Yeah, that’s basically what it usually came down to, in 50ies science fiction – perhaps a tiny little bit less direct and unsubtle than here, but I just don’t do subtlety.
And I felt it would be appropriate to let Snuka come up with the idea. I mean, he does have a very pronounced capitalist streak to begin with. What he doesn’t usually have is a nose, however, and that’s a requirement – you can’t come up with an idea like that without rubbing your nose first. So now I’ve equipped him with a retractable nose-of-opportunity (not to be confused with a nose for opportunity).
Once Snuka came up with the basic idea, working out the details didn’t take long – fortunately, Captain Valiant used to work in skywriting. Which isn’t very surprising, since fictional pilots generally feature character backgrounds involving every imaginable kind of military and civilian flying. The second happy coincidence was that the starfighter was equipped for skywriting….but since it came from Stan’s, that’s probably not even that implausible, either.
More on Monday.