Tag Archives: espionage

A couple of very cool space adventure novels

Posted on February 9, 2023 by I.M. Baytor

So, I finally started watching Andor and it’s as neat as I’d heard. It’s Star Wars as a taut cyberpunk heist, compelingly acted and with enough of a distinct vibe to feel more satisfying than the endless retread of the … Continue reading →

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More cool episodes of Mission: Impossible

Posted on January 11, 2023 by I.M. Baytor

This is Gotham Calling’s 600th post! As usual, I like to signal these benchmarks with longer listicles (a hundred posts ago I listed my favorite westerns), so today I’m doing a follow-up to the post from last September ranking the … Continue reading →

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A couple of 21st-century spy novels

Posted on October 26, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

Another post based on my summer reads… Besides science fiction, as always I also spent part of my break reading spy yarns. The last time I wrote about this type of books in the blog I focused on a couple … Continue reading →

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A couple of deservedly acclaimed futuristic novels

Posted on September 28, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

Another post about science fiction, but this one looking beyond comic books… Reading old novels set in the future can be fun in different ways. On the one hand, it’s fascinating to see how other eras imagined (accurately or not) … Continue reading →

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Gotham Calling’s top Mission: Impossible episodes

Posted on September 15, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

Today is Gotham Calling’s eighth anniversary! Since I celebrated the blog’s previous anniversary with a list of my top 50 film noirs, this time around I was going to do a list of my top spy films, but I ended … Continue reading →

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A couple of vintage spy novels

Posted on May 12, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

I’ve written extensively about John le Carré in this blog, but today I want to go further back into the roots of spy literature. Here are a couple of very different novels by a couple of very different writers who … Continue reading →

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Spotlight on The Unknown Soldier, 1988-1989 – part 2

Posted on March 10, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

As I started to discuss last week, 1988-9’s exhilarating The Unknown Soldier limited series is miles apart from Joe Kubert’s original iteration of the character. For one thing, instead of a fully-committed agent of an unquestionably righteous American war effort, … Continue reading →

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Spotlight on The Unknown Soldier, 1988-1989 – part 1

Posted on March 3, 2022 by I.M. Baytor

At a time when pavlovian pundits and politicians seem keen to revive Cold War rhetoric and imagery, (mis)applying it to the conflict taking place in Ukraine, perhaps it is worth remembering that even during the Cold War itself there were … Continue reading →

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On Dynamite’s James Bond – part 2

Posted on September 30, 2021 by I.M. Baytor

If you read last week’s post, you know I’ve been looking back at the James Bond comics published by Dynamite in these last few years. By securing some of the industry’s top talent, this publisher has been able to churn … Continue reading →

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On Dynamite’s James Bond – part 1

Posted on September 23, 2021 by I.M. Baytor

After much delay, the latest James Bond movie is finally coming out next week. Hopefully, No Time to Die will bring the kind of super-spy thrills Black Widow kept threatening to deliver but never really did. In fact, aside from … Continue reading →

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