Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: cia, gardner fox, ogden whitney
Ogden Whitney and Gardner Fox’s Undercover Girl was an immediate reflection of the Cold War espionage of its era.
Article Summary
- Ogden Whitney and Gardner Fox created Undercover Girl during Cold War espionage in ’47.
- Historical tie-in with the CIA’s inception and Undercover Girl’s narrative.
- Manhunt’s Undercover Girl spawned her own title after the series ended.
- Character possibly modeled after actress Lizabeth Scott, reflecting the era.
Artist Ogden Whitney was likely working on the creation of the character Undercover Girl for the launch of Magazine Enterprize’s Manhunt sometime during the summer of 1947. That’s around the same time that former Office of Strategic Services officer Elizabeth McIntosh announced her book Undercover Girl about her exploits working around the world for the OSS. McIntosh had been a newspaper reporter at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and later as a war correspondent for the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicate. The book garnered significant publicity through the final months of 1947, just as the Manhunt series was ramping up, with Undercover Girl aka Starr Flagg initially posing undercover as a foreign correspondent for a newspaper. Just as Manhunt was winding down, Magazine Enterprises briefly launched Undercover Girl into her own title. An espionage title that got underway in the early years of the Cold War era, there are three issues of Undercover Girl up for auction in the 2022 July 3-4 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122227
The Undercover Girl feature in Manhunt and the subsequent title is a fascinating reflection of its particular moment in time. The successor agency to the OSS and the short-lived National Intelligence Authority / Central Intelligence Group, the Central Intelligence Agency was created on September 18, 1947 when the National Security Act of 1947 became law. References to Undercover Girl working for “Central Intelligence” began periodically with Manhunt #2, cover-dated November 1947 and with an on-sale date of September 30, which means that this real-world turn of events was seemingly reflected in the comic book virtually immediately. The feature had a distinct focus on adventures all over the world revolving around safeguarding the secrets of the atomic bomb and similar matters. The feature was written by the legendary Gardner Fox.
Manhunt lasted for 13 issues, and then the character appeared in two issues of the brief Trail Colt series, ending in late 1949. Her adventures from Manhunt were then collected into three issues of her own title. According to Ron Goulart, Ogden Whitney may have modeled the character after Lizabeth Scott, a popular actress of the era. A fascinating reflection of its moment in history in the early Cold War era, there are three issues of Undercover Girl up for auction in the 2022 July 3-4 Sunday & Monday Comic Books Select Auction #122227
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