Space Crazy Comics: Double Menace on Jupiter's Moon

This story, from Space Action #1, is all about family, treachery, and unobtainium.

It opens on a prospector finding a dead ship full of shiny stuff.

He thinks the shiny stuff looks pretty, well, pretty, and concludes it could be valuable.

Although his testing method needs work.

Did it occur to you, sir, that perhaps you just have a bad hammer rather than a good sample?

They decide that this new metal, "Asteroidium," is awesome, and needs to be obtained in large amounts.

The government has a most... peculiar method of deciding what company should be permitted to mine it for them.

Perhaps it's a way to get around some form of legislation against no-bid contracts-one of the competitors is pretty shady-but I'm probably giving them too much credit. (Also, technically, hasn't the old prospector already done that? Give him the contract!)

The other competitor, by the way, is the father of the fiance of the first competitor. And so it seems likely there's more to him trying dirty tricks than merely being the winner.

His first dirty trick, sending somebody ahead to ambush the other, ends in failure practically before it begins, when some aliens (who merely look like foreigners, of course) show up and attack them.

Of course, we don't get to see the attack.

They dispatch the ambush ship and then hide in orbit, waiting for the miners' rockets to show up.

Meanwhile, the stupidity of the test (plus the stupidity of the writers) is demonstrated further.

First, note that apparently, each side was supposed to use nigh-identical rockets. Apparently, they only have F1 racing in this future.

Second, physics do not work that way, although hopefully I don't need to point that out.

Needless to say, the team that played things straight (other than breaking the laws of physics) get there first, and they get lots of Asteroidium dug up, when the other dudes show up and threaten to take it from them.

That, of course, is when the alien dreadnought shows up.

They stand no chance against this alien menace, but they're going to give it the old college try or whatever.

Good luck with that...

But dad's still kicking for the moment, and he's got one last trick left...

The alien dreadnought wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisi-er, ramming tactics.

And so...

They splash into each other.

If the rest of it wasn't so bad, that might almost have been uplifting and awe inspiring, and all that.

-Signing off.