Number 195


Air Ace Jet Powers


If you're a new Pappy's reader then you don't know that all four issues of the M.E. Comics series, Jet Comics have been posted on this blog in chronological order. Just click on the link for "Jet Powers" at the bottom of this page.

Jet was a science-fiction series, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Powell. After the four-issue run it was replaced by American Air Forces, which also starred Jet Powers, not as a scientist, but as a fighter pilot in action during the Korean conflict. That's a big switch. You have to wonder why they kept the same character to confuse the reader. It would have been smarter to just rename him something like Ace Powers, and tell us he was Jet Powers' twin brother.

This story, the last in my personal inventory of Jet Powers stories, is from Battle #15, a reprint circa 1964, of American Air Forces #7. The publisher was Super Comics, which took old comics, reprinted them, packed them three to a bag, and sold them for a quarter.

"Whom The Gods Destroy" is the kind of war story that Harvey Kurtzman hated, which motivated him to create Frontline Combat over at EC Comics. It's typically violent in that guts-and-glory, jingoistic war comics way. The Chinese femme fatale looks a lot like Su Shan, Jet's female "friend" in the science fiction series. Maybe Bob Powell just had one stock Asian woman character in his portfolio, and she happened to be sexy and beautiful.