Retconning the history of covert operations: spy comics at the end of the Cold War

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the revisionist engagement with the history of US covert operations in three spy series published by DC Comics in 1988–90: Blackhawk, The Unknown Soldier and Justice, Inc. It discusses four levels of revisionism: pre-textual (in the editorial/creative process), textual (in the ensuing narratives), intertextual (in the interplay with other media and earlier versions of same franchises) and extratextual (advertisements, reviews, editorials, readers’ letters). The article argues that these comics recoded the Cold War in a critical light and recreated the process of disenchantment with orthodox narratives, destabilising the era’s dominant historical imaginary of nostalgia and triumphalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Cold War
• comics
• spy fiction
• covert operations
• Ronald Reagan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Martin Pasko (w) and Rick Burchett (a), ‘Kissoff – That’s a Russian Word, Isn’t It?’, Action Comics Weekly #631 (New York: DC Comics, 1988).

² Falk Pingel, ‘The Cold War in History Textbooks: A German-German, French and British Comparison’, in The Cold War: Historiography, Memory, Representation, ed. Konrad H. Jarausch, Christian F. Ostermann and Andreas Etges (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2017), 123–7.

³ This formula can be found, for example, in Geraint Hughes and Saki Ruth Dockrill, ‘Introduction: The Cold War as History’, in Palgrave Advances in Cold War History, ed. Saki Ruth Dockrill and Geraint Hughes (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2006), 5–7; and Odd Arne Westad, ‘The Cold War and the International History of the Twentieth Century’, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol 1, Origins, ed. Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–5.

⁴ Vladimir O. Pechatnov, ‘Changing Cold War Interpretations in Post-Soviet Russia’, in Historiography, Memory, Representation, ed. Jarausch, Ostermann and Etges, 83–6.

⁵ Nicholas J. Cull, ‘Reading, Viewing and Tuning into the Cold War’, in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 2, Crises and Détente, ed. Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 438–59; and Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2010).

⁶ Caroline Guthrie, ‘Narratives of Rupture: Tarantino’s Counterfactual Histories and the American Historical Imaginary’, Rethinking History 23, no. 3 (2019): 340–1.

⁷ Siegfried Weichlein, ‘Representation and Recoding: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cold War Cultures’, in Historiography, Memory, Representation, ed. Jarausch, Ostermann and Etges, 47–64.

⁸ See, for example, the stories collected in Al Feldstein et al., Child of Tomorrow and Other Stories (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2013), 25–40, 57–64, 73–80, 105–12.

⁹ Chris York and Rafiel York, ‘Introduction: Frederic Wertham, Containment, and Comic Books’, in Comic Books and the Cold War, 1946–1962, ed. Chris York and Rafiel York (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company 2012), 5–8.

¹⁰ Matthew J. Costello, Secret Identity Crisis: Comic Books and the Unmasking of Cold War America (New York: Continuum 2009), 58–125.

¹¹ Ferenc Morton Szasz, Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World (Reno: University of Nevada Press 2012), 52–6; and Rui Lopes, ‘“Must We All Remain Helpless?”: Superman vs. the Nuclear Threat in the Late Cold War’, ImageText 10, no. 2 (2019), https://imagetextjournal.com/must-we-all-remain-helpless-superman-vs-the-nuclear-threat-in-the-late-cold-war/. (Accessed on 25 October 2021.)

¹² Bradford W. Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 2001), xiv.

¹³ It is therefore no coincidence that the intensification of reboots in film franchises in recent years has coincided with an age in which more comic properties are being adapted to the screen than ever before.

¹⁴ David Scott Foglesong, ‘When the Russians Really were Coming: Citizen Diplomacy and the End of Cold War Enmity in America’, Cold War History 20, no. 4 (2020): 419–40; Raymond A. Patton, Punk Crisis: The Global Punk Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); and Paul Rubinson, ‘Imagining the Apocalypse: Nuclear Winter in Science and the World’, in Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought and Nuclear Conflict, 1945–90, ed. Matthew Grant and Benjamin Ziemann (Manchester: Manchester University Press 2016), 238–59.

¹⁵ DC published other series about covert operations at the time (including the popular Checkmate! and Suicide Squad), but, unlike this trio, they were not period pieces.

¹⁶ Keith Dallas, ed., American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1980s (Raleigh, NC: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2013); Jean-Paul Gabilliet, Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 86–8; Wright, Comic Book Nation, 260–2; and Roger Sabin, Adult Comics: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 1993), 62–86.

¹⁷ Author’s interview with Robert Greenberger, April 5, 2019.

¹⁸ Paul Hirsch, ‘“This Is Our Enemy”: The Writer’s War Board and Representations of Race in Comic Books, 1942–1945, Pacific Historical Review 83, no. 3 (2014): 448–86.

¹⁹ For revisionism in Captain America, see Costello, Secret Identity Crisis, 170–6.

²⁰ Carl F. Miller, ‘“Worlds Lived, Worlds Died”: The Graphic Novel, the Cold War, and 1986, CEA Critic 72, no. 3 (2010): 50–70.

²¹ Author’s interview with Robert Greenberger April 5, 2019; and Gabilliet, Of Comics and Men, 92–3.

²² Author’s interview with Dennis O’Neil April 15, 2019.

²³ Jesse T. Moore, ‘The Education of Green Lantern: Culture and Ideology’, The Journal of American Culture 2 (2003): 263–78.

²⁴ Author’s interview with Mike Gold April 22, 2019.

²⁵ James Owsley (w) and Phil Gascoine (a), The Unknown Soldier #1–12 (New York: DC Comics, 1988–9).

²⁶ Andrew Helfer (w) and Kyle Baker (a), Justice, Inc. #1–2 (New York: DC Comics, 1989).

²⁷ Howard Chaykin, Blackhawk #1–3 (New York: DC Comics, 1988); Mike Grell, Martin Pasko (w) and Rick Burchett (p) Action Comics Weekly #601–8, 615–22, 628–34 (New York: DC Comics, 1988); Martin Pasko, Doug Moench (w) and Rick Burchett (p) Blackhawk #1–16 (New York: DC Comics, 1989–90); and Martin Pasko (w), Rick Burchett (p) and Bill Wray (i); ‘Death Warmed Over’, Elliot Maggin (w) and Dick Rockwell (a), ‘To Punch a Hole in the Sky!’, Blackhawk Annual #1 (New York: DC Comics, 1989).

²⁸ Author’s interview with Mike Gold, April 22, 2019.

²⁹ Christopher R. Moran, ‘Company Confessions: The CIA, Whistleblowers and Cold War Revisionism’, in Historiography, Memory, Representation, ed. Jarausch, Ostermann and Etges, 94–112; and Kathryn S. Olmstead, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

³⁰ John Ehrman, The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 140–2.

³¹ J. Hoberman, Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan (New York: The New Press, 2019), 251.

³² GSB, ‘Warner Withdraws from Brough to Light’, The Comics Journal 125 (October 1988): 5–6.

³³ ‘Denny O’Neil & Matt Fraction’, The Comics Journal 300 (November 2009): 145.

³⁴ Author’s interview with Dennis O’Neil, April 15, 2019.

³⁵ Steve Webb, ‘The Unknown Soldier’, Amazing Heroes 157 (January 15, 1989): 231.

³⁶ Katie Main, ‘Black Talk’, Blackhawk #11.

³⁷ Katie Main, ‘Black Talk’, Blackhawk #12.

³⁸ Brannon Costello, ‘Christopher Priest’, in Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels, vol.2: M-Z, ed. M. Keith Booker (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010), 486–7; Abraham Riesman, ‘The Man Who Made Black Panther Cool’, New York Magazine, 22.01.2018; and Todd Steven Burroughs, ‘Black Panther, Black Writers, White Audience: Christopher Priest and/vs. Reginald Hudlin’, Fire!!! 4, no. 2 (2018): 55–93.

³⁹ Gary Groth, ‘I Have a Hard Time With Vigilantes: An Interview with Howard Chaykin’, The Comics Journal 109 (July 1986): 83–5; and Paul Gravett, ‘RRRRRED’, in Howard Chaykin: Conversations, ed. Brannon Costello (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 116–20.

⁴⁰ Author’s interview with Mike Gold, April 22, 2019.

⁴¹ ‘DCI with Johnny DC’, in The Unknown Soldier #2.

⁴² Chaykin, ‘Blood & Iron’, Blackhawk #1, 2–3, 11.

⁴³ Martin Pasko (w), Grant Miehm (p) and Terry Beatty (i), ‘Citizen Jan’, Secret Origins #45 (New York: DC Comics, 1989).

⁴⁴ Owsley et al., ‘Jack and Fred Go to the Airport’, Unknown Soldier #2, 2.

⁴⁵ Owsley et al., ‘Libertador’, Unknown Soldier #4, 16.

⁴⁶ Owsley et al., ‘Gobbledegook’, Unknown Soldier #7, 2.

⁴⁷ Brian D’Haeseleer, ‘Paving the Way for Baghdad: The US Invasion of Panama, 1989, The International History Review 41, no. 6 (2019): 1194–215.

⁴⁸ Alison Landsberg, Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 25–59.

⁴⁹ Owsley et al., ‘Looking for Charlie’, Unknown Soldier #1, 3, 7.

⁵⁰ Pasko et al., ‘Cinderella Undercover’, Blackhawk #3; and Pasko et al., ‘Death Warmed Over’.

⁵¹ Pasko et al., ‘All the Skeletons Come out to Play’, Blackhawk #8, 20–1.

⁵² Moench et al., ‘Ultimate Paranoia’, Blackhawk #16, 24.

⁵³ Helfer et al., ‘Betrayal’, Justice, Inc. #2, 4.

⁵⁴ Owsley et al., ‘Barry’s Deal’, Unknown Soldier #3, 5.

⁵⁵ Owsley et al., ‘Brother Leader Bites the Dust’, Unknown Soldier #5, 23.

⁵⁶ Owsley et al., ‘Jack and Fred’, 12.

⁵⁷ Owsley et al., ‘The Fifth Man’, Unknown Soldier #8.

⁵⁸ Michael Denning, Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller (New York: Routledge, 2014), 114–41; and Toby Miller, Spyscreen: Espionage on Film and TV from the 1930s to the 1960s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 88–121.

⁵⁹ Owsley et al., ‘Looking for Charlie’, 26.

⁶⁰ Author’s interview with Dennis O’Neil, April 15, 2019.

⁶¹ Author’s interview with Mike Gold, April 22, 2019.

⁶² William W. Savage, Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens: Comic Books and America, 1945–1956 (Hannover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1990), 34–50; and Peter Lee, ‘Decrypting Espionage Comic Books in 1950s America’, in Comic Books and the Cold War, 30–44.

⁶³ Costello, Secret Identity Crisis, 70–1.

⁶⁴ Geoff Klock, How to Read Superhero Comics and Why (London: Continuum, 2002).

⁶⁵ Marc Singer, Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018), 59–60; and Sabin, Adult Comics, 92.

⁶⁶ Mike Gold, ‘A Brief History of Blackhawk’,Blackhawk Annual #1; and Cord Scott, ‘Blackhawk’, Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels, vol. 1, A-L, ed. M. Keith Booker (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2010), 60–1.

⁶⁷ Kim Thompson, ‘Howard Chaykin Puts It All Back Together Again’, Amazing Heroes 132 (January 1, 1988): 29. The original creators were acknowledged in the mini-series’ final page.

⁶⁸ Chaykin, ‘Red Snow’, Blackhawk #2, 31. On Chop-Chop’s earlier depictions: Mark Evanier, ‘Blackhawk Bylines’, Blackhawk #263 (New York: DC Comics, 1983).

⁶⁹ Costello, Brannon, ‘Fascism and Mass Culture in Howard Chaykin’s Blackhawk’ 7, no. 2 (2013), https://imagetextjournal.com/fascism-and-mass-culture-in-howard-chaykins-blackhawk/. (Accessed on 3 December 2021).

⁷⁰ Pasko et al., ‘All in Color for a Crime’ Blackhawk #1, 3, 9.

⁷¹ Pasko et al., ‘Better Dead Than Read’, Blackhawk #2, 12.

⁷² Pasko et al., ‘All in Color for a Crime’, 20–1.

⁷³ Joe Kubert et al. (w, a), Star Spangled War Stories #151–204 (New York: DC Comics, 1970–7); Bob Haney (w), The Unknown Soldier #205–268 (New York: DC Comics, 1977–82); Robert Kanigher (w), Lee Elias (p) and Romeo Tanghal (i), ‘Heap the Corpses High!’, DC Super Stars #15 (New York: DC Comics, 1977); Bob Haney (w), Romeo Tanghal (p) and Frank McLaughlin (i), ‘The Secret That Saved the World!’, The Brave and the Bold #146 (New York: DC Comics, 1979); Paul Levitz (w), Irv Novick (p) and Frank McLaughlin (i), ‘The Specter of War!’, DC Comics Presents #42 (New York: DC Comics, 1982). An early version of the concept appeared in Robert Kanigher (w) and Joe Kubert (a), ‘I Knew the Unknown Soldier!’, Our Army at War #168 (New York: DC Comics, 1966).

⁷⁴ Michael Aushenker, ‘From Parts “Unknown”!’, Back Issue 37 (December 2009): 40–8.

⁷⁵ Owsley et al., ‘Blood Cold’, Unknown Soldier #12, 2; and Bob Haney (w), Dick Ayers (p) and Gerry Talaoc (i), ‘A Farewell to War!’, Unknown Soldier #268.

⁷⁶ Gary Groth, ‘War and Peace with Denny O’Neil: Two Interviews with Denny O’Neil’, The Comics Journal 66 (September 1981): 64; and Webb, ‘Unknown Soldier’, 231.

⁷⁷ J. Richard Stevens, Captain America, Masculinity, and Violence: The Evolution of a National Icon (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2015), 24–74.

⁷⁸ Owsley et al., ‘Libertador’, 18.

⁷⁹ Frank Robbins (w) and Jack Sparling (a), ‘A Cocktail for Molotov!’, Star Spangled War Stories #172; David Michelinie (w) and Gerry Talaoc (a), ‘Target Red’, Star Spangled War Stories #196; and Bob Haney (w), Dick Ayers (p) and Gerry Talaoc (i), ‘Red Flows the Don!’, Unknown Soldier #242.

⁸⁰ Les Adler and Thomas G. Paterson, ‘Red Fascism: The Merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the American Image of Totalitarianism, 1930’s–1950’s’, The American Historical Review 75, no. 4 (1970): 1046–64.

⁸¹ Kenneth Robeson, The Avenger: Justice, Inc. (New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1972 [1939]).

⁸² Dennis O’Neil (w) Justice, Inc. #1–4 (New York: DC Comics, 1975).

⁸³ Helfer, ‘Trust’, Justice Inc. #1, 3.

⁸⁴ Ernest Mandel, Delightful Murder: A Social History of the Crime Story (London: Pluto Press, 1984), 111–28.

⁸⁵ ‘DC List This Week’, Unknown Soldier #1.

⁸⁶ Lou Mougin, ‘The Unknown Soldier #1ʹ, Amazing Heroes 155 (December 15, 1988): 69.

⁸⁷ Andy Mangels, ‘Blackhawk’, Amazing Heroes 157 (January 15, 1989): 33–4.

⁸⁸ Katie Main, ‘The Secret Origin of the Secret Organization’, Blackhawk #8.

⁸⁹ Katie Main, ‘Anything, Anywhere, Anytime’, Blackhawk #14.

⁹⁰ Mike Gold, ‘Blackhawk’, Blackhawk Special (New York: DC Comics, 1992).

⁹¹ Letter by Howard Leroy Davis, Blackhawk #4; Letter from William Messner-Loebs, Blackhawk #5.

⁹² Letter from Anthony C. Diaz, Blackhawk #12.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rui Lopes

Rui Lopes is a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History, NOVA-FCSH, specialised in Cold War culture, transnational anticolonialism, and the international history of European authoritarianism. He is the author of the book West Germany and the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1968-1974: Between Cold War and Colonialism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).