Comic Book of the 1950’s T-Man #3 “Death Trap in Iran!” highlights Cold War Paranoia I finally managed to find the comic book on ebay and decided to share it with you readers so that you can make up your own opinion. It should be added that this comic book hero which preceded Ian Fleming’s James Bond Franchise or the TV hit Mission Impossible (which was partly directed by our Talented Iranian compatriot Reza Badiyi did not just operate in Iran, but a little everywhere in the so-called “Communist Infested World” or “Third World Dictatorships” in the views of the Free World public opinion of the Time.
I have put a link to the Comic Book Description by MohamedMossadegh.com but would also like to add that the however this American comic book may sound shocking or even ridiculous by today’s standards that Joseph Stalin was to die on the same year as the 1953 Coup in Iran. The Crimes of the Soviet dictator as well as the Cult of Personality that surrounded his persona were openly reported and condemned by his successor Nikita Khrushchev (who was no more innocent but a wise opportunist) three years later at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
If the Cold War Paranoia seems obsolete today with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Era, this Paranoia seems to a great degree justified if not condoned. For a Country like Iran that shared a common frontier with the Soviet Union of the Time, the Red Threat was always a grim reality that the Iranian intelligentsia preferred to ignore in the name of democratic idealism or even in most cases Leftist intellectual discord.
The Invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet Forces in 1980 proved the same leftists wrong as to the innocent intentions of the Russian Bear. That said the Comic Book is not without flaws in describing Iran and Iranians particularly their costumes, Fez and Turban liked characters that seem more like Egyptian or Ottoman Turk than Iranians of the 1950’s. Also I don’t think that the author of the Comic book could be held accountable for the 1953 Coup more than could be seen as a White House financed film to present Iranians as Evil. ‘
I personally think that like anything Art and particularly Pop Artists are influenced by their times and what they hear and see in the news and press, but I very much doubt that they can be considered as serious political analysts. That said, you NEVER KNOW DO YOU ? ;0) Comic Book Description by MohamedMossadegh.com. This comic book from January 1952 [T-Man #3] has a storyline clearly ‘ripped from the headlines’ based on Iran’s oil nationalization standoff with the West.
The comic-book connection is actually not so far-fetched. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower himself described the 1953 coup in his memoirs as sounding ”more like a dime novel than an historical fact.” This particular piece of Cold War era pulp fiction chronicles the adventures of U.S. Treasury agent Pete Trask (hence, the name ‘T-Man’), who could have just as easily been a CIA agent or coup-conspirator Kermit Roosevelt, who himself has been described by NY Times reporter Stephen Kinzer as “a true-life James Bond.” Ironically, the T-Man series, like Iran’s democracy, was short-lived, both meeting their untimely end in the year 1953>>>T-Man comic book pages
