The Mystery of Jet-Man Comics No10 - An Action Ash adventure

Earlier today, while in my local comic shop, I was routing through the back issues and came across a fairly old and interesting looking comic. It was called Jet-Man Comics No10. After closer inspection I found it was from 1946. It was the oldest comic I'd ever seen let alone touched, however it wasn't worth much, being British reprints of American material.

It contained the following:

Rocketman -Exactly what it sounds like. A man with a rocket on his back that fights crime. He also has a sidekick called Rocketgirl. Technically they were portrayed more like an equal team but obviously, being a woman, she's not good enough to be billed in the title. (JOKE! Before I start getting e-mails claiming I'm misogynist.)

Master Key - A rich playboy who has X-ray vision and fires beams of light that seem to burn from his eyes.

Happy Landing - Comedy about a soldier on leave visiting his girlfriend.

Johnny on the spot - A kid who happens to come across crime and then combats it with his gimpy friends.

And last of all Punch and Cutey - The adventures of a dim witted boxer and his tough nut sister.

There were also two prose one pagers in there titled Loan Shark Bait and Six Shooter Surprise.

Did you notice something?
That's right, no sign of the titular character, the aforementioned Jet-Man. I was intrigued and had to purchase this strange gem. The small print in the back of the book claimed it was Unusual Comics #2, so when I was at home with the magic of the Internet at hand, I began investigating.

After extensive searching I found something out. Neither Jet-Man nor Unusual Comics seemed to exist! This was strange when you consider the fact that even the most obscure comic books and characters from the Golden Age have at least a small paragraph of info on the Net. I was just about to give up when the results of a google search of character names from this enigmatic book, yielded an intriguing result. All of the characters had appeared together in Punch Comics.

Digging further I found the list of all the stories from the strange comic I now owned, and they were all in the same issue. Punch Comics #16. I'd found it! I had solved the mystery. I had a copy of Punch Comics #16 with the wrong cover and minus a story named Speedy Wheeler Saves the Day and Wins a Bike.

Yet the biggest mystery remains unsolved: Who is Jet-Man?

I wonder if I'll ever know. - AA

Legacies #1

Legacies #1
In the beginning...
Written by Len Wein
Art by Andy Kubert

Action Ash
A series designed to tell the story of the history of the DC Universe, naturally starts off in the golden age. We follow Paul Lincoln, now an old man, from his childhood in the 1940's as he comes into contact with various masked adventurers and through this we learn the history of the DCU.
This first issue features The Crimson Avenger, The Sandman, The Atom (original) in the main story and Doctor Fate and The Spectre in the back up material.

I love Golden age comics so this first issue was great for me. Also, not knowing as much about the days of DC past as I do about Marvel's, this series will be an enjoyably geeky history lesson for me.
Nicely scripted, it felt almost like DC'S attempt at their own version of a Marvels Project style series, which I do not feel is a bad thing. Marvels Project was a great little series and the chance to see something similar for a different universe makes me smile.

Andy Kubert on the pencils with his old dad, Joe, on inks, provides this book with a lovely aesthetic that suits the story well. Also the first two pages are by a certain mister Scott Kolins, however they are almost unrecognisable as him due to the colourist (Mike Atiyeh). This matters not, however, because they are as fantastic as the rest of the book, the first page being one of the best and a great way to start it off.
J.G. Jones provides pencils for the back up strip which is equally awesome, his renderings of The Spectre and Dr Fate being among the best I've seen.

This is a nice little package and you definitely get your moneys worth.

4 felled fedora wearing mobsters out of 5