New "Facts Page" for this issue

SUMMARY:

Phineas Blodgett believes he has invented a way to extract gold from sea-water, but his financers have other plans in mind.

OVERVIEW:

Inventor Phineas Blodgett thinks he has discovered a way to extract gold from sea water. When no investor will buy his invention, he goes to a man with a bad reputation, who helps him get his machinery working. Aquaman, knowing the man, Sponsler, is a crook, keeps his eye on the operation, and catches some thieves outside the factory with gold. He recovers the gold for Blodgett, who figures out that the gold wasn't made in his factory. Aquaman shuts down the operation and tells Blodgett that extracting magnesium would be easier, and also profitable.

COMMENTS:

The splash page has Aquaman, with yellow gloves, leaping from the water after a gold bar on a fishing line, while various thugs are gathered around with nets ready to capture him. This just shows that the tendency to use images that weren't in the story to promote a story has been around a long time.

This is one of those stories that isn't afraid to teach. There is trace amounts of gold in sea water. It has been extracted successfully in the past, but never in any significant amounts. I'm not sure about magnesium, I'd have to look that up. Often the older stories are based on faulty science, this one seems a little more plausible than many to me. I probably ought to read up on it some more.

Sponsler's thug, Baldy, thinks his boss has gone completely nuts by agreeing to help out Blodgett. He gets a little more enthusiastic about it once Sponsler explains what he intends.

Blodgett is way too naive to be a good inventor. I mean, absent-minded I could understand, but he lets Sponsler add whole components to his invention, and doesn't question their function. Wouldn't most inventors want to know exactly what the added bits do? He should've figured out Sponsler's plans much sooner, despite his desperation and desire to succeed.

At no point in this story does Aquaman use fish to help him in any way.

Cazeneuve's art is very distinctive, and the layouts in this story are very simple. Except for the splash page, every page has seven panels, usually three across the top then two rows of two. The story progresses nicely with what we might consider an awful lot of dialogue in this age. The text was necessary to build a complicated story. Although there are action sequences, a lot of the images are just establishing the scene for the text.

CONCLUSION:

A pretty good story with some interesting turns.