Jet Dream (Comic Book)



""A potpourri of panic's cooking, Jet! I hope your derring-do dolls are ready to roll...""

- Martin Brown, Jet Dream #1

Original Gold Key Comics Comic Book Feature

The Jet Dream feature first appeared in Gold Key Comics' The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Comic Book Adaptation, between July 1966 and April 1969 (cover dates.) Each of these 16 stories was a mere four pages in length. (Other than sharing a book and an espionage theme, Jet Dream and The Man From UNCLE were completely unrelated.) In June 1968 (cover date), the first and only issue of Jet Dream's own title, with a full-length story, appeared.

The series premise appears to have been strongly influenced by both Blackhawk and the Pussy Galore character in Goldfinger, who had an all-female "Flying Circus." Likewise, the "Stunt-Girl Counterspies" were a team of female fliers and spies, but fighting for the good guys (while also, for reasons never adequately explained, working "day jobs" as Hollywood stuntwomen.)

The members of the Jet Dream Team were (as described in Jet Dream #1):
 * Jet Dream -- "The leader."
 * Petite -- "She looks fragile, but she's as tough as steel, quick as a whippet, and brave as a lioness. She's also a connoisseur of perfumes, gourmet cuisine, and fine wines."
 * Marlene -- "Powerful as a wrestler, but with a cool, precise Teutonic mind."
 * Ting-a-Ling -- "An exotic South Seas beauty with the instincts of a panther... but naive and innocent as a lamb."
 * Cookie Jarr -- "A former Olympic gymnast, her athletic skills make her a deadly foe for rogues... but when the action is over, she's an alluring charmer."

The feature provides the primary source material for the Remix Comic Jet Dream and Her T-Girl Counterspies.

The original Jet Dream comic book feature provides examples of:

 * Ace Pilot: All of them.
 * Action Girl: All of them. Unusually for comic books of the era, none of the girls on the team have "passive" specialties as their primary skill or power.
 * Amazon Brigade: Jet and her Stunt-Girls, obviously, but also Raven Red and her team.
 * Arch Enemy: Raven Red, the only villain to appear twice over the course of the feature.
 * Artistic License Geography: In the aforementioned "Powder Puff Derby Caper," Jet is shot down over a "South Pacific island" somewhere between Honolulu and San Francisco.
 * Brainy Brunette: Marlene.
 * Catch Phrase: "Jet-a-Reeno!"
 * Cool Car: Various expensive sports cars loaded with numerous gadgets and weapons.
 * Everyone Looks Sexier If French: Petite.
 * Evil Counterpart: Raven Red, also a top-notch aviatrix with an all-girl team.
 * Expy: Blackhawk and/or Pussy Galore.
 * Fiery Redhead: Petite, Depending on the Artist.
 * Four-Girl Ensemble: Jet is the leader. Petite is the sexy one, Marlene the big girl who can out-wrestle most men, and Ting-a-Ling is the sweet, naive one. (Cookie Jarr doesn't really have a defined role in this setup.)
 * Home Base: "No-Man's-Land" is the team's secret headquarters "somewhere on the coast of Southern California."
 * Improbable Piloting Skills: All of them. They are particularly good at improvisation, such as (for example) disabling an enemy plane by dropping an empty external fuel tank on it.
 * Knockout Gas: Jet uses a compact full of "Kayo Powder" with a similar effect.
 * Mata Hari: All of them.
 * Nebulous Evil Organization: CIPHER, whose symbol is a zero, making it perhaps the most generic organization of its kind.
 * Overt Operative: The girls all work as Hollywood stuntwomen, but their other jobs seem to be public knowledge, and they don't hide their identities. (But at least their Home Base is well-hidden.)
 * Parachute Petticoat: The Stunt-Girls are prepared for anything, including being unexpectedly thrown from a cliff, as Marlene demonstrates with her "Tunic Chute."
 * Poirot Speak: Marlene and Petite.
 * She Fu: Jet and the other Stunt-Girls engage in a lot of acrobatics in their fights (but aren't afraid of old-fashioned fisticuffs either.)
 * Shoe Phone: The girls have a wide array of spy gadgets and weapons, almost invariably disguised as stereotypically "girly" items, such as:
 * Compact full of "Kayo Powder"
 * Radio hidden in an earring
 * Marlene's "Tunic Chute"
 * Stunt Double: The somewhat inexplicable second occupation of the team members.
 * Take That: It might be pure coincidence, but on the cover of Jet Dream #1, it kind of looks like Jet and her team are clobbering the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad from Tower Comics' THUNDER Agents comics, which would have been direct competitors at the time of publication.
 * Those Wacky Nazis: Marlene is attacked by Nazi agents who want to get back at her father, who worked against Hitler during the war.
 * Wacky Racing: In "The Powder Puff Derby Caper," Jet joins an all-female Honolulu-to-San Francisco air race. It's used by Raven Red to ambush Jet.
 * Woman in White: All the girls wear white jumpsuits.