The Greys

This is the last strip of Season 4. Every year so far we’ve changed the header image for the Greys site, and for the past year the top of our site has been based on the titles from the classic spy series, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

As we approached the end of the season, however, we realised that we have never actually created a comic which uses the characters from the programme – or even one that references them indirectly. It was a situation that was just begging to be rectified, preferably before the switch to Season 5 brings a new header.

While thinking about iconic features of the U.N.C.L.E. series and movies it was immediately obvious that we really had to use Robert Vaughn’s character, Napoleon Solo, and David McCallum’s character, Illya Kuryakin, so work began to create Grey versions of each of them. The pen-communicator also seemed like a great addition, but that in turn led to discussions about the shoe-phone used in Get Smart, Mel Brooks’ wonderful parody of the spy genre.

It’s a genre that is ripe for humour: for every Bond there’s a Flint, for every Napoleon Solo there’s a Maxwell Smart. Not to mention Austin Powers and Inspector Gadget! Our comic is just a small addition to this rich culture of spy parodies, but we think it makes for a worthy end to the season.

The question now is what should we use for our Season 5 header…?

Click here to download the SVG source for this comic