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.