Francis Durbridge's crime novelist turned private detective, Paul Temple, started out in a collection of 1938 radio show serials before later featured in four films produced in the 1940s. Durbridge further success with a novel and Paul Temple television show helped spur the Associated Press editors to develop a strip version which began in the London Evening News on November 19, 1951 for its twenty year run. Since Durbridge was hired to write the feature, he quickly picked up his main characters, Paul, his beautiful wife Steve, and Scotland Yard's Sir Graham Forbes. Alfred Sindall was chosen as the first artist, but soon left to develop his own strip property, and Bill Bailey too over the drawing chores. But most fans just remember the skilled pen work of artist John McNamara who changed the look of the title character to match his on screen persona. Numerous marketing items and pocket-sized comic books soon followed, but who can forget the fond memories of this delightful strip reprinted in America's Menominee Falls Gazette.
Hearing rumors that his employer, Mr. March, was a sorcerer, orphan boy Tommy Troy snuck into his attic one night to discover a weird glowing ring that the boy was compelled to try on. As the room was plunged into darkness, Turan, Emissary of the Fly people appeared out of another dimensional plane activated by the mysterious fly ring. Explaining how his people were overcome by power-hungry despots, they reduced his race to the insignificant life form known as the fly! Since evil and greed still flourish in the world today, the emissary stated that only one pure of heart could still wield the powers of the lost fly race by simply rubbing this magic ring. Thomas Troy, met the challenge, and became the super-guardian of justice known as, The Fly. Now possessed with the insect's properties, Troy has the strength of a hundred men, can see in all directions, scale any height, and fight crime with his ultra quick reflexes and feared buzz-gun whose powerful stinger leaves crooks unconscious. Grown to manhood, our hero serves justice by day as an attorney at law, but as night falls on a sleeping city, Troy becomes the nemesis to all criminals, the dreaded Fly! First published in August of 1959, this early Joe Simon and Jack Kirby hero lasted for thirty suspenseful issues before its cancellation in 1964.
