The coolest of the cool

Normally I don't do stuff like this in this blog, but I felt in necessary to note the recent passing of Robert Culp. I grew up watching I Spy on TV, and thought (and still think) that he (and Bill Cosby) as Kelly & Scott were the coolest of the cool. They were America’s answer to that Brit double-aught spy from across the pond, and even though they were on TV instead of the big screen, they we truly so much cooler.

"It appears that the individual (Culp) had fallen down and struck his head. It's still a preliminary investigation and we're still waiting on the official cause of death," she said, adding there was no indication of foul play.

Culp, who was born in Oakland, California, and attended university in Washington state and California, earned his first major television role in the late 1950s Western "Trackdown," playing a Texas Ranger.

But his most famous TV role was that of Kelly Robinson, a secret agent with a double life traveling the world as a top-seeded professional tennis player in "I Spy."

Culp also wrote scripts for seven episodes of the show, which ran from 1965 to 1968 and featured Cosby as his partner, Alexander Scott.

It was the first U.S. prime-time network drama to feature a black actor in a starring role and both men were nominated for Emmy Awards in all three of the program's seasons -- with Cosby beating out Culp each time.

I met Culp a year or so back at the New York Comic Con. I t was then that I thanked him for all that coolness from all those years ago, and asked him to autograph a copy of my comicbook, Agent Unknown. I told him that the characters that he and Cosby played in I Spy all those years ago inspired the main characters in my comic, which helped kick-start the comic itself.

Well, I am now (with the help of the Chris Torres), re-launching that series with a modern-age version of Kelly & Scott. I hope that you will all get to see it soon.