Yikes!
I looked at the cover of Blackhawk #59 (1952) and it brought to mind fears of a huge object hitting our planet and making us like dinosaurs...extinct. I was able to shake it off. After all, a miss is a miss. In this tale it isn’t the fear that an asteroid is about to hit Earth that is the problem, it is that an “aggressor nation,” (and we all know who that is, don’t we?) has set up a base on said asteroid, ready to rain down death on America. America has only one rocket ship ready to fly to Asteroid X, and it can accommodate seven, just the number of Blackhawks! What luck!
Except for the out-of-this-world environment, it is a battle story. I don’t know who wrote “Beachhead on Asteroid X.” The Grand Comics Database gives Bill Ward ? (question mark means it is a guess) credit for the artwork.
I am torn by opposite opinions: even though I am for the exploration of space, I also tend to agree with Blackhawk’s opinion in the final panel.
I infer that the Aggressor Nation was reduced to the Agressor Nation as a result of the G force of the asteroid. Serves 'em right!
ReplyDeleteSomething with a tenth of the Earth's gravitational pull and just a thousand miles away would effect a terrible catastrophe, with or without agents from the A[g]gressor Nation. Also, I'm reminded of The Mouse on the Moon (1963) and their tinny thing, by a rocket going 50 mph (1000 milies / 20 hours).
Those Commies are such dolts! They screwed this up even worse than that business with the manbat. If one has rockets sufficient for travel to the Moon, then it doesn't make much sense to use those rockets to transport a space cannon and a nuclear bomb to an extraterrestrial body with an intension of shooting the bomb towards the Earth at the first opportunity. A rocket can of course simply deliver the bomb more directly.
Weaker gravity would make for a thinner atmosphere, so the winged flight made no sense.
Uh, hey, Blackhawk, that large a rock exploding that close to earth is for sure going to rain down a lot of incredibly large planet-killer sized meteors. So, basically you went from dooming the capitalistic running dog nations to dooming the entire race!
ReplyDeleteGood job!
Daniel, Brian...I don't think the rocket would get that far, most likely blowing up on the ground or having some major problems if by some slim chance it got into space.
ReplyDeleteIt's always fun to look back at how easy people of the era thought space travel and rockets would be. Just fuel up, point it at the sky and push the button!