PETER FLINT

Peter Flint is an agent with the British Intelligence Corps.

That is the title given us for the organization on the first page of the first adventure we have of Flint's many, many adventures which start in 1939, just before the start of WWII. It will be shown later to be a part of that country's military intelligence apparatus, run by a General Ferguss who will soon convince him to become a covert agent. From then on his handler is a short, stumpy man known by the codename of Kingpin.

I say handler and not boss or supervisor because while Flint takes assignments from him, a really large number of missions over the next few years, Flint is never an official employee of the government. In fact, his involvement itself will be kept a major secret know to just a handful of people, the only ones to know that Flint is in fact the soon-to-be legendary nemesis to the Nazis "Codename Warlord".

In that introduction to Flint, which takes place in 1939, likely the late Spring, we see a blond-haired man in his late 20's or early 30's, taking part in a cross-country road rally race in the German Alps. Flint watches a competitor's car go out of control and when he stops to lend assistance, he sees the man, a fellow Brit named Brian, dying from a gunshot. Brian's final act is to hand to Flint a small piece of metal on which is etched '1-9-39', asking Flint to "take this badge to General Ferguss" and exhorting him to hurry before the people who shot Brian also catch Flint.

Flint will from that point demonstrate one impressive feat of derring-do after another as he races his car along narrow Alpine roads while being shot at, leap off a high cliff into frigid mountain waters, climb onto and later leap from a cable car, break into an electrified-fenced facility and steal a plane to fly back to England.

All this will show from the very beginning how determined and capable Flint can be when the going gets tough. And we will learn soon that for him the going will be consistently tough as he will be asked to again and again go behind enemy lines to pull off one impossible mission after another.

And all while, at the bizarre request of General Ferguss, while letting everyone he knows and cares about back home believe that he, a "minor member of British nobility" complete with a lordship and a very fancy ancestral estate, is a coward and a do-nothing. When asked at a dinner party if he would be joining 'the Guards' now that the Nazis had invaded Poland, Flint will demure with "all that shooting and fighting! No - not for me, thanks".

This would result in Flint receiving considerable condemnation from his fellow aristocrats (none on whom seem to be doing much themselves) all the while standing at the ready for a call to disappear behind enemy lines for a harrowing mission, something he would receive over 600 times!