Space Crazy Comics: Dr. Meade's Last War

On Monday, I posted a panel from a story in Space War #2, complaining primarily about narration.

I guess I can further torment educate you on this story, hm?

Dr. Meade's Last War opens on a space battle between Earth and a planet named Talus III.

So a "Dr. Meade, great savant of Talus," tells the Talus...ians that we're evil. Hm.

The following narration strikes me as biased.

Of course, then we learn that something fishy's going on.

Something involving a certain Dr. Meade, of course.

You could go with the mouseover text, but of course the more logical answer to this oddity is that Dr. Meade is a double agent.

He's tryin' to kill everybody.

The Earth commander decides that he has to risk making contact with the Talus...ian commander rather than continue the battle, just in case Dr. Meade was not merely a Talusian spy.

The commander from Talus apparently doesn't take Meade very seriously... (No wonder, he looks exactly the same as when he was spying on Earth. What the heck, guys?)

Meade doesn't take it well, and douses commander Wejus's first mate with ketchup.

I mean, I guess he kills the guy.

Wejus attempts to retaliate with his own ketchup bottle, but Meade pulls his turning transparent act again.

Hey, Meade's rhetoric sounds familiar... Oh, yeah, Great Ag and Ob!

Anyway, Wejus and Cogan get along.

They make a stop at Talus III to resupply, and there's a brief aside trip to the supreme ultimate ruler of Talus III. They ride giant birds to conserve fuel.

I wonder how much energy it takes to take care of thousands upon thousands of giant birds that would be better invested in cheap, low-energy vehicles? Eh, never mind.

The supreme ruler dude, who is basically Wejus with a beard and (if memory serves) eyebrows, tells them that he thinks they're going to win.

The "dark galaxy?" I know I complain a lot about this kind of terminology, and at least it wasn't "universe" again, but dagnabbit do I ever hate that!

Dr. Meade is watching them.

How Meade does this stupid stuff is never really explained at all, by the way. There's no explanation for why he's a mile tall or why he can become intangible or why he can travel through space. (And no, none of it is symbolic. He's literally there, as you will see.) Not even half-butted pseudoscientific madness.

Here's where Monday's panel comes in, by the way.

Meade is pretty confident until...

No, I don't know why this would be effective against spaceships particularly... (Although a fun fact about space travel that not many people know is that it's harder to keep a spacecraft cool than it is to keep it warm.) Of course, the fact that they're "semi-liquid" spaceships might be part of it.

Also, "cold ray" is a pretty lame name for this, although I'll give them kudos for not just saying "freeze ray" like everybody else ever.

Then, they notice the gigantic Dr. Meade floating there, and shoot him too.

Wejus and Cogan are happy about this development. Who wouldn't be, I guess?

Of course, their dialogue with each other is total bull. "Don't believe those who lie for their own gain?"

Well, duh, you morons! How can you tell who's lying for their own gain if they're lying?!

Eh, never mind.

The story's not really as bad as I make it out to be, but it's still pretty stupid.

-Signing off.