Cannon

If you can imagine Cannon as a film co-directed by Sam Peckinpah and Russ Meyer, you'll probably have a good idea what this contains. Wally Wood is a legend, and though this is trashy and sexist, it's still hilariously over-the-top (intentionally so) and incredibly well drawn.

This book is definitely a relic of its time. Wood liked to write sexy action comics for servicemen, so these stories originated in comics sent to soldiers. Wood had a great art style, all bullet-headed agents and voluptuous, leggy women. He had a talent for drawing both action scenes and cheesecake pinups, and he was also especially good and looks of existential horror, which pop up once or twice in this volume.

One of the tropes of this series is that all the women are beautiful and none of them keep on their clothes. A handful of the female characters (heroes and villains both) are seemingly always nude or only occasionally dressed in see-through clothing. When given the opportunity to disrobe, they do, and if they need to escape a show more villain’s clutches in the altogether, they make the best of it.

This would all be a bunch of absurd, sexploitational fun if not for the threats of rape and casual misogyny that crop up throughout. I liked the art and adventure enough that the occasional sour note didn’t ruin the book for me, but my rating definitely comes with a big asterisk. show less

A James Bond-esq cold-war romp in a weekly comic strip style from the 60s. The main character (John Cannon) was an American U-2 pilot shot down in China and brainwashed to become a killer assassin. He is sent back to America with a target but it caught first. He is reprogrammed to be a killer for America instead when his programming could not be reversed completely. The artwork is well drawn though there is an overdependence on breasts to carry the story. Though, there is not question Wallace Wood had a talent for drawing them well. Not a whole lot of depth to this one.

Wally Wood was a heck of an artist, with a nice smooth realistic style (although all his beauteous women had identically buxom shapes). His writing, at least in this series, was a little less successful. Cannon is a secret agent of the cold war period, who gets in more scrapes, and beds more women than James Bond. The stories are unashamedly sexist, the plots fairly irrelevant, and all in all this series is basically a guilty pleasure.

Cannon is driving toward the church for his wedding when it blows, killing his fiancee and his Chief. He reverts back to the cold killer he formerly was, and resumes his exploits as an agent. Nonsensical storylines, but chock-full of beauteous nekkid women.