Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine

Number 169


Jet Powers and the Fleets of Fear


With this Pappy's entry we say goodbye to Jet Comics. We've posted a story a week for the past 16 weeks. This final entry in the saga has Jet Powers not only breaking up a royal Martian plot, but taking on invaders threatening Mars and then Earth. Whew. What a guy!

The story is the second part of the story begun in Jet #3. It's not the final Jet Powers story. Jet Powers (the comic book character) outlived Jet Powers (the comic book) by coming back as an Army air ace. I have one of those stories and will run it sometime in the future. If you want to see all of the Jet Powers stories posted so far click on the "Jet Powers" link at the bottom of this page.

My personal assessment of the four issues of Jet, published in 1950 and '51, is that I liked the character and I felt the best issue was #2 (the first one I encountered, back in 1959). I'm puzzled as to why Jet only lasted four issues. Declining sales could have been the reason this series was dropped, there was a lack of interest on the creative and/or editorial end, or the book was dropped in favor of other projects. In those days ME Comics was doing a lot with their Western comic books like Ghost Rider, Tim Holt and The Durango Kid. ME was a small player in the comics field, with a limited number of titles, but they had a successful line with what it was they did the best. Despite my quibbling complaints over some of the stories in Jet, it was probably better than most of other publishers' outputs in those days. I'm proud of my Cosmic Aeroplane-pedigreed copies of the four issues and I'll keep them forever. I've been happy to share them with you and hope you've enjoyed them.