Space Ace volume 6

The latest issue of Space Ace—or, more properly, Ron Turner's Space Ace—has arrived. Dated April but released in June, it is always well worth the wait. This issue contains the last of Ron Turner's Space Ace serial stories, written and drawn for Lone Star comic back in 1956 and an interesting background feature by editor John Lawrence on what happened to make this the last serial.

In 'The Collectors From Space', Ace's meteor-damaged spaceship is approached by a mysterious sphere which draws the spaceman and his second-in-command Sergeant Bill Craig inside. Unconscious, they are unaware that the sphere continues on to Earth where it gathers items of architectural interest. Meanwhile, the military fight back; their war craft have been immobilised, but they are able to use horses to drag a trailer, loaded with an atomic mine, under the sphere. The explosion destroys the stabilisers of the alien ship and launches it towards space. Inside, the creatures the aliens have been gathering for their intergalactic zoo escape...

And that's just the first two episodes. There are still four more episodes to go in this rip-roaring yarn which sees Ace and Bill saving the lives of the aliens and reveals how you escape the gravity of a Jovian moon when all you have is a submarine.

The 'science' in this science fiction is what you'd expect of a boys' comic from the 1950s, but that doesn't make the story any the less exciting, and Turner's artwork—and John Ridgway's colouring—are as good as we've come to expect from this series.

You'll find more excitement in 'Space Ace and the Lens', in which an alien race wants to use a solar reflector to revive a dead world at the expense of another planet whose unhappy inhabitants seek the aid of the Space Patrol. Space Ace and Bill are almost roasted alive when they intervene.

You can get hold of this latest volume for £8.95 (UK) or £14.00 (Overseas) including p&p — and that's pretty much at cost, I can assure you — with payments through Paypal via spaceace.54 AT virginmedia.com or by cheque or postal order to John Lawrence, 39 Carterweys, Dunstable, Beds. LU5 4RB.