MYSTERY IN SPACE #99; May 1965; DC Comics; Jack Schiff, editor; featuring
Adam Strange vs. "The World Destroyer From Space!" and Space Ranger battling
"The Living Robots!" The cover, illustrating the Space Ranger story (though it
appears second in the issue), depicts Space Ranger in an assembly line of
space lawmen who are being converted into robots by a sinister device. One
alien in front is completely "robotized", another in back is still flesh and
blood, and Space Ranger under the overhead beam of the sinister device is in the
midst of being converted from flesh to metal. The parrot-beaked alien
operating the ray cackles, "Even Space Ranger is now under my control! Soon, I
will be king of this solar system!"
Review by Bill Henley
After Julius Schwartz gave up editorship of MYSTERY IN SPACE and took the
creative team of Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino with him. Jack Schiff
produced a further ten Adam Strange stories (MIS #92-102, skipping #101), produced
by members of his own editorial stable, including Lee Elias on the art. The
conventional fan wisdom on these stories is that they're of little or no
worth, a disgrace to the proud name of Adam Strange. As I mentioned in a
response to another review, I don't quite agree. Certainly the Schiff-edited Adam
Strange stories weren't as good as the Schwartz/Fox/Infantino classics, but
they're still readable. I at least like them better than the Ultra the
Multi-Alien series that replaced Adam (sorry, Ultra fans).
I think "The World-Destroyer From Space!" is written by Jerry Siegel-- yes,
the co-creator of Superman-- though it might be Dick or Dave Wood. The art,
as mentioned, is pencils and inks by Lee Elias. Elias was a comics veteran
and though his art lacks the pristine slickness of Infantino it had its own
virtues, including expressive faces. (One thing to note about Elias' depiction
of Adam is that he kept the costume the same except that he immediately, and
permanently, got rid of the finned helmet and let Adam's blond hair tousle in
the breeze. I don't know if Elias and/or Schiff thought the helmet looked
silly, or if Elias just wanted to place a visual mark of his own on the
character.) On the splash panel, Adam Strange is in the midst of nuptials with a
pretty redhead in an Earthly-looking white wedding gown, when he is attacked
by a floating pinkish-orange monster hurling lightning bolts as Alanna grins
fiendishly. Her father Sardath chides her; "How COULD you, Alanna? Just
because Adam jilted you for Lurinor,you wrecked the only weapon that could have
saved him AND our planet!"
As our story begins, Adam makes his usual Zeta-beam trip to Rann, where a
playful Alanna greets him with a hug-- "It's only been weeks since our last
meeting but it seemed like an ETERNITY!"-- and a challenge to a race, Adam's
jet-pack against her "air scooter". When Alanna wins the race, Adam reacts with
an uncharacteristic scowl; "You needn't rub it in! You're a bad sport!"
Alanna is puzzled and upset by Adam's anger, and she and Sardath are both
disturbed when he proves "quiet and withdrawn" during dinner. "Maybe some Earth
problems are still on his mind!", Alanna speculates. It gets worse when Adam
is invited to be the guest of honor at a "special celebration" of his own
heroic deeds. He is openly rude to the crowds of Rannians hailing him as
"champions of champions"-- until one of them, a redhead with a cinnamon-bun hairdo
of the sort later popularized by Princess Leia, approaches him. "You're the
prettiest girl here!", Adam declares, and he snubs Alanna in order to dance
with her. The redhead, Lurinor by name, confesses that she has always
hero-worshipped Adam and envied his sweetheart, Alanna. "Forget Alanna!" Adam
declares. "She belongs to my past! You, who are infinitely more fascinating,
belong to my FUTURE!" And, addressing the crowd, Adam declares he is so
smitten with Lurinor that he is proposing that they be married the very next day--
a proposal Lurinor eagerly accepts. While a baffled Sardath wonders if Adam
has "lost his mind", a tearful but enraged Alanna declares, "I wouldn't marry
that heel now if he begged me! Lurinor is welcome to him! I HATE HIM!"
The next day, Adam and Lurinor are in the midst of a public outdoor wedding
ceremony, with Alanna in the background vowing not to cry in public, when an
amorphous, flying, orange creature approaches shooting lightning bolts. Adam
recognizes it; "It fits the descripton of the legendary monster-- the
World-Destroyer Creature! It's supposed to have exploded the planet Goz, eons
ago!" Explaining further, Adam says the creature searches the galaxy for planets
containing the rare element Zymium from which it can gain "illitmitable
power". Once it gains a power boost by absorbing Zymium, it can blast apart an
entire planet and absorb still greater power from the explosion, keeping it
going for eons until it runs low and has to seek out another Zymium-containing
world. And Rann is in deadly danger, for it has Zymium. Though his romantic
inclinations have changed, Adam seems as dynamic and quick-thinking as ever,
as he stops a guard from firing at the creature-- "Your ray-blaster won't
harm the creature! If anything, it's making it STRONGER!"-- and rushes Sardath
to his lab to obtain a "large repulsor-ray machine", which Adam uses to push
the creature back towards space and gain time to find a more permanent
solution. Adam sets Sardath to work building a device to his specifications, but
refuses to explain the machine's exact function; "Don't distract me with
questions! Just do as I say! Billions of lives are at stake!"
Meanwhile, Alanna spots the creature returning, shooting its lightning
bolts, and despite her alienation from Adam she dons her jet-pack to rush to warn
him and her father. The creature spots and follows her, and at first she
thinks it is attacking her with its bolts. But then one of the creature's
lightnings destroys a deadly poison-quilled Razak bird that threatened to attack
her. Alanna is puzzled by the creature's behavior until she spots "a
pattrern in the woods below, formed by the space-creature's bolts! I'm beginning to
understand!" Shortly afterwards, Adam Strange emerges from Sardath's lab
with a new ray-weapon in hand and orders bystanders aside as he prepares to
blast the creature. But Alanna leaps forward, grabbing the weapon and ripping
wires loose, inactivating it. She then cheers on the space creature: "Go
get him! Get him!" And as Adam is wreathed in the creature's lightning bolts,
Alanna laughs manically, and Lurinor and Sardath are horrified; "Not only
will Adam die because of your hatred, but OUR WHOLE WORLD WILL PERISH!" But
then, as the creature flies off into the sky, an unharmed Adam seizes Alanna in
an embrace and kiss, and now it is Lurinor's turn to be outraged; "Stop it,
Adam! She tried to destroy you! How can you....?" But, still holding
Alanna, Adam insists, "No, I'm not crazy! Neither is Alanna! She just saved me
from an awful fate, bless her!" Alanna explained that she saw the initials
"AS" burned into the ground by the creature's bolts, and that plus he
creature's action in saving her life enabled her to figure out by "intutition" what
had happened. Somehow, as Adam traveled from Earth to Rann by Zeta-beam, the
space creature got caught up in the same beam, and their minds exchanged. the
creature's mind in Adam's body landed on Rann, and it decided it wanted to
keep its new form (and for some reason, took a shine to Lurinor as well).
Arriving on Rann to discover his own "wedding" in process, creature-Adam tried
to make physical contact with Adam-creature, sensing that this would change
their minds back. But Adam-creature drove it away, and then had Sardath create
the weapon capable of destroying its old form once and for all. (Why the
creature is so eager to exchange its natural form, capable of living for eons,
for a mortal human body is not altogether clear. I guess it was *really*
taken with Lurinor.....) But the danger is not over, for with its plan to
remain in Adam's body foiled, the creature will proceed with its original goal
to seek out Zymium and blow up the planet Rann. Quckly, Alanna repairs the
wires she damaged on the mystery weapon, and she and Adam jet off to confront
the creature before it can reach Rann's Zymium mines. They are almost too
late, as the creature is already sucking up Zymium-energy, but the ray-weapon
functions as advertised. Working as "energy-absorbing ray", it drains the
creature, making it smaller and smaller until it disappears altogether.
"Ironically, the creature created the SOLE weapon that could destroy it!", Adam
comments. Back at Ranagar, Lurinor (who apparently was sincere about her
hero-worship for Adam) is crestfallen at being left at the altar but "thankful I
didn't marry a monster in human form". Alanaa takes the opportunity to drop a
hint, "Speaking of marriage, darling..." when Adam suddenly fades away as his
Zeta-beam charge wears off. However, Alanna knows he will soon return via the
next Zeta-beam, and, "Meanwhile I'll have plenty of time to make myself look
my prettiest for him! I'm not taing any chances!"
As I've mentioned, I suspect Gardner Fox must have had one of the happier
marriages among comics creators, since he liked to depict couples (like Hawkman
and Hawkgirl and Adam and Alanna) who worked together closely and were
romantically devoted to each other without a lot of jealousy and bickering. Here,
in this non-Fox Adam Strange story, Alanna shows uncharacteristic signs of
jealousy and spite, but the provocation is considerable.....and, on the other
hand, she is actually the one to make the crucial deduction that saves the
day, which rarely if ever happened in Fox-written stories.
The remainder of this issue is devoted to the cover-featured Space Ranger
story. Space Ranger was Jack Schiff's own editorial "baby", reportedly
produced at the same 1950's editorial bull session at which Julie Schwartz came up
with Adam Strange. While Schwartz gave Adam a home in MYSTERY IN SPACE,
Schiff featured the Ranger for years in his own sci-fi title TALES OF THE
UNEXPECTED, but when Schiff took over MiS, he shoehorned both characters into the
same title. Like the post-Schwartz Adam Strange, Space Ranger comes in for a
lot of fannish disdain, but in his case I think the disdain is largely
warranted... at least, I've never found anything very interesting about Space
Ranger's rather juvenile adventures. On the splash page of this one-- drawn I think
by Howard Purcell, though I could be mistaken-- Space Ranger's
shape-changing pal Cryll has transformed himself into a green creature with double
vacuum-tube nostrils, but Space Ranger is transformed himself into a glowing
metallic form. "Look out, Cryll-- Space Ranger's become a hostile robot and he's
utilizing his robot powers to attack you with that glow!" In Saturn Stadium,
two alien criminal types are watching an exciting boxing bout, but though the
exciting climax is approaching, one of them insists they both leave to meet
their boss, known as Zru. "We'd be crazy to keep Zru waiting! That brilliant
brain is on the verge of becoming king of this solar system!" Another
member of the audience is eager to make their acquantance and learn more about
Zru, but as the "Martian Mauler" wins the bout, cheering fight fans block the
aisles and prevent him from catching up to the two hoods. Removing his
undercover disguise, Space Ranger, "Guardian of the Solar System", returns , along
with girlfriend Myra, to his asteroid headquarters, The Ranger is convinced
that the mysterious Zru is behind a series of "unexplained disapperances", but
his "odd little assistant" Cryll is busily but unsuccessfully trying to
locate info on Zru on the "Z" shelf of the Ranger's large library. (Wow, how
futuristic. Didn't even Batman, a mere 20th century primitive, have a
Bat-computer on which to keep his records of known criminals by this time?)
The next day, at Saturn City Hospital, a familar figure with an unfamilar
look shows up. The vanished Dr. Vervo, a trusted doctor, shows up, but he has
reappeared wtih completely metallic skin, a "living robot".. Brushing off his
former colleagues, he uses his knowledge of the hospital safe combination to
make off with "the planet's total supply of rare and valuable pluradium"
Space Ranger and Cryll show up on the scene, but the Ranger's ray-gun is
useless against the metallic Vervo, and Cryll's shapechanging efforts also fail
when a space flying manned by the gangsters Bru-rel, Toga and Zru appears to
seize Vervo and the pluradium loot. Trying to figure out the criminals' next
move, the Ranger deduces that a "paper deal" they spoke of refers to a plan to
attack the Interplanetary Mint. One of the missing persons is a master
engraver for the mint. And the next day, Jar-nee the Jovian, developer of the
"secret process for developing paper" for the mint, is accosted and taken
capive with "immobilization fluid". Or is he? Actually, the real Jar-nee has
been warned and his captured doppleganger is Space Ranger in disguise. Taken to
the gang's hideout at an abandoned asteroid mine, "Jar-nee" is ordered to be
sent through the "reception center", where an X-ray device reveals not only
his hidden weapons but his identity as Space Ranger. Exposed and still
helpless due to the immobilization fluid, Space Ranger listens as the
parrot-beaked Zru explains that he was an inhabitant of another solar system whose
criminals are imprisoned on a planet where mere flesh and blood beings cannot
survive, so the convicts are subjected to a "robotization" process to give them
metal skins and make them subject to the will of their guards. Zru got
himself sentenced to this prison in an attempt to free his gang boss Graz-vo, but
when the plan went awry, he fled without Graz-vo but with the "robotizing
bulb" and control helmet he can use to create "living robots" of his own. He
fled to Earth's solar system and plans to dominate it with his robot slaves, but
his first priority was to obtain the supply of pluradium, not because of its
money value but because it can substitute for Kronium, "an element necessary
for my existence". Zru's thugs suggest that Space Ranger ought to be
killed, but Zru laughs off the suggestion; why kill him when he can be "tobotized"
and become Zru's loyal servant? And that is what Zru proceeds to do.
Later, at "Interplanetary Military Headquarters on Pluto", General Larki
appears in robot form with a mission to steal vital defense plans for Zru's use.
But Cryll is on the scene, since Space Ranger earlier warned that Larki
might be the next target. Becoming the blue double-trunked creature, Cryll
traps the robot general in a pit, but Robot-Ranger shows up to disable Cryll and
rescue the general. Cryll and Myra are baffled how to make contact with the
Ranger and overcome the control kept on him by Zru's control helmet. But
some time later, as Zru starts to direct his robot slaves on another mission,
Space Ranger acts without orders and seizes the control helmet from Zru's head,
freeing the other robotized beings to revolt and overcome Zru and his gang?
How did the Ranger escape control? It seems that Cryll took the form of a
Mercurian telepathic monkey and beamed the Ranger instructions on how to
escape Zru's control by removing his helmet. Now Zru is defeated, but the
Ranger and the others may be doomed to exist as living robots forever, since even
Zru had no knowledge of how to reverse the robotization effect. Fortunately,
at this point the police of Zru's own home solar system show up. They have
tracked him to Earth's system because of the presence here of pluradium, the
only known substitute for the vital element Kronium, and now they can restore
the Ranger and the others to normal while hauling Zru off to serve his own
sentence as a "living robot".
Space Ranger and Adam Strange each had only two more MYSTERY IN SPACE
appearances to go at this point. Adam appeared without the Ranger in #100 and
#102, while the Ranger appeared without Adam in #101 and made his last bow in
#103, sharing the issue with the debut of Ultra the Multi-Alien (Lee Elias' new
art assignment in place of Adam Strange).
Adam Strange vs. "The World Destroyer From Space!" and Space Ranger battling
"The Living Robots!" The cover, illustrating the Space Ranger story (though it
appears second in the issue), depicts Space Ranger in an assembly line of
space lawmen who are being converted into robots by a sinister device. One
alien in front is completely "robotized", another in back is still flesh and
blood, and Space Ranger under the overhead beam of the sinister device is in the
midst of being converted from flesh to metal. The parrot-beaked alien
operating the ray cackles, "Even Space Ranger is now under my control! Soon, I
will be king of this solar system!"
Review by Bill Henley
After Julius Schwartz gave up editorship of MYSTERY IN SPACE and took the
creative team of Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino with him. Jack Schiff
produced a further ten Adam Strange stories (MIS #92-102, skipping #101), produced
by members of his own editorial stable, including Lee Elias on the art. The
conventional fan wisdom on these stories is that they're of little or no
worth, a disgrace to the proud name of Adam Strange. As I mentioned in a
response to another review, I don't quite agree. Certainly the Schiff-edited Adam
Strange stories weren't as good as the Schwartz/Fox/Infantino classics, but
they're still readable. I at least like them better than the Ultra the
Multi-Alien series that replaced Adam (sorry, Ultra fans).
I think "The World-Destroyer From Space!" is written by Jerry Siegel-- yes,
the co-creator of Superman-- though it might be Dick or Dave Wood. The art,
as mentioned, is pencils and inks by Lee Elias. Elias was a comics veteran
and though his art lacks the pristine slickness of Infantino it had its own
virtues, including expressive faces. (One thing to note about Elias' depiction
of Adam is that he kept the costume the same except that he immediately, and
permanently, got rid of the finned helmet and let Adam's blond hair tousle in
the breeze. I don't know if Elias and/or Schiff thought the helmet looked
silly, or if Elias just wanted to place a visual mark of his own on the
character.) On the splash panel, Adam Strange is in the midst of nuptials with a
pretty redhead in an Earthly-looking white wedding gown, when he is attacked
by a floating pinkish-orange monster hurling lightning bolts as Alanna grins
fiendishly. Her father Sardath chides her; "How COULD you, Alanna? Just
because Adam jilted you for Lurinor,you wrecked the only weapon that could have
saved him AND our planet!"
As our story begins, Adam makes his usual Zeta-beam trip to Rann, where a
playful Alanna greets him with a hug-- "It's only been weeks since our last
meeting but it seemed like an ETERNITY!"-- and a challenge to a race, Adam's
jet-pack against her "air scooter". When Alanna wins the race, Adam reacts with
an uncharacteristic scowl; "You needn't rub it in! You're a bad sport!"
Alanna is puzzled and upset by Adam's anger, and she and Sardath are both
disturbed when he proves "quiet and withdrawn" during dinner. "Maybe some Earth
problems are still on his mind!", Alanna speculates. It gets worse when Adam
is invited to be the guest of honor at a "special celebration" of his own
heroic deeds. He is openly rude to the crowds of Rannians hailing him as
"champions of champions"-- until one of them, a redhead with a cinnamon-bun hairdo
of the sort later popularized by Princess Leia, approaches him. "You're the
prettiest girl here!", Adam declares, and he snubs Alanna in order to dance
with her. The redhead, Lurinor by name, confesses that she has always
hero-worshipped Adam and envied his sweetheart, Alanna. "Forget Alanna!" Adam
declares. "She belongs to my past! You, who are infinitely more fascinating,
belong to my FUTURE!" And, addressing the crowd, Adam declares he is so
smitten with Lurinor that he is proposing that they be married the very next day--
a proposal Lurinor eagerly accepts. While a baffled Sardath wonders if Adam
has "lost his mind", a tearful but enraged Alanna declares, "I wouldn't marry
that heel now if he begged me! Lurinor is welcome to him! I HATE HIM!"
The next day, Adam and Lurinor are in the midst of a public outdoor wedding
ceremony, with Alanna in the background vowing not to cry in public, when an
amorphous, flying, orange creature approaches shooting lightning bolts. Adam
recognizes it; "It fits the descripton of the legendary monster-- the
World-Destroyer Creature! It's supposed to have exploded the planet Goz, eons
ago!" Explaining further, Adam says the creature searches the galaxy for planets
containing the rare element Zymium from which it can gain "illitmitable
power". Once it gains a power boost by absorbing Zymium, it can blast apart an
entire planet and absorb still greater power from the explosion, keeping it
going for eons until it runs low and has to seek out another Zymium-containing
world. And Rann is in deadly danger, for it has Zymium. Though his romantic
inclinations have changed, Adam seems as dynamic and quick-thinking as ever,
as he stops a guard from firing at the creature-- "Your ray-blaster won't
harm the creature! If anything, it's making it STRONGER!"-- and rushes Sardath
to his lab to obtain a "large repulsor-ray machine", which Adam uses to push
the creature back towards space and gain time to find a more permanent
solution. Adam sets Sardath to work building a device to his specifications, but
refuses to explain the machine's exact function; "Don't distract me with
questions! Just do as I say! Billions of lives are at stake!"
Meanwhile, Alanna spots the creature returning, shooting its lightning
bolts, and despite her alienation from Adam she dons her jet-pack to rush to warn
him and her father. The creature spots and follows her, and at first she
thinks it is attacking her with its bolts. But then one of the creature's
lightnings destroys a deadly poison-quilled Razak bird that threatened to attack
her. Alanna is puzzled by the creature's behavior until she spots "a
pattrern in the woods below, formed by the space-creature's bolts! I'm beginning to
understand!" Shortly afterwards, Adam Strange emerges from Sardath's lab
with a new ray-weapon in hand and orders bystanders aside as he prepares to
blast the creature. But Alanna leaps forward, grabbing the weapon and ripping
wires loose, inactivating it. She then cheers on the space creature: "Go
get him! Get him!" And as Adam is wreathed in the creature's lightning bolts,
Alanna laughs manically, and Lurinor and Sardath are horrified; "Not only
will Adam die because of your hatred, but OUR WHOLE WORLD WILL PERISH!" But
then, as the creature flies off into the sky, an unharmed Adam seizes Alanna in
an embrace and kiss, and now it is Lurinor's turn to be outraged; "Stop it,
Adam! She tried to destroy you! How can you....?" But, still holding
Alanna, Adam insists, "No, I'm not crazy! Neither is Alanna! She just saved me
from an awful fate, bless her!" Alanna explained that she saw the initials
"AS" burned into the ground by the creature's bolts, and that plus he
creature's action in saving her life enabled her to figure out by "intutition" what
had happened. Somehow, as Adam traveled from Earth to Rann by Zeta-beam, the
space creature got caught up in the same beam, and their minds exchanged. the
creature's mind in Adam's body landed on Rann, and it decided it wanted to
keep its new form (and for some reason, took a shine to Lurinor as well).
Arriving on Rann to discover his own "wedding" in process, creature-Adam tried
to make physical contact with Adam-creature, sensing that this would change
their minds back. But Adam-creature drove it away, and then had Sardath create
the weapon capable of destroying its old form once and for all. (Why the
creature is so eager to exchange its natural form, capable of living for eons,
for a mortal human body is not altogether clear. I guess it was *really*
taken with Lurinor.....) But the danger is not over, for with its plan to
remain in Adam's body foiled, the creature will proceed with its original goal
to seek out Zymium and blow up the planet Rann. Quckly, Alanna repairs the
wires she damaged on the mystery weapon, and she and Adam jet off to confront
the creature before it can reach Rann's Zymium mines. They are almost too
late, as the creature is already sucking up Zymium-energy, but the ray-weapon
functions as advertised. Working as "energy-absorbing ray", it drains the
creature, making it smaller and smaller until it disappears altogether.
"Ironically, the creature created the SOLE weapon that could destroy it!", Adam
comments. Back at Ranagar, Lurinor (who apparently was sincere about her
hero-worship for Adam) is crestfallen at being left at the altar but "thankful I
didn't marry a monster in human form". Alanaa takes the opportunity to drop a
hint, "Speaking of marriage, darling..." when Adam suddenly fades away as his
Zeta-beam charge wears off. However, Alanna knows he will soon return via the
next Zeta-beam, and, "Meanwhile I'll have plenty of time to make myself look
my prettiest for him! I'm not taing any chances!"
As I've mentioned, I suspect Gardner Fox must have had one of the happier
marriages among comics creators, since he liked to depict couples (like Hawkman
and Hawkgirl and Adam and Alanna) who worked together closely and were
romantically devoted to each other without a lot of jealousy and bickering. Here,
in this non-Fox Adam Strange story, Alanna shows uncharacteristic signs of
jealousy and spite, but the provocation is considerable.....and, on the other
hand, she is actually the one to make the crucial deduction that saves the
day, which rarely if ever happened in Fox-written stories.
The remainder of this issue is devoted to the cover-featured Space Ranger
story. Space Ranger was Jack Schiff's own editorial "baby", reportedly
produced at the same 1950's editorial bull session at which Julie Schwartz came up
with Adam Strange. While Schwartz gave Adam a home in MYSTERY IN SPACE,
Schiff featured the Ranger for years in his own sci-fi title TALES OF THE
UNEXPECTED, but when Schiff took over MiS, he shoehorned both characters into the
same title. Like the post-Schwartz Adam Strange, Space Ranger comes in for a
lot of fannish disdain, but in his case I think the disdain is largely
warranted... at least, I've never found anything very interesting about Space
Ranger's rather juvenile adventures. On the splash page of this one-- drawn I think
by Howard Purcell, though I could be mistaken-- Space Ranger's
shape-changing pal Cryll has transformed himself into a green creature with double
vacuum-tube nostrils, but Space Ranger is transformed himself into a glowing
metallic form. "Look out, Cryll-- Space Ranger's become a hostile robot and he's
utilizing his robot powers to attack you with that glow!" In Saturn Stadium,
two alien criminal types are watching an exciting boxing bout, but though the
exciting climax is approaching, one of them insists they both leave to meet
their boss, known as Zru. "We'd be crazy to keep Zru waiting! That brilliant
brain is on the verge of becoming king of this solar system!" Another
member of the audience is eager to make their acquantance and learn more about
Zru, but as the "Martian Mauler" wins the bout, cheering fight fans block the
aisles and prevent him from catching up to the two hoods. Removing his
undercover disguise, Space Ranger, "Guardian of the Solar System", returns , along
with girlfriend Myra, to his asteroid headquarters, The Ranger is convinced
that the mysterious Zru is behind a series of "unexplained disapperances", but
his "odd little assistant" Cryll is busily but unsuccessfully trying to
locate info on Zru on the "Z" shelf of the Ranger's large library. (Wow, how
futuristic. Didn't even Batman, a mere 20th century primitive, have a
Bat-computer on which to keep his records of known criminals by this time?)
The next day, at Saturn City Hospital, a familar figure with an unfamilar
look shows up. The vanished Dr. Vervo, a trusted doctor, shows up, but he has
reappeared wtih completely metallic skin, a "living robot".. Brushing off his
former colleagues, he uses his knowledge of the hospital safe combination to
make off with "the planet's total supply of rare and valuable pluradium"
Space Ranger and Cryll show up on the scene, but the Ranger's ray-gun is
useless against the metallic Vervo, and Cryll's shapechanging efforts also fail
when a space flying manned by the gangsters Bru-rel, Toga and Zru appears to
seize Vervo and the pluradium loot. Trying to figure out the criminals' next
move, the Ranger deduces that a "paper deal" they spoke of refers to a plan to
attack the Interplanetary Mint. One of the missing persons is a master
engraver for the mint. And the next day, Jar-nee the Jovian, developer of the
"secret process for developing paper" for the mint, is accosted and taken
capive with "immobilization fluid". Or is he? Actually, the real Jar-nee has
been warned and his captured doppleganger is Space Ranger in disguise. Taken to
the gang's hideout at an abandoned asteroid mine, "Jar-nee" is ordered to be
sent through the "reception center", where an X-ray device reveals not only
his hidden weapons but his identity as Space Ranger. Exposed and still
helpless due to the immobilization fluid, Space Ranger listens as the
parrot-beaked Zru explains that he was an inhabitant of another solar system whose
criminals are imprisoned on a planet where mere flesh and blood beings cannot
survive, so the convicts are subjected to a "robotization" process to give them
metal skins and make them subject to the will of their guards. Zru got
himself sentenced to this prison in an attempt to free his gang boss Graz-vo, but
when the plan went awry, he fled without Graz-vo but with the "robotizing
bulb" and control helmet he can use to create "living robots" of his own. He
fled to Earth's solar system and plans to dominate it with his robot slaves, but
his first priority was to obtain the supply of pluradium, not because of its
money value but because it can substitute for Kronium, "an element necessary
for my existence". Zru's thugs suggest that Space Ranger ought to be
killed, but Zru laughs off the suggestion; why kill him when he can be "tobotized"
and become Zru's loyal servant? And that is what Zru proceeds to do.
Later, at "Interplanetary Military Headquarters on Pluto", General Larki
appears in robot form with a mission to steal vital defense plans for Zru's use.
But Cryll is on the scene, since Space Ranger earlier warned that Larki
might be the next target. Becoming the blue double-trunked creature, Cryll
traps the robot general in a pit, but Robot-Ranger shows up to disable Cryll and
rescue the general. Cryll and Myra are baffled how to make contact with the
Ranger and overcome the control kept on him by Zru's control helmet. But
some time later, as Zru starts to direct his robot slaves on another mission,
Space Ranger acts without orders and seizes the control helmet from Zru's head,
freeing the other robotized beings to revolt and overcome Zru and his gang?
How did the Ranger escape control? It seems that Cryll took the form of a
Mercurian telepathic monkey and beamed the Ranger instructions on how to
escape Zru's control by removing his helmet. Now Zru is defeated, but the
Ranger and the others may be doomed to exist as living robots forever, since even
Zru had no knowledge of how to reverse the robotization effect. Fortunately,
at this point the police of Zru's own home solar system show up. They have
tracked him to Earth's system because of the presence here of pluradium, the
only known substitute for the vital element Kronium, and now they can restore
the Ranger and the others to normal while hauling Zru off to serve his own
sentence as a "living robot".
Space Ranger and Adam Strange each had only two more MYSTERY IN SPACE
appearances to go at this point. Adam appeared without the Ranger in #100 and
#102, while the Ranger appeared without Adam in #101 and made his last bow in
#103, sharing the issue with the debut of Ultra the Multi-Alien (Lee Elias' new
art assignment in place of Adam Strange).
