Number 164


Space Ace Gets Woody!


This is the last Space Ace story from Jet Comics #4, the final issue.

Not only the last Space Ace, but because of the artwork it's the best of the series. Wally Wood inked over Al Williamson's pencils. What a combination they made. I wish they'd done a lot more work together. Wood's bold inking replacing Williamson's tentative inking of this period really makes a difference in how dynamic the story looks.

As for the story itself, well, it's Space Ace, after all…ace criminal of the spaceways, blah blah blah…gets into a jam over a woman, then gets himself out, blah blah…meantime getting lots of reward money or some jewelry or something good, blah blah…and then gets a full pardon for all his crimes, et cetera, et cetera...nice life!

As usual, some of the most entertaining bits of business are the little things that scripter Gardner Fox was good at: his pseudoscientific-sounding creations, like Ace's electric space pants (!!!) Wouldn't they give you a shock if you had to — you know — go to the bathroom? Not only that, he has the ability to turn them into a key to unlock a cell door. Or how about the paralysi-ray? Or Space Ace finding big tanks of nitrous oxide — laughing gas— so conveniently? Or how about describing Ace's fighting ability as being like a "Plutonian tigercat"?

I'm not an expert on all Golden Age comics (duh), so I just found out that ME published a Space Ace comic in 1952. I was also surprised to find out that Space Ace appeared in ME's Manhunt as far back as 1947. Well, hit me with a paralysi-ray! There's always something new to learn in this crazy comic book business.

Number 163


Kink From Under The Counter


It's hard for me to believe, grizzled and jaded as I am today, that I was ever young and naïve. But I was. It was 1965, I was 18. A friend and I went into a bookstore. In some pre-arranged buy, my friend gave the clerk $3.00, which got him a digest-sized booklet, very slim. It was a black-and-white comic book called The Passion Pit.

The booklet was by Eneg, an artist I'd never heard of. Eneg was the pseudonym for Gene Bilbrew, an African-American comic book artist who turned to fetish illustrating and became well-known in that subterranean community. Bilbrew was born in 1923 and died in 1974 at the young age of 51. You can google his name and come up with several sites, some of them selling his printed work.

If this were published today it would be considered tame. There just isn't that forbidden thrill to spike-heeled boots, masks, whips and chains, or rubber clothes, not anymore. The mainstream co-opted those images some years ago. I saw a lot of them when I watched MTV with my son in the early 1990s and the heavy metal bands were thrashing around with models right out of Irving Klaw's shop in New York City.

A note on the copy I used for the scans: I found a pirate copy of The Passion Pit back in the late 1970s. It was called Chinese Torture, and Eneg's name was removed. The printing was not that good, photographed as it was from an original printed copy. Mine is a second generation from that generation. So if there are details that are muddy I apologize. Some of it isn't my fault. Some of the original printing flaws due to Bilbrew's sloppy original art are still present: There are lettering guide lines visible in some panels, even some pencil marks under his drawings. He also didn't rule his panel borders very straight. Personally, I like that sort of thing. It reminds me that a real live human being sat down at a drawing board and made these pictures, and was a sloppy workman with some of it. Just like the rest of us are at times in our everyday work.

I also get a kick out of his spelling: "Bhudda" and "strenght" show no editor was involved in this comic.

Number 162


The First Man In History Who Could Not Die!


Oboy, here's another story from Jet #4. Except that Jet only appears as a vignette in the splash panel. He doesn't star in this story, but says if we write in he'll show us more of this type of story. He calls us "boys and girls," too. Apparently no boys and girls wrote him back then in 1951, because there were no more issues of Jet. I'm not sure why a comic with the potential Jet had in issues #1 and 2 would flame out so quickly, but sadly, it did.

It could have been editorial problems, maybe not knowing exactly what direction to send the book. I thought it had a strong premise at its beginning: a two-fisted scientific genius with a bunch of futuristic gadgets and a beautiful Asian girlfriend fighting off evil using his own wits and gizmos. Mix together some concepts cobbled from newspaper comic strip stars Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, then a dash of real-life Einstein and Thomas Edison. For some reason Jet never got back to its initial level. It's a pity, really, but there's no accounting for the marketplace. In 1951 science fiction was popular, but not as popular as other genres. Horror was raising its ugly head, thanks to EC and its line-up of titles, and science fiction was represented amongst the titles on the market, even from EC, but they didn't sell well compared to other genres. Even romance comics outsold science fiction. Believe it or not, romance outsold almost everything! That seems almost science fiction-y to me, but it's true.

This story is a standalone, and is similar to what writer Gardner Fox would do for editor Julius Schwartz in titles like Mystery In Space and Strange Adventures.*

The story of Gar San, Myrza, and the surprise ending using a heretofore unseen character, Tanda Set, is lightweight. There's really no explanation for why the female character is in disguise as a newspaper writer, or why she's in the same place pilot "Johnny Wilson" is brought to hospital. The whole story is contrived, for lack of a better word. Still, with artwork by Bob Powell it can't be all bad. Myrza is a hottie, 1951-style. The story might be lacking in the logic department, but it's fast moving and maybe some boys and girls of that era liked it, even if they didn't write in asking for more.

*Unlike most other science fiction comic books, science fiction sold well enough for DC to publish for many years. It likely had something to do with Schwartz's genius for gimmicky covers and plot hooks.

Number 160


Nature Of The Beast


"Look Homeward, Werewolf," is a good example of a comic book twisting a title from a popular source (in this case, Thomas Wolfe's classic 1929 novel, Look Homeward Angel). It also uses a famous fable for its basis, the often-told story of the frog and the scorpion. It's been adapted to horror comics, though, so even though the fable has a moral, the moral to any horror comics story is there is no moral to a horror comics story.

The story was originally published in 1954 in Atlas Comics' Uncanny Tales #23, but I scanned it from a Marvel Comics reprint in 1974's Crypt Of Shadows #8. I don't have the original to compare it to, and there might be slight differences mandated by the Comics Code. The writer is unknown, but the artist is Mort Lawrence.

This story messes with the werewolf legend. According to it, the werewolves live "in the hills" and hide from humanity. They also can't stand any water at all, or they turn mad. This silliness stretches the reader's credulity, but it's an entertaining story anyway.

Number 159


Jet Powers Puts Them To Sleep


Anarchy! Murder! Looting! Chaos! "The Rain Of Terror," is from Jet #4, ME Comics, 1951, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Powell. It's a follow-up to "The Dust Doom" in issue #3. I explained in my last entry for Jet Powers about the unique way they had with continuity and continued stories in Jet Comics. You can check out my last couple of postings by clicking on "Jet Powers" in the links at the bottom of this page.

The title refers to an attack by the villains of this post-apocalyptic story, a "former torch-singer," now called The Red Queen, and a general who has been dishonorably discharged from the Army. They crush a rebellion against their subjugation of the population with a rain of napalm--jellied gasoline--one of the worst anti-personnel weapons ever invented. Jet Powers rallies support and attacks the Red Queen and her general buddy with a rain of his own. Jet's rain being more humane, of course.

Su Shan, the sexy Chinese woman Jet met back in #1 (when she was an accomplice to the diabolical Mr. Sinn), is here in a couple of panels, along with Jet's new friend, Jimmy, who survived the dust doom. Su Shan tells Jimmy, "What a man!" referring to Jet, which leads me even further to believe that when he isn't saving the world, he and Su Shan are entertaining each other on that lonely mesa in the desert Southwest where they're shacked up. What can I say? Jet's a virile scientific hunk, and she's a sexy Asian woman in the Dragon Lady class.

Jet #4 is the last issue of the series. In that strange way of Golden Age comics and their re-naming of titles to fool the Post Office, it turned into American Air Forces with #5. Jet Powers had a role as an air ace, minus the science fiction elements. I have one of those stories, from a 1960s reprint book, and I'll present that after I post the whole of Jet #4. Be patient, Jet-fans. In a few weeks you'll have all of the Jet catalogue I own at your fingertips.