UNDER CLOAK OF DARKNESS

A super spy is a super patriot and a super baseball fan in a subpar debut.

He’s five-six, 140 pounds, but a man of steel with virtuoso moves. Call him John Apparite, though of course that’s not his real name. His real name is known only to the Director. The Director of what? That, too, is a secret—so secret, in fact, that if you guess it you’ve probably signed your death warrant. In 1955, John is a fledgling FBI agent when CIA chief Allen Dulles thrills him to his marrow with a proposal that will almost certainly land him in a flag-draped coffin. Dulles is sparing with details. It’s the enigmatic, ice-eyed Director who fills him in. “You will be joining the most covert espionage program in existence,” John’s told. It’s so covert that only three men know of it, so hush-hush it doesn’t even have a name. What remains unspoken, sparing John’s blushes, is the Director’s view of him as potentially “the greatest intelligence agent the United States has ever seen.” But before he’s ready for the assignment, John has to be put through a draconian martial arts exercise of the Director’s devising. Butch’s Place is a sleazy D.C. bar no one—except for certified thugs—ever enters. Go on in, the Director tells John. Take on everyone inside and emerge only when no one’s left standing. In ten seconds the 25-year-old wunderkind all but destroys eight cutthroats. John’s reward for performing so brilliantly is always more or less the same and always relished: He’s allowed access to the Director’s Motorola so that he can listen to his beloved Washington Senators lose to the damn Yankees.

A comic book without the drawings.