Jet Power 1 Drawn by Bob Powell and Lawrence Woromay, possibly written by Gardner Fox
I must say that this book was well drawn. Unfortunately, the colourisation is terrible (although twice as good as that of the ME original). Still, it is difficult to see what is going on in the panels because of that. I like that Powers is portrayed as a scientist and inventor, and not just an adventurer. This book is much more interesting than the groping attempts by the novice writers and artists of the early 1940s, whose so-called "science fiction" has little science and mostly fantasy that has little to do with what we modern readers know of The Universe in which we live. Super Scrounge and the other posters above have made most of the points I would have brought up, so this will be more brief than my usual reviews.
This Is Jet Powers - Intro Chapter
I like the opening, showing snippets of the earthquake disasters. I also like the author having added Powers note pad, which can be used to teach readers some real-life information, that, at least, might get them something to talk about at dull cocktail parties. Interesting that the author has presaged the videophone.
Mr. Sinn is an interesting villain - A Materialistic, sadistic Tibetan, who lives in a palace in The Himalaya Mountains of Tibet, whose almost entire population believe in an ascetic, non-materialistic and pacifistic form of Bhuddism. But wait.... his skin is green! He's not a local. He must be an alien being from another planet, as there are no humanoids, or primates, for that matter, known to have green skin. He wants to enslave humankind to do his bidding, and engineered bringing Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin to power.
So, Mr. Powers has the oft-used air/land/sea vehicle, eh? To be expected in the early 1950s, I suppose. He already was flying over The Himalayas, and yet he goes out of his way southward and eastward, to Indochina, and to walk back there, likely over a 1,000 miles, just so he isn't seen approaching the villains palace??? That is too ridiculous. A gravitron gun that "releases the mass of matter". I'm sure there is a way to explain that it lowers significantly the specific gravity of any object its ray penetrates. Somehow, I do not believe that seeing any combination of coloured lights would drive a person mad. So Jet makes a stun gun out of unused machine parts in a few minutes, and busts open a wall that allows the nearby river to flow into the underground palace, and destroy Sinns lab.Sinn has built a palace inside a mountain, which lies adjacent to a river in a high mountain valley, or in the foothills of The Tibetan Plateau. Powers uses his graviton on the machinery that creates the earthquakes, lifting it high, and letting it crash to the ground destroying it. Good that the author refrained from attempting to explain how such a small amount of machinery could cause mega earthquakes many thousands of miles away on other continents. Sinn, trying to get away, pushes his loyal accomplice, Su Shan, ostensibly, to her death. Maybe good help is always easy to find?
Jet Powers - The Man In The Moon
Sinn has laboratories strewn all over The World, in case some get destroyed. He has a man-made tiny "moon". How much food and water could fit in that tiny spherical vehicle/satellite, that is seemingly no larger than a bathyscaphe? Su Shan takes a drug to lose her memory, so she cannot reveal any information to help Powers. Does a drug like that exist? Sinn can look anywhere on Earth from any single place because he can warp light. And he can read lips, so he can understand what anyone, anywhere is saying. Does he understand fluently EVERY language of the important military nations? If two people are speaking face to face can he move his equipments view to see the speaker whose back was facing him a second before, while he was reading the lips of the other? How does he know where to aim his machine? So, Su Shan is still Powers enemy, even though Sinn tried to kill her. Maybe The Americans supported a ruthless dictator who had her parents killed? Nice suspense at the end of this chapter with Sinn in his satellite, hurling towards Earth, seemingly to be burned to death by the heat from the friction.
Space Ace - The Desert Devils
Strange to call a given area on a planet that is totally desert, a "desert". I can understand that in the early 1950s the author has canals bringing water from the polar ice caps, and plant life exists there after it has been colonised. But saying that the deserts on Mars are too hot, seems wrong. Space Ace is doing one heck of a lot of talking while a bunch of flame-shooting robots are trying to burn him to cinders. All those large text balloons just kill the action. I would be fired if I put all that text in an action scene! And there is even a large narrative caption explaining what is happening in the panel, we can see with our own eyes! That is a BIG No-No! The worst thing about that is that virtually EVERYTHING he says is completely unnecessary to understanding the story. It is also too unbelievable that ALL the robots shooting at him at once ALL miss every shot. Also, there is very little action shown. The poses are mainly standing with the robots arms bending forward to shoot. I would have shown Space ace diving and contorting his body to evade the spraying flames. It almost makes one believe that this artist and this writer had been paid by a competitor chief editor to sabotage sales of this issue! Soon, inside the robots underground cave, Space Ace finds the Human manipulator of the robots. He is dead, and Ace says he has been dead for 10,000 years, but the dry desert air has preserved him like an Egyptian mummy. Yet, in the panels, he is drawn like any healthy living person. He shows no sign of his skin desiccating from the dryness for such an extremely long period. He should be all wrinkled and shrivelled. Again, almost every panel has half to two-thirds of it taken up by text balloons. And Ace is talking to the reader to provide information. And THIS is the climax page!!! He simply flips a handle, which turns off the machine, and the robots stop dead. What a horribly weak climax! Then, we have a boring epilogue where Ace is congratulated for his generosity in giving up some of his reward money to the families of the burned-up men.
Jet Powers - The Thing From The Meteor
It is interesting that an insect-type of alien being has deliberately travelled to Earth in a meteor shower, to become a scout for making it easier for his entire people to follow him there and to conquer the planet. I assume that the alien only has the basic outer shape of a grasshopper/locust flying insect, but not a similar physical structure, because the current amount (%) of oxygen in this planets atmosphere, and the level of gravity on Earth, limit the size of insects to the size of Earths largest insect species that exist now. When The Earths insects were much larger than they are now, during The late Carboniferous and early Permian Periods (about 300 million years ago), oxygen made up a much higher % of The Earths atmosphere. In addition, even the most gigantic insects of that period were much smaller than New Tow, the space alien insect like being. So, HE must have much more solid and heavy skin, and much more bulk. Therefore, those thin and wispy wings he has would most likely not be able to support his weight in flight (unless we assume the unlikely situation that they move at incredibly high speeds whose friction would burn them up.
Nev Tow hides his laboratory inside a burro underground. Personally, I don't think even the largest donkeys body would have enough room to hold much equipment, and leave much room for its operator. And it would be disgusting to spend time inside a decaying body of a deceased animal. I suspect the author meant "inside a burrow". This just shows us that even by the early 1950s, editors had little time to spend making last checks when editing comic books before sending them to the printer. Or, that could even be a printer error of omission. Tows flying (at least in The Earths atmosphere) seems to be accomplished WITHOUT moving his wings. I wonder what his body power source is (at least for his flying function)? Tow captures Jet to learn much about Earth and its people, and of course (for the sake of the reader) he understands English, so they can communicate together. Jet simply and easily does Tow in , by sending out DDT bombs. Apparently (and conveniently) Jet always has some DDT handy, because insects are constantly bothering him.
Author
Topic: Reading Group #275 Jet Powers (IW) (Read 2737 times)
