Crossover of the Week

December 1999

VOICE OF PAIN

FBI Agent-in-Charge Jeffrey Reynolds tells Police Lt. Ralph Adams he has been reading classified official reports about vigilantes such as the Voice. The most recent report was dated in the late sixties, and concerned a disguise artist referred to as Mr. Jones who worked for the Bureau. The Voice refers to George Sanchez as “my Burbank.” Reynolds considers asking his Great-Uncle Lynn about the vigilantes of the old days. Former police chief Cobbins refers to vigilantes (or “Independent Operators”) who were involved in World War II, including an Australian who served with his country’s military while wearing a mask and using the code name “the Phantom Commando.”

Story by Erwin K. Roberts in Double Danger Tales #52, Tom and Ginger Johnson, eds., Fading Shadows Publications, May 2002; reprinted in Casebook of the Voice, Modern Knights Press, 2014. Mr. Jones appeared in Dennis Lynds’ story “The Man of a Million Faces,” published in the June 1968 issue of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine under the house name of Robert Hart Davis. Burbank is an agent of a shadow-cloaked pulp hero, specializing in communications. Reynolds’ great-uncle Lynn is FBI agent Lynn Vickers, who appeared in stories by Bryan James Kelley in Public Enemy (later retitled Federal Agent). The Phantom Commando is an Australian comic character created by John Dixon who appeared in his own series from 1959–1970.