Before there was Legend, there was The Wild Wild West, a melding of western and spy genres that aired on CBS from 1965 to 1969. Its popularity was so great that it not only spawned two "reunion" specials (one in 1979, and the other in 1980... and there might have been even more if one of the leads didn't unexpectedly pass away the next year) and a theatrical spin-off starring Will Smith in 1999 (which wasn't generally well-received, but was responsible for rescuing a damaged historical locomotive engine. I say more about that here), but also a couple of comic book series. There was a series published by Gold Key in the '60s, which I've never seen, and a more recent comic book mini-series published by a company called Millennium in 1990, which is what I'll be talking about here.First, here are the basics. Jim West (played by Robert Conrad) and Artemus Gordon (played by Ross Martin) are two Secret Service agents serving under President Ulysses S. Grant (thus, the series takes place between 1869 and 18771, although when dates are given within the show, they tend not to appear in chronological order). West was the suave gunman, while Gordon was an inventor and master of disguise (a predecessor to Legend's Bartok, perhaps?). If you think of them as spies in the Old West (but specifically, the kinds of spies often seen in other 1960s television, so include a dose of science fiction), you've got a pretty good idea. West and Gordon combatted all sorts of outlandish threats to the nation. Although the term "Steampunk" was decades in the future, The Wild Wild West can certainly be seen as a progenitor of the genre.
The 4-part comic book story was called "The Night of the Iron Tyrants," echoing the naming scheme used in the original series. Set in early 1876 (almost certainly intended to be after the events depicted in the series, itself), it begins with the arrival of a group of iron-clad killers laying waste to a small town. The arrival of West and Gordon provides some resistance, but the armored assassins get away. The lone survivor, who introduces herself as Felicity Morstan-Haselmayar, joins West and Gordon on their train, The Wanderer, where it is established that the killers have destroyed two other towns before this one, with the only apparent connection being a poster announcing the impending arrival of a "Professor Haselmayar," Felicity's husband. But it is soon revealed that Haselmayar is, in fact, John Wilkes Booth! Almost immediately after that bombshell, we learn that Booth is involved in a plot involving West and Gordon's long-time nemesis, Dr. Miquelito (sic) Loveless.
That's not to say that Booth is in league with Loveless. Rather, it turns out that Booth was part of a larger conspiracy2 to assassinate not only Abraham Lincoln (as he did in reality), but nearly every other member of the government, and Booth went into hiding after his supposed death, retaining possession of several pages of a journal that would expose the remaining members of that conspiracy. Those conspirators have joined with Loveless to provide them with the futuristic weaponry necessary to complete their plans, and have been attempting to find and kill Booth (hence the armored annihilations wherever he was expected to appear) and retrieve the pages of the journal before their identities can be exposed.
As it turns out, our heroes find Booth in fairly short order, and retrieve the missing pages, only for Booth to be killed by one of the conspirators. Before the conspirator can kill the others, they are rescued... by Loveless, who seems so confident that his plans to take over the country are unstoppable that he actually releases them soon after allowing them to read from the missing pages... pages containing information that shakes Jim West to his core. The conspiracy to take over the government has, in all essence, already taken place, with conspirators in place at the highest levels3... excepting for President Grant, himself, who has been suffering from an extended illness, brought about by being slowly poisoned.
While Gordon is able to rescue the President, both West and Felicity4 are captured by the conspirators and made to go through a gauntlet of Iron Knights intent on killing them. It doesn't work, and when he and Felicity arrive at the end of the gauntlet, they are greeted by Dr. Loveless, who has been using West's and Gordon's freedom to keep the conspiracists busy while he conducted his own plans. While the conspiracy plans to stage an explosion at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia,5 killing President Grant outright, as well as the visiting Emperor of Brazil, Loveless intends to use the resulting chaos to take over most of California, which (as longtime fans of the television series already know) he considers his by birthright.
In true James Bond fashion, Loveless leaves West and Felicity in a death trap while he leaves, and West manages to free them both. West then arrives to save President Grant from throwing a lever that would cause the fatal explosion, but it turns out that Gordon is impersonating Grant to ensure his safety. When the explosion fails to take place, Loveless crashes the ceremony in his own airship, hoping to incinerate everyone from above. Thankfully, West and Gordon are able to crash through the airship's glass windows, and Loveless attempts to send everyone to a fiery death by blowing the airship's controls. Of course, everyone actually manages to escape instead (with the probable exception of Loveless's faithful giant, Voltaire, who was gravely wounded before the crash. Notably, Voltaire stopped appearing in the television series without explanation before the first season ended). The final pages establish that the conspiracy has failed, but that most of those responsible can't be formally punished, as the revelations would shake the nation too much, and that West and Gordon themselves are likely to be "put out to pasture" soon, as Grant will not be re-elected, and the next President will consider them to "know too much and (be) too clever for (their) own good." But, as Artemis says, "We'll do what we've always done... meet whatever comes head-on."
"The Night of the Iron Tyrants" was praised for capturing "the fun mixture of western and spy action that marked the ground-breaking 1960s TV series," and I certainly agree. The comic book came from an all-but unknown publisher, so I assume that it wasn't produced in any great quantity, but if you're interested in reading the whole story, I recommend it if you can find it, especially if you're a fan of the series.
1The timing does track with existence of the US Secret Service, which formed in 1865, but at the time, the Secret Service was strictly interested in curbing counterfeiting. It's debatable whether the Service's expanded duties in 1867 to begin "detecting persons perpetrating frauds against the government" might have included the kind of counterintelligence frequently undertaken by West and Gordon. In any event, they didn't formally take on the protection of the US President until 1901.
5This was an actual historical event, which ran from May 10th to November 10th, 1876, but I confess I'm unfamiliar with it.
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