Reading Marvel - Mission: Impossible

Cody is endeavoring to read his way through Marvel's entire publishing history. Let's see if he can do it!

Marvel tells a couple of stories about the IMF.

The spy action thriller franchise Mission: Impossible has been around for sixty years at this point, and it’s shocking that very little attempt has been made to expand the franchise in the world of comic books up to this point. In the ‘60s, there was a five-issue series from Dell Publishing (and the fifth issue was just a reprint of the first issue), and that was it until 1996, when Marvel Comics teamed with Paramount Pictures to create a one-shot comic book that serves as a prequel to the ‘96 feature film. And that’s all we’ve gotten in the way of Mission: Impossible comic books, despite the fact that the concept could easily lend itself to a series that could run as long as the likes of G.I. Joe. (There are well over 400 issues of G.I. Joe in existence.)

Marvel’s 48-page Mission: Impossible comic book features two stories, both of them written by Marv Wolfman. Pino Rinaldi, Rod Whigham, Andrew Wildman, Robert Almond, Jim Amash, Tom Wegryzn, Phil Moy, and Scott Reed teamed up to handle the artwork on the first story, Through a Mirror Darkly, which takes up the majority of the pages.

That one sees an Impossible Missions Force team that consists of Jim Phelps from the TV series, his much-younger wife Claire (a character in the first movie), and Tom Cruise’s “master of disguise” character from the films, Ethan Hunt, along with field techie Calvin and ponytailed computer specialist Lofficier, characters who only exist in this comic book, being sent on a mission to look into former Soviet general Anatoli Yershov, who been an American ally in recent years… but now, there’s suspicion that his politics have changed.

Word is that Yershov has gotten his hands on a lost U.S. missile and its activation software with the intention of using that missile to destroy a high-level summit meeting that will be attended by his political rivals. He will then seize control of Russia and ally with terrorist nations. While Phelps, Calvin, and Ethan infiltrate the summit meeting location, Kastle Lupon in the Ural Mountains, as a chef and his kitchen crew, Claire and Lofficier find their way into Yershov’s home in Kozhvagorski.

It’s an interesting enough story with some action, intrigue, and a twist. Despite being a lead character on the TV show, Jim Phelps (played by Peter Graves in both the ‘60s-into-’70s and ‘80s versions of the series) was revealed to be a traitor in the ‘96 movie (where he was played by Jon Voight). What Wolfman attempted to do with this story was explain why Phelps would shift from a hero to a villain. It’s up to the fans to decide whether or not he was successful. For me, I see the Jim Phelps in the movie as an entirely different character from the person on the TV show, he just happens to have the same name, so the explanation and the traitor twist is fine with me.

The second, short story in the comic book is called Should Any of Your Agents… and it features two supporting characters from the ‘96 film, Luther Stickell and Franz Krieger, in an adventure brought to the page by Rob Liefeld and Extreme Studios.

Apparently the president of the South American country Santa Delvado is being paid to  smuggle hi-tech weapons to militia terrorists – so while Luther investigates the president’s side of things in Santa Delvado, Krieger is working in the Middle Eastern location of Asmiar, Araqistan, looking for an arms dealer codenamed White Eagle. As you might have noticed, the names of specific locations in these stories were made up by Wolfman.

This Mission: Impossible comic book was marketed as a “48-Page Spectacular,” but it doesn’t really live up to the “Spectacular” part of that description. It’s interesting and entertaining enough, but it could have been better. Still, it’s a fun read, and worth checking out if you’re a fan of this franchise.