Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine

Number 136


Jet Powers goes ape!


While Jet Powers is off racing around through time (Pappy's #133), Mr. Sinn's former assistant, the sexy Su Shan, takes a powder. And that's appropriate. It turns out that a powder is one of the motivations of this plot, such as it is. The villain, Marlon Stone (a comic book villain named Marlon?) has a "dissolvo-ray" that turns any paper into powder. He plans to extort money from people wishing to keep their precious paper collectibles intact.

Imagine your comic collection turned to dust unless you cough up some money. You obsessive-compulsive comic book collectors would do it. I know you would because I would, too.

The story, "House of Horror," is in the number two position in Jet #2, 1951. The story is written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Powell. Jet Powers doesn't show up until page 4, and immediately gets thrown into the action, a room with walls that press in on him, and escapes that only to find himself in a room full of gorillas. Such interesting ways Marlon has of dispatching an enemy. He must've been raised on movie serials. Why not just take a gun and shoot Jet when he walks in the door?

You have to wonder what in the world Mad Marlon Stone had in mind building such death traps. Like all of the Jet Powers stories, it's very entertaining, even if lacking in the logic department.  The ending leaves us wanting a little more. I'm sure from that goggle-eyed expression on Jet's face when Su Shan admits she "knows what she's doing," he's imagining what the two of them could be doing. Too bad the story ends at that point. I'd like to find out what happened when they got back to Jet's mesa lab.