| rdfs:comment | - In Pep #1, in a story drawn by Jack Cole, young scientist John Dickering has discovered a gas fifty times lighter than hydrogen. By injecting small doses of it into his bloodstream, he is able to make great leaps through the air. After a number of injections, twin beams come from Dickering's eyes and when he crosses the beams, whatever he is looking at disintegrates. He makes a glass shield (visor) as that is the only thing his beams will not disintegrate, a weakness often used against him from the first story onwards. In the second story, tied up and unable to raise his visor to save himself, he smashes it against a rock, breaking the glass. Realising that such a discovery could wreck humanity, Dickering destroys the formula for the gas and uses his powers to benefit humanity.
|
| abstract | - In Pep #1, in a story drawn by Jack Cole, young scientist John Dickering has discovered a gas fifty times lighter than hydrogen. By injecting small doses of it into his bloodstream, he is able to make great leaps through the air. After a number of injections, twin beams come from Dickering's eyes and when he crosses the beams, whatever he is looking at disintegrates. He makes a glass shield (visor) as that is the only thing his beams will not disintegrate, a weakness often used against him from the first story onwards. In the second story, tied up and unable to raise his visor to save himself, he smashes it against a rock, breaking the glass. Realising that such a discovery could wreck humanity, Dickering destroys the formula for the gas and uses his powers to benefit humanity. Despite the first page blurb, in the first story, Dickering flies rather than floats/jumps (there was no explanation about his propulsion method but if he disintegrated the air in front of him, the vacuum caused might pull along someone almost without weight.) In the first story alone, he callously disintegrates 3 gangsters and drops one to certain death. He kills more in Pep #2. At the start of issue 3, we find that the police know he is Dickering but want him on the force rather than trying to stop his vigilantism. In that story, he comes under the hypnotic control of Doc Zadar and causes widespread destruction while Zadar robs places and is then considered an outlaw. The Comet helps a young reporter named Thelma Gordon and in her newspaper she reports all the good things that The Comet does to get him back in the public's good graces. In Pep #7, the gas wears off so Dickering loses his powers and he discovers he can modify his gas intake, rendering him human when he wants, so he can appear in public without fear of destroying people with his disintegration vision.
|
