If you look at it from a certain angle,
Jor-El is the ultimate
Ditko/Randian type of hero--the lone genius no one will listen to, who will defy the rules of his society because he
knows A is A, dammit, and he'll do what's necessary!!
So what happens when Ditko gets to tell his version of the exploding planet sending out one last ship?
[Note--writing credits for this story aren't firmly known--
GCD lists it as "
Joe Gill ?"--so I'll just be saying "
Ditko" as shorthand, while acknowledging other hands were likely involved in at least plotting this story.]
Jack Lawson is up at his vacation cabin when a meteor almost hits him!
But it's not just
any meteor...
What is it with these damned
Science Councils not believing their planet is blowing up?!?
But unlike
Krypton, this planet has
a whole horde of believers!
Bala was not a particularly nice place...
Yeah, that shot's not familiar
at all...
Anyway, Jack's "
dream" ends.
Fortunately, the
Balarites had the same weakness as the aliens in
Signs:
So: exploding planet sends its only son to help and inspire us,
or sends 10,000,000 miniaturized troops to conquer us?!?
I know which one Ditko (
et. al.) believes...
From Space Adventures #27 (1959)
3 comments:
I'm missing something here. Where do the Balarites say they're going to conquer whichever planet they land on? They could easily have stayed small and the entire population could have lived happily in a vacant lot somewhere. How does the guy know he's saving the earth? Sounds to me like he's jumping to conclusions.
The panel that shows all the volcanoes refers to the "warlike, savage inhabitants of Bala", which I suppose was intended to mean that they would continue to act as such on Earth. (Or maybe there was another reference that wasn't included here.) Though it does still seem like the guy decided on preemptive genocide as his first option, which... doesn't seem like the most moral of choices.
Luthor is correct, that's really the only basis for assuming that Jack was right. That just (unitnetionally?) emphasizes the oddness of the viewpoint--assume any visitors should be presumed to be hostile. If this had fund Kal-El, well...
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