Similar to Batman and the Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), Spy Smasher (secretly the "wealthy Virginia sportsman"[1] Alan Armstrong) is a master detective, equipped with a number of gadgets and a specialized vehicle, the "Gyrosub", which was a combination of an airplane, an automobile, and a submarine.

[5] With the end of World War II and the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Spy Smasher was left without a battle to fight.

He first appeared in Crisis in Eternity, as a member of the Squadron of Justice when King Kull had captured Shazam and the Elders, and teamed up with other villains to wipe out life on all three Earths, and defeated Ibac on Earth-Two as he attacked Atlantis by tricking him into saying "I back down from no-one", defeating him as saying his name causes him to turn into a normal man and vice versa.

The character was used prominently in the 1990s series The Power of Shazam!, in which aged Alan Armstrong often recounts his adventures as Spy Smasher.

AC Comics has published reprints of some Golden Age Spy Smasher stories that have lapsed into the public domain.

A new Spy Smasher, government agent Katarina Armstrong, created by Gail Simone, first appears in Birds of Prey #100 (January 2007).

That issue shows a flashback of both women competing in a race, with Katarina beating Barbara by cheating but immediately confessing to the judges after she had won.

The GPA agents apparently erase all of her memories by "resetting" her brain, telling Cameron Chase that Katarina can hear their conversations but can no longer process what the sounds mean.

Oracle initially muses that it could be Katarina's doing, as she has the means and motive to harm the Birds, but it is eventually revealed to be the work of the White Canary.

[10] Spy Smasher is eventually revealed to be alive and well when she recruits Bane and his new team of mercenaries (consisting of himself, Jeannette, Lady Vic, King Shark, Dwarfstar and Giganta) to invade and claim Skartaris in the name of the U.S.[11] Creator Gail Simone said on Katarina: "I felt the DCU needed a Jack Bauer.

They actually like each other, but like brothers fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War, the distance between them is so vast and clearly drawn that they can't even hope to reconcile.