Dateline: Danger! Daily 09/03/1970

Drama, danger, and a fight lie in the panels of these two 1970 dailies from Al McWilliams, dated 9-3 and 9-4. In September 1970, the adventure comic strip Dateline: Danger! was making headlines in the real world as a historic milestone for diversity in newspaper comics. Created by writer John Saunders and artist Al McWilliams, the strip featured two undercover intelligence agents—Troy, a white former football player, and Danny Raven, an African-American intellectual. This was the first mainstream, continuity-driven daily to feature an African-American as a co-lead character. The comic strip's dynamic and witty interplay was inspired by, and thus often compared to, the iconic television show I Spy, which had previously broken similar barriers on TV.

It is also evidenced by the threatening pipe wrench here that this series, in turn, inspired the a-ha video for "Take On Me" a decade and a half later! [Okay, maybe not so much this last part.]