Welcome to the first installment of the newest feature here at the Random Acts of Geekery, Retro-Reviews! In this feature, I'll be looking at an old comic book and writing my thoughts about the stories, which will include plot summaries and critiques. It's my way of getting more comics content into this blog!
The original Amazing Adventures title was an anthology book, so there's several different features to talk about! First of all, there's the inside front cover feature, “Amazing Facts From Nature”! According to this one-pager (done in black and yellow): The deerfly has been clocked at 800 miles per hour; a flock of wild geese raced the 20th Century Limited and won, even though the train was going 85 miles per hour; the European swift migrates 1500 miles from Europe to Africa in seven hours (more than 200 miles per hour); an ordinary flea can lift 150 times its own weight and pull 300 times it own weight; and that salmon can swim against the current at 30 miles per hour, and leap 15 feet into the air in hurdling a waterfall!
The first full-fledged story in this issue is “The Asteroid Witch,” (with art by Murphy Anderson) starring Interplanetary Space-Pilot Vince Darrow! The tale opens when Vince is bitch-slapping Kit-E, a lovely Martian maiden, who has apparently bored him. As Vince walks away, he complains about how women on every planet eventually turn into demanding hags, but then he realizes that Kit-E has jumped to her death, as she threatened to do just before Vince slapped her!
Vince takes it in stride, however, and finds himself into a crowded bar, where he orders a Rocketini, and as he drinks it, he thinks, “Somewhere in this universe there must be a woman of unendurable allure who is truly unconquerable!”
Coincidently enough, Vince overhears two spacers talking about The Asteroid Witch, who is sort of a space siren, and the reason why all space ships are routed around the area in which she can be found. As Vince listens to one spacer talk about his encounter with the Asteroid Witch, he decides that he must meet her, at any cost! Vince heads to the space-port and steals the rocket ship that he's employed to pilot. The Interplanetary Patrol is alerted to his theft, and they attempt to warn him away from the forbidden area!
Vince comes to his senses and prepares to surrender to the IP, but then the Asteroid Witch appears on his viewscreen, and he decides to battle the IP, breaking through into the forbidden area! The IP decides he's doomed, and don't follow him as Vince follows the Asteroid Witch through the void. Vince crashes his space-liner on the asteroid she lives on, and makes his way to the Asteroid Witch! She taunts him, calling him closer and closer so she can kiss him... and then she is interrupted by Kit-E, who only faked her death! Pointing her atom-blast pistol at the Asteroid Witch, Kit-E forces the space siren to flee the universe!
As the Asteroid Witch flies off into space, Vince begs Kit-E to forgive him, which she does, and then she tells Vince to look up into space, where they see the Asteroid Witch explode! It turns out that Kit-E wasn't holding an atom-blast pistol, but a dimension gun with an invisible beam that was slow-acting, and that the Asteroid Witch is now living in the fifth or eighth dimension! And of course, now everything is all hunky-dory between Vince and Kit-E, and they'll live happily ever after.
The moral of the story would seem to be... go ahead and smack around the woman who truly loves you, because she'll just fake her death and then save your life in return!
Next time around: "A-Day"!
Breed: Generic
Posts
