Why didn't Starman win the war?
[The comments about Marvel geniuses not using their inventions to, you know, cure cancer or end world hunger reminded me of this topic.]
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Now, the original Starman (the one who appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS and ALL-STAR COMICS beginning in 1941)had as his main distinction something called the Gravity Rod. This was a sceptre that charged up with starlight and converted it into useful energy. Anti-gravity, concussive blasts, heat rays (and the occasional rabbit-out-of-the-hat application) made Starman an upper-level super-hero able to hold his own with the heavy hitters in the Justice Society.
Below is from ALL-STAR COMICS# 11, June-July 1942. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Starman is seized with the same intense patriotism as the other JSA members and they all enlist in their civilian identities. (Why not in costume? Maybe because they thought of their civilian identities as their true selves, who they really were and saw their super-hero guises as something of a game. Just as they wouldn't get married as Hawkman or the Atom, they wouldn't enlist that way.) Anyway, Ted Knight somehow brings his costume and weapon along with him anyway and soon finds himself attacking a huge concentration of Japanese forces. In fact, he ends up seizing Formosa by himself....!
The natural thought is, if he's this invincible against conventional fighter planes, why doesn't Starman go on to Tokyo or Berlin and just level those cities? For that matter, why only make one Gravity Rod? He repairs and replaces his gizmo a number of times, so it's not non-reproducible. Why isn't there a squad of Starmen in action? Is it just a case of "It's MY toy, I don't want anyone else to play with it?" Or that he fears the American military will misuse his technology? Wars don't last forever and when WW II ends, will America go on an imperialistic conquest using the Gravity Rod adventage? (In 1942, it would be an unusually perceptive person who worried about future possibilities like that.)
"Let's erect a gigantic rod..." "You Earthmen are so dirty."
A few months later, we find Starman on the planet Jupiter in a typically implausible Golden Age epic. Here he has the Jovians build an immense replica of his Gravity Rod and its power propels his ship back to Earth. Leaving the war aside, imagine the uses for a device like this. Engineering, construction, transportation, rescue work in disasters... it would provide a leap forward as big as the telephone or the electric light. But this never seems to occur to Ted Knight. The Gravity Rod is restricted to his personal use for fighting super-villains, alien invaders and bank robbers...
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[The comments about Marvel geniuses not using their inventions to, you know, cure cancer or end world hunger reminded me of this topic.]
Now, the original Starman (the one who appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS and ALL-STAR COMICS beginning in 1941)had as his main distinction something called the Gravity Rod. This was a sceptre that charged up with starlight and converted it into useful energy. Anti-gravity, concussive blasts, heat rays (and the occasional rabbit-out-of-the-hat application) made Starman an upper-level super-hero able to hold his own with the heavy hitters in the Justice Society.
Below is from ALL-STAR COMICS# 11, June-July 1942. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Starman is seized with the same intense patriotism as the other JSA members and they all enlist in their civilian identities. (Why not in costume? Maybe because they thought of their civilian identities as their true selves, who they really were and saw their super-hero guises as something of a game. Just as they wouldn't get married as Hawkman or the Atom, they wouldn't enlist that way.) Anyway, Ted Knight somehow brings his costume and weapon along with him anyway and soon finds himself attacking a huge concentration of Japanese forces. In fact, he ends up seizing Formosa by himself....!
The natural thought is, if he's this invincible against conventional fighter planes, why doesn't Starman go on to Tokyo or Berlin and just level those cities? For that matter, why only make one Gravity Rod? He repairs and replaces his gizmo a number of times, so it's not non-reproducible. Why isn't there a squad of Starmen in action? Is it just a case of "It's MY toy, I don't want anyone else to play with it?" Or that he fears the American military will misuse his technology? Wars don't last forever and when WW II ends, will America go on an imperialistic conquest using the Gravity Rod adventage? (In 1942, it would be an unusually perceptive person who worried about future possibilities like that.)
"Let's erect a gigantic rod..." "You Earthmen are so dirty."
A few months later, we find Starman on the planet Jupiter in a typically implausible Golden Age epic. Here he has the Jovians build an immense replica of his Gravity Rod and its power propels his ship back to Earth. Leaving the war aside, imagine the uses for a device like this. Engineering, construction, transportation, rescue work in disasters... it would provide a leap forward as big as the telephone or the electric light. But this never seems to occur to Ted Knight. The Gravity Rod is restricted to his personal use for fighting super-villains, alien invaders and bank robbers...
statistics: Posted by doctorhermes428 — 4:30 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 0 — Views 168