crippled Bend	[credited]
Dec/	19	Vultures of the Rio Grande	[credited]

3 Villains of Doom's Stories Adapted

In the 1966 novel Batman vs. 3 Villains of Doom the Penguin, the Joker, and Catwoman vie for the Academy Award of crime, a golden machine gun: the Tommy. DC in the person of E. Nelson Bridwell considered the novel canon, mentioning the Tommy in a World's Finest letter column.

Although William Woolfolk (as Winston Lyon) certainly followed the Batman TV show in the details—Robin's "Holy" exclamations, Chief O'Hara, the bust of Shakespeare—the three villains' schemes are adapted from comic book stories. (And the Catwoman is wearing her comic-book costume, with its full-head mask and green cape.)

Once I recognized the stories' sources from their synopses in the Batman volume of Michael Fleisher's Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes, I assumed they must have been written by Woolfolk—having seen pages of a few of his scripts in fanzines, I thought he might have kept them on hand. Evidently not, at least in this case; once I saw the stories themselves, I changed my opinion. Copies of these stories must have been pulled from the files and sent along to him by DC.

Stories Adapted in Batman vs. 3 Villains of Doom

Apr-May/50	Batman #58	The State-Bird Crimes	w: Edmond Hamilton
June/47	Det #124	The Crime Parade	w: Hamilton
Apr/47	Det #122	The Black Cat Crimes	w: Hamilton?

A Ghost for John Severin

On my posts about Sal Trapani's ghost pencillers, I figured he knew most of them from their working together at Charlton. I suspected the same sort of thing applied with John Severin's finding a ghost for this story from Cracked 70 (Aug/68). "Snow Flake and the Seven Dwarfs" is signed only "Severin" in his handwriting, and only the regular Cracked artists are listed in the masthead. I wondered where he could have known this artist from, and figured it must have been when he was drawing at EC; this penciller was the colorist there.

All kidding aside, Marie Severin would have her pencils inked by her brother, with both credited for the first time, a couple of years later at Marvel on Kull the Conqueror. There may be more examples of this ghosting at Cracked, but an awful lot of its issues are hard to come by nowadays.

A Curt Swan Crime Story with a Tiny Difference

Curt Swan was a mainstay at DC for some four decades. Along with his superhero and war strips for them in the early Fifties, Curt Swan worked on the company's Gangbusters and other crime features.

But this Swan-pencilled story, "Killer at Large," was published in Crime Cases 25 (Nov/50)—from Timely/Atlas/Marvel.

Sub-Mariner Artist Draws David Bruce Banner's Lookalike

If at first you don't succeed in identifying an artist on a comic book, keep on looking at other comics, and maybe when you go back to that first one you'll have run across some clue and a light bulb will go on.

The Courtship of Eddie's Father (2 issues, Jan/70 and May/70),  a TV tie-in from Dell, stumped me and others. The best I could come up with was that the artist wasn't Jack Sparling.

In the time since, I IDed the artist on a DC romance story by some girls' faces—

—comparing here from my July 9, 2015 post a page from "Two Hearts on a Tree" in Secret Hearts 121 (July/67) with a tier from Carl Pfeufer's known work on Super Green Beret 1 (June/67) at Milson.

Who was expecting Carl Pfeufer at Dell, 1970? He drew all the stories in the two issues of The Courtship of Eddie's Father; D. J. Arneson wrote them.

Suuuuper Realism (Comparatively) on Ricky Nelson

Pete Alvarado strayed over from animated-style comics (I associate him best with Andy Panda and Charlie Chicken among the many, many features he did) to pencil, and for all I know ink, the first issue of Dell's Ricky Nelson (Four Color 956, Dec/58) spinning off from the TV sitcom "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." Russ Manning drew the fourth issue, and in between--who knows?

The best way to recognize an artist's work when he may be trying to match the models in a tie-in is to look at secondary characters--note the soda jerk Sam here. Still, Alvarado's characteristic finger shapes and arm positioning do show up at times on Ricky, as in the first panel here. The silhouette in the final panel is also a giveaway.

Alvarado would do Dell's first three issues of The Three Stooges in a style closer to animation cartooning, even though Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe are as "real" as Ricky Nelson.

Norm DiPluhm: D. J. Arneson

After the nom de plume "Norm DiPluhm" at Charlton was attributed by fans to Steve Skeates, he spent years explaining that it wasn't him.

Rip Jagger's recent post on his blog about DiPluhm's Phantom stories reminded me of who the writer really is—the splash page to "Skyjack" that Rip uses as his illustration has the Ghost Who Walks saying "Great Scot" with one "t" rather than the more common "Great Scott." That and other markers unlike Skeates' identify the writer as D. J. Arneson. (He also wrote as DiPluhm for Go-Go and Abbott and Costello, two titles Skeates worked on, which may help explain those fans' thought processes). This example is from "The Giant Ape of Thawth."

Phantom stories written by D. J. Arneson
* = credited (as "Norm DiPluhm")

Aug/69	33	The Phantom's Death
Oct/	34	The Cliff Kingdom	*
		The Giant Ape of Tawth
Feb/70	36	The River That Never Ends	*
		Very Special Timber	*
Apr/	37	Bandar Betrayers	*
		Skyjack	*
		Disband the Patrol!	*
Jun/	38	The Dying Ground	*
		The Phantom's New Faith
		The Trap

That's the entirety of Arneson's Phantom stories. On Ghostly Tales here are the stories that jumped out at me in flipping through the entire run for my own indexing; there may be a few more.

Ghostly Tales by Arneson
* = credited (as "DiPluhm")

Oct/67	63	Up on the Mountain
Feb/68	65	The Phantom Crew	*
May/	66	Water, Water, Everywhere	*
Sept/	68	Yo Ho Ho and a Dead Man's Jest
Nov/	70	Pop Goes Popolos

Working Backwards from the Who's Who--Sam Citron

The Who's Who credits Sam Citron with Girls' Love Stories 1968 at DC. It gives him stories at Gold Key around the same time  in Ripley's Believe It or Not and The Twilight Zone. On the Grand Comics Database the latter stories, uncredited in the comics themselves, have been identified. But possibly the art spotters who paid attention to the weird anthologies at one company didn't cross over to the romance ones at another.

That art of Citron's for Girls' Love Stories is on "Don't Leave Me Again" in number 138 (Oct/68). As with the Gold Key stories, he's inking himself here; at ACG three or four years earlier, all his stories (credited in the comics, as per usual at that company), were inked by Pete Costanza or Tom Hickey. This story's splash page has been correctly noted in the GCD as a reprint of the Infantino & Giordano cover.

I spent some time looking though the Sixties DC romance books to see if Citron had any work obscured by inkers, but finally had to admit to myself that the handful I found were by perhaps Werner Roth or Tony Abruzzo. DC did try to homogenize art into a house style at times via the inking.

Carl Memling Suspense Stories

A feature of Charlton's Lawbreakers Suspense Stories and its retitling, Strange Suspense Stories, for awhile was the contest where readers provided a solution to an unfinished story; that synopsis would be scripted and illustrated in a later issue. The odd thing is that Carl Memling scripted five of the solutions but only one of the unfinished story/solution pairs.

"What Was in Sam Dora's Box?" (art by Steve Ditko) recycles a gimmick from an EC story but the pun in the character's name is what's of interest here; compare with the (better) pun for Memling's story "Appointment with Sam Mara" in Dell's Ghost Stories 4 Oct-Dec/63).

Memling's stories may start in #11, which I haven't seen.

Written by Carl Memling:
Lawbreakers Suspense Stories

May/53	12	Breakout
		Murder on Rye
July/	13	Death Raps Twice
		Escape from the Noose
		Change in Script
Sep/	14	Man Overboard
		The Last Drop
		Richard Capp's Solution to "Murder on Rye"
Nov/	15	Out of the Frying Pan

Strange Suspense Stories

Mar/54	17	Beautiful Night for Murder
		10¢ Worth of Doom
May/	18	What Was in Sam Dora's Box?
		Caroline Denver's Solution to "Face to Face"
		Dead Right
Jul/	19	All Burnt Up
Aug/	20	The Payoff
		Donald Coronado's Solution to "Moment of Decision"
Sep/	21	Mary Lou Wachtel's Solution to..."Prize Package"
Nov/	22	Malcolm Hutcher's Solution to..."The Kill"

Spyman

How much Jim Steranko contributed to the published stories of the characters he created for the Harvey Thrillers begs two questions: how many scripts did he submit and how many were used? Steranko's scripts on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, are much more in the Marvel style than anything at Harvey, so although there isn't a lot that lets me say "The Birth of a Hero" is written by Steranko, there's nothing that leads to any other writer.

Look through France Edward Herron's credited work at DC on Blackhawk and Challengers and you'll find "Kwhamma" a lot.

Otto Binder's attributions for the back-up pieces in the Thrillers line seem to have morphed into credits for the main features, but I can't find him on Spyman, for one. I can't even find his style on the Eye Spy backup in #1.

Nick Caputo gives Mike Esposito as a possibility for the inks for the first part of Tuska's story. A CGD guess at the second part's inks is Carl Pfeufer.

I suspect the intro pages on the Thrillers are more likely written by editor Joe Simon than by the main-feature writers.

Spyman

Sept/66	#1	The Birth of a Hero	w: Jim Steranko?
			p: George Tuska
Dec/	#2	The Hand Is Quicker Than the Monster	w: Ed Herron
			a: Dick Ayers
Feb/67	#3	Death of Spyman	w: Herron  a: Bill Draut

Spyman backups

Sept/66	#1	Eye Spy and His Gal Friday...Jane Blond	w: Dick Wood??  a: ?
Dec/	#2	You Push a Button [ROBOLINK]	w: Otto Binder
			a: Carl Pfeufer
Feb/67	#3	Campy Champ: The Terrific Teen	w: Binder  a: Pfeufer

Stanley and His Monster under Joe Orlando

Stanley and His Monster was only one issue old (having displaced The Fox and the Crow in their own title after a couple of years as a front-of the-book "back-up" feature) when the editorship and the format changed. Issue 109, the last under Murray Boltinoff, contained a full-length story with credits for Arnold Drake (the feature's sole writer since the first episode in Fox and the Crow 95), Bob Oksner, and Tex Blaisdell. As of 110, under Joe Orlando there were no writers' credits, and signatures for the story artists only in 111. The format became three stories per issue.

Orlando kept Oksner and Blaisdell for some stories, but did not use Drake. He went to Howie Post for scripts. The credits pasted onto '80s reprints for Drake are very likely sheer guesswork rather than from the records.

The inker on the Sekowsky story could be Tex Blaisdell, but Stanley's face throughout looks to be by a different hand. Why is there a comma in the title? Ask the Rolling Stones.

Stanley and His Monster written by Howie Post

Jun-Jul/68	110	Carnival Caper	p: Bob Oksner   i: Tex Blaisdell
		Camp Cru-m-bee's Pet Dog...Spot	a: Henry Scarpelli
		Music, Monster, Please	p: Win Mortimer  i: Blaisdell
Aug-Sep/	111	Film Flam Man	p: Oksner  i: Blaisdell
		Badtime Story	a: Scarpelli
		Superhulk	p: Oksner  i: Blaisdell
Oct-Nov/	112	Like Father, Like Son?	a: Scarpelli
		Painting the Town, Red	p: Mike Sekowsky   i: Blaisdell?
		All Kinds of Spot	a: Scarpelli

In The Best of DC, out of inventory; written by Post

Oct/82

29

[Piñatas]

a: Oksner

George Roussos Inks DR. STRANGE But Not Dr. Strange

George Roussos is credited in the Grand Comics Database with anonymously inking the Dr. Strange story "The Return of the Omnipotent Baron Mordo" in Strange Tales 114 (Nov/63). The comment suggests that he may have been brought on board because Stan Lee wanted to rush the story into that issue (Dr. Strange stories appeared in 110 and 111 but not in 112 and 113).

Actually Steve Ditko had plenty of time to ink the story. And then Stan had the time to have Roussos do artwork corrections.

Roussos inked Victoria Bentley. I might have said he redrew her, but I see Ditko's poses still there. Dr. Strange himself, Mordo, and so on, are pretty much Steve Ditko's work, pencils and inks. Roussos may have contributed a bit more—on this page, the tree in panel 3 and Mordo's hands in panel 6 look like his brushstrokes—but to my eye the men's faces are more finely inked than Victoria's.

Trapani and Company on Flying Saucers

Sal Trapani had a signed story in each issue of Dell's Flying Saucers (#5 reprinted #1). Who ghosted the pencils for him? I'd say two artists we're familiar with.

I believe I see the generic Charlton style of Bill Molno under three stories; the tier from "Swamp Gas" uses the man-at-the-steering-wheel shot I compared in stories signed by Molno and those Molno ghosted for Joe Shuster.

In the fourth Trapani-signed story the penciling style changes and reminds me of the scratchy effect in mid-seventies Charlton work by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico. The clouds from the flying saucer in "Space Spiders?" show it most obviously.

There are two FS stories which Trapani left unsigned because he had nothing to do with them, but the general Charlton feel seems to have connected him with them. They're both pencilled by Dick Giordano. I can't say who inked them; not only do I not see Trapani work, I can't say I see Giordano himself or Frank McLaughlin on the inks either.

Flying Saucers Trapani or Giordano art

Apr/67	1	Strange Shoot Out	p: Bill Molno  i: Sal Trapani
July/	2	Swamp Gas	p: Molno  i: Trapani
Oct/	3	The Fear of Death	p: Dick Giordano  i: ?
		A Nightmare in Broad Daylight	p: Molno  i: Trapani
Nov/	4	Trust Your Eyes	p: Giordano  i: ?
		Space Spiders?	p: Bill Fraccio  i: Trapani

Double Date with Candy and Tippy

Just as Stan Lee reused only his own scripts when he refried Millie the Model stories, when Jack Mendelsohn reused old scripts as a writer for Tippy Teen at Tower, he reused only his own—his own Candy stories from Quality in the Fifties. They are indeed rewrites, some more, some less; the gag climaxing "Chemical Warfare" is different from the one ending "Chemical Formula."

The Tippy character Ashley Hartburn (think Reggie Mantle) comes directly from Candy's cast with no name change.

The first story in Tippy 1, "Great Skate," is by Mendelsohn, as I've mentioned, but I don't see an earlier version of it. There are a lot more Quality/Tower refries, but since I have a gap in Tippi issues on hand after 3, I'll stop here for now.

Jack Mendelsohn Tippy Teen 1-3 scripts
reworking his Candy ones

Nov/65	1	Chemical Warfare
		from "Chemical Formula" CANDY 42 (Sep/53)
Jan/66	2	Hearts and Flowers
		from "Hearts and Flowers" CANDY 33 (Dec/52)
		Muscle Tussle
		from "Muscle Tussle" CANDY 32 (Nov/52)
		Inferior Decorating
		from 2nd Candy story CANDY 37 (Apr/53)
		Volley Folly
		from 4th Candy story CANDY 37 (Apr/53)
		A Sight for Sore Eyes [GO-GO AND ANIMAL]
		from "A Sight for Sore Eyes" CANDY 49 (July/54)
		Starlet Fever
		from "Is It a Cinema?" CANDY 33 (Dec/52)
Mar/	3	3rd Finger Right Hand
		from "3rd Finger Right Hand" CANDY 51 (Nov/54)
		Very Dear Diary
		from 1st Candy story CANDY 37 (Apr/53)
		Sweep No More My Lady
		from "Sweep No More, My Lady" CANDY 45 (Dec/53)
		A Stretch in Time
		from 2nd Candy story CANDY 36 (Mar/53)
		Odd Appreciation [GO-GO]
		from "Odd Appreciation" CANDY 33 (Dec/52)
		Keeping 'Em in Stitches
		from "Knot One, Purl Two" CANDY 35 (Feb/53)
		Good Deed Indeed-y
		from "One Good Turn Deserves Another" CANDY 51 (Nov/54)
		Axe Me No Questions
		from 5th Candy story CANDY 36 (Mar/53)

Dick Dillin on (Who Would Have Thought?) Blackhawk

During Dick Dillin's long run across two companies in the Fifties and Sixties on Blackhawk, he had to be spelled only a couple of times. In Blackhawk 210 (July/65) under the usual inker Chuck Cuidera's work (note the close-up in Panel 1), Jim Mooney steps in to pencil, as indexers were quick to notice (see notably the young women in Panel 3, although the men's poses are evidence of Mooney's work too).

However...

Mooney didn't pencil all of "Danger--Blackhawk Bait." He did Part 2. Part 1 was pencilled by Dick Dillin:

The main Blackhawk writers at this point are Ed Herron and Bob Haney; "Aaaah" and, elsewhere in the story, "Uuuuh", drawn out on the "a" or "u" rather than the "h", pinpoint this script as Haney's.

Undercover Spy Writer in the MMMS

In rereading mid-sixties Marvels, occasionally you might look over the list of Merry Marvel Marching Society members in each issue to see if there are any names you recognize with hindsight. For instance, I see Will Meugniot in Strange Tales 143. And then I see a professional writer listed in Strange Tales 148—under his fandom pseudonym (he used his real name on his books).

Ted Johnstone, at the top of the rightmost column, is actually Man from U.N.C.L.E. tie-in writer David McDaniel. So it's appropriate that his listing appears in the book featuring Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. When ST 148 (Sept/66) went to press McDaniel's first novel, The Dagger Affair, had been on the stands for about half a year and his second, The Vampire Affair, was just coming out from Ace Books.  It was in his novels, not on the TV show, that the secret history of THRUSH was revealed and in fact its full name: the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

(I didn't have to look that up any more than I would the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves, or Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division, but I can't get any further on SHIELD's gritty, with-it, "up-to-date" new name [twenty years now?] than Strategic Homeland blah blah blah blah.)

In the U.N.C.L.E. novel that McDaniel wrote to end the series but that Ace declined to publish in 1971, The Final Affair, one character, a motorcycle gang member, is nicknamed The Thing and shouts "It's clobberin' time!" And at one point Mr. Waverly refers to THRUSH as "that Hydra-headed bird."