History[]
John Steed was a suave, sophisticated, impecabbly dressed agent of an unspecified branch of an equally unspecified British intelligence service active primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, the nominal head of a loosely knit group of operatives known as The Avengers (though this was not a name they ever actually used themselves). Steed, whose trademarks were a bowler hat and an umbrella, was a top agent skilled in every aspect of intelligence gathering and in several forms of both armed and unarmed combat, and an expert marksman. During the course of his career he was teamed with numerous other operatives, some apparently professionals like himself (including his longtime partner Mrs Emma Peel and later Tara King) and some seemingly amateurs he called upon when needed in a presumably less official capacity (including anthropologist Cathy Gale, nightclub singer Venus Smith and Doctors David Keel and Martin King). Later, in the 1970s, he led an enlarged 'team' of three, the so-called New Avengers, consisting of himself and agents Purdey and Mike Gambit. Steed specialised in unusual and often quite bizarre cases which nobody else could have tackled.
Notes[]
- John Steed was the lead character in the cult TV series' The Avengers and The New Avengers (played by Patrick Macnee), and featured in numerous comics adaptations, primarily in TV Comic.
- Who Steed worked for was never really made clear, though it was seemingly a branch of British Intelligence. He did, however, occasionally report to a man called One Ten, and later to the wheelchair bound (male) eccentric code-named Mother.
Trivia[]
Steed was implied to have died at some point (as was Mike Gambit), in Mark Millar's spy series The Secret Service in CLiNT.
Links[]
- Appearances of John Steed
- Character Gallery: John Steed
- Images that feature John Steed
- Fan-Art Gallery: John Steed
- John Steed quotations
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