Being A Good Spurt About It

In 1940, Fiction House decided to extend their popular science-fiction magazine Planet Stories into a new comic with Planet Comics that was part of their Big 6 lineup. Their first issue saw the debut of outer space heroes such as Captain Nelson Cole, Buzz Crandall, and The Red Comet whose adventures vary from generic Flash Gordon planetary romance plots to full on superhero adventures with a size-changing savior. One character that endured for the first twelve issues was the inexplicably named Spurt Hammond. It never gets addressed if his name is a common one in the year of 25,000(sometimes in the year 40,000}that he comes from, or if Spurt is a nickname he earned after an amusing night on the town. The original writer was possibly Henry C. Kiefer(aka: Orson Herr, Wm. S. Mott, Trace R. Bullet), or an unknown author who somehow arrived at the decision that Spurt was an acceptable enough name for his eager young space captain. Spurt is a Lieutenant in the American Interspace Lines where he pilots a rocket transport going from planet to planet usually dealing with villain of the week scenarios where an aggressor either wants to hijack his ride, steal his cargo, or get him sandwiched in between two warring factors. Mr. Hammond would also regularly have to save ravenous space vixens, good or bad, causing an entire amazon tribe into mud wrestling to win his affections. Spurt confronts each situation with old fashion fisticuffs, although it sometimes entailed beard-pulling, giant-slaying, batman-bashing, rockmen-wrecking, and mecha-mashing, even though he did get an operation that essentially made him fireproof. Our hero ends up saving planet Venus on three separate occasions, each of which had a completely different character as the active queen that all helped feed his misogynistic tendencies. While he used handle of Planet Flyer, the aptly named Spurt was a jerk to both his allies and enemies, he tussled with the poetically labeled Idiots of Pluto, plus he would destroy an entire set of space islands just to snub his adversaries. Despite his list of crimes, Spurt got reprinted years later under two individual publishers branded as Rock Raymond, and then later on as just Rocketman who had his own merchandise in a projected comics viewer. Thus proving that a little Spurt can go a long way.