Numbner 2110: Red Comet sends criminals on holiday

The Red Comet is a character from early issues of Planet Comics. He has “magical abilities,” which, to me, is any power the writer can think up for a particular story to combat villains. As stated in the Public Domain Superheroes website: “His powers include telekinesis, super-strength, extrasensory crime detection, the ability to shrink to the size of an insect or grow to over 5 miles tall (using an intra-atomic space adjuster), and the ability to make things explode with his mind. He flew a ship that could travel over 660 million miles per hour. ”

I would like to learn the trick of making things explode with my mind. It sounds like a handy super power.

Fortunately for criminals, in this entry from Planet Comics #5 (1940), he doesn't use that super power. But Red Comet is able to stop crime for two weeks. He has rounded up all the criminals, and is depositing them one-by-one to “inhabitable planets.” Then he takes some war profiteers and flings them into space. While the artwork is credited to Don Rico by the Grand Comics Database, the story has the fingerprints of Fletcher Hanks, or someone using Hanks's techniques for getting rid of bad guys. Hurling them into space is a real dire punishment, and next to it making the war profiteers explode through the power of his mind might have been considered merciful.

Number 1793: Spacy Stories Week: Joe Kubert’s Star Pirate

To end September and welcome October, we have another theme week, to wit, Spacy Stories Week, where each story will take place in that fictional space of the imagination. First up is Star Pirate, a Planet Comics strip that featured some great artists, including young Joe Kubert, whose familiar style is evident here.

Ever notice something about this style of science fiction? It is a pirate story, transplanted from Earth’s seas into outer space. One of the tricks used to make it sound more spacy is to insert the word space: space billiards, space coppers, space racketeer. Here's my friendly advice to would-be science fiction writers: do not emulate that outdated and cornball technique.

From Planet Comics #32 (1944):