Pulp Fiction: G-8 and His Battle Aces -- Part Two.

Last week I described how my Dad started off reading G-8 and His Battle Aces -- a pulp fiction series that predated the War Comic boom. And so, I purchased a G-8 reprint: Patrol of the Cloud Crusher (June 1936) -- my hope being that this was one of the issues he read. The timing was right on, as Dad would have been nine or ten ... or later, since he relied on hand-me-downs from other kids who (unlike him) had a dime to spare.

The saga starts with a mysterious mechanic visiting airfields and rubbing grease on Allied aircraft. Weird. G-8 thought so too. As it turned out, the grease was an attractant, a pheromone. But for what end? The answer flashed over the radio: A flight of British SE5s … decimated! 

A giant hand sprung out from a cloud and grabbed one, then two, and finally three of the biplanes, and crushed them into splinters. There were no survivors. What on earth?

G-8 and his comrades – Nippy Weston and Bull Martin – got to work, facing death, not only from the barbaric hands, but also from the machinations of Herr Doktor Kreuger. It was he who developed the ointment of death that attracted the giant hands and made them grab. And his plan was devious: “I have many giant arms, “he boasted, “… that will pluck planes out of the air and crush them.” 

G-8 was beginning to realize that the grease was, by some odd chemistry, a source of nutrients, a food. These so-called hands were not hands at all. They were mussels – huge, primeval mollusks that survived in a cave once occupied by Neanderthals. Kreuger had found that they morph into a shape resembling a hand whenever food was nearby. In this case, the food was mixed with grease. So how do you stop them?

It was discovered that alum (a sulfate of aluminum) smothers the mussels much like insecticide kills flies. And so, the Allied pilots filled their guns with alum-coated bullets and attacked. The cave was bombed, and the few remaining hands were shot and killed as they frantically grabbed at the air. The story ended with G-8, Nippy, and Bull eating scallops for breakfast (a type of mussel) – “a fitting dish” Nippy quipped.

 And so, I was Dad for a few days, late fall, early twilight, huddled in my easy chair, reading G-8 – a communion of sorts. 

I guess what is so intriguing, is how I followed his path without knowing there was a path. I had my own airplane period in the mid-1960s, and it was filled with Monogram P-51s, Johnny Cloud adventures, and WW2 books. I didn’t become a pilot, but Dad did, and that’s enough for a lifetime of stories. And now we have this one: G-8’s tangle with the airplane-crushing hands!

Next time ... The War Comics!