Someone, and I forget just who, called science fiction “an unpopular popular genre.” That’s the sort of bon mot, hinging on various interpretations of the word “popular,” that comes home when one is confronted by something like that compilation of comic strips from the 1950s that is Jet Scott.
Christopher N. Crouch, in his Introduction to this volume, gives a highly colored picture of the post-War world — the Cold War, rockets, jet planes, and the whole panoply of what had been, through the 1930s and ’40s, the science fictional future of Hugo Gernsback’s formula. Crouch notes particularly the “carefully crafted stories predicting the future in ever clearer and more convincing detail,” bidding adieu to the space operas of E. E. “Doc” Smith and his confreres, and praising such writers as Asimov, Heinlein, and Van Vogt for their realism. The older comic strips — Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers — were, in Crouch’s opinion, ready to give way to a more contemporary strip, one in keeping with the technological revolutions under way in American life.
Sadly, Crouch misses the point: Asimov, Heinlein, Van Vogt and other science-fiction writers of the 1950s had left the Gernsback formula behind. Solid science was a given, but it was no longer the story. They were writing people stories; the problems had human solutions, not technological fixes. As for space opera — well, nearly sixty years later, people are still writing them, to the point where they are not only still a solid subgenre of science fiction, but have retained their place in comics and even form a significant area in manga, while figures such as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers are very nearly mythic archetypes. Which brings us to Jet Scott.
From the vantage of the early twenty-first century (even for those of us who aren’t convinced the century has really started), they are a nostalgia turn. They are very ’50s, which is a big part of their charm. (These stories are all from 1953-54.) Part thriller, part adventure story with a scientific trick or two, they’re well-constructed but fairly predictable, no matter how exotic the locale (the Arabian desert, the South Seas, and New York, among others). They’re still fun, and must have been a wonderful way to spend a bit of Sunday morning as you went through the “funnies,” but even then, from the standpoint of science fiction and where it was in its own history, they were definitely retro. Sheldon Stark’s scripts don’t display a great deal of sophistication, but that’s not something you look for in a syndicated comic: big crisis, probably threatening life as we know it, and the hero is called in. The hero in this case is Jet Scott, who works for Scientifact. Hero solves problem, hero gets girl — there’s always a beautiful woman involved, of course — and life goes on until the next crisis.
The core of this volume is the drawing by Jerry Robinson. Already a distinguished science and science-fiction illustrator, who had even worked on Batman starting in 1939 (he created the Joker), Robinson’s work here is exemplary. The drawing is clear, expressive, finely rendered whether in black-and-white or color, supporting a strong narrative flow perfectly. The character designs are high comic realism, and beautifully reflective of character. The pages have a definite period feel, which is not to say “dated” — by “period” I mean of the time, the way a fine piece of furniture is period: the drawing is true to its time and still satisfies contemporary sensibilities.
It’s Volume 1 of a series, and an impressive publication. I will say, however, that if you’re used to contemporary comics, it may take some getting used to.
(Dark Horse Books, 2010)
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