“It’s not my fault you didn’t get your tickets on time. Take the next bus.”
Planet Comics #1
Love Romances Publishing Company (January, 1940)
Because that’s a name that screams Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon style sci-fi action. It’s the same people who gave us Fight Comics and Jungle Comics, and those did indeed have fights and jungles in them. I don’t know why neither of them have the same publisher name and how this one got the romance sounding publisher. So I guess this one will have a lot of planet. How many times will it be the one we live on? Let’s check it out. I’m using a second scanning that looks like the someone “fixed” the colors, as they’re brighter than any of the scans I’ve seen from Comic Book Plus thus far. So if that’s not to your taste, and they do at least seem to have the colors more accurate than most modern fixes, I’ll link to both, as the other one is just a straight-up scan with no extra work.
[Read along with me here, or alternately here if the first one was too brightly colored]
The Planetary Adventures Of Flint Baker & The One-Eyed Monster Men Of Mars by Dick Briefer
Flint, or Fletcher in the first panel (Flint is the more galactic hero sounding name) finishes his father’s spaceship to Mars and somehow has the clout to free three prisoners held for murder (only one is actually guilty but with reasons) to be his crew. It just gets sillier from there, folks. Stowing away is a girl reporter, Mimi, who convinces Flint to let her stay because she’s kind of hot. On Mars they find out that other Earthlings came here first but were bad guys who were exiled to the dark side of Mars. Not how orbits work if I remember my astronomy. When Mimi and the princess are captured, Flint and company go after them, one dying fighting the guy who framed him with the hypnotic powers he never uses here. That seemed a bit pointless. This feels like a first, maybe second draft, the one-eyed balls with legs are hard to take as a real threat, but it’s not a horrible read. It just needed more work.
Auro, Lord Of Jupiter
So…Tarzan in space? Tarzan in space. Auro’s ship crashed on Jupiter, killing his parents. Raised by a sabertooth tiger(?), the boy finds natives who name him Auro because he beats them as his Earthling body gets stronger growing up on Jupiter’s heavier gravity. Right. After the origin our story has our hero helping an Earth woman rescue her friends from a tyrant on Neptune. I’m worried we have a theme going here. Also, the panels are not easily to follow on a couple of pages.
The Red Comet by Ken. Jackson
Yes, the period is in his name. Might be a 1940s thing like “Geo” for George. So we got a superhero after all, one that changes size as he rescues Earth colonists from the evil spider men. Still some issues with the panels but it’s the better story thus far…not that the bar was set very high. It’s not perfect, but feels like at least a second draft was worked on, unlike the last two.
Captain Nelson Cole Of The Solar Force by Alex Boon
Captain Cole and Lieutenant Bud are sent to stop a madman on a forming planet, using it’s power and an army of zombified men to steal ships in space and plan a full invasion of the solar system. Again, the bar is high and in a better comic this would be an average story. Instead it’s probably the best thus far. The panel flow works, the concept is decent, our heroes use strategy and made up future science as well as being clever enough to save the day. It’s finally a story I enjoyed.
Spurt Hammond: Planet Flyer: “The War Lords Of The Moon”
Before I even start reading…what the hell kind of name is “Spurt” for your hero? I don’t care if this is the outer space future, it’s a terrible character name. Warrior women on the moon try to rob Spurt’s cargo ship, later capturing him off-panel when he tries to get it back. Hearing that they plan to attack Earth with bomb laden creatures called Mooniacs. Spurt manages to not only defeat the “Lunerzons” but because he’s so clever they fight over who will marry him. This story may not get dumber as it goes on, but it does somehow manage to maintain the same level of dumb all the way through. Not sure if that’s a positive. Also don’t care for the art. Spurt looks like a girl himself in a few panels.
Buzz Crandall And The Space Patrol by Bob Jordan
So Buzz’s deal is going to rescue all the idiots who get themselves in trouble as adventurers and explorers. I can think of a few characters in this comic that could have used him, but these Golden Age anthologies aren’t even sharing universes within the same pages. He’s also pretty salty about scientists leaving Earth and getting into trouble. Our hero, folks. This time he rescues a scientist and his daughter from an expedition because the scientist seems to know how to turn water explosive. Okay. The Sharkmen of Neptune who don’t even look much like sharks want to turn the thing they need to survive into a high powered explosive. This seems like a very dumb idea. So was this story.
Quorak: Super Pirate: “The Man Who Stole The World” by Albert Charles
Considering who we’ve seen come from the world in this comic, he can have it. And somehow a less dumb name than “Spurt”. I’m not even in a bad mood and I’m just lambasting this comic. I feel like Buzz Crandall throwing shade at people daring to leave Earth. Quorak turns his fictional space element’s magnetic power way up and steals Pluto, “the greatest planet”. (Oh, if you only knew how Pluto would actually be treated by the year 2000, Al. Also that Pluto is already too far away from the sun to NOT be a freezing cold planet. I think the Plutonians would be fine.) The heroes of this story aren’t even directly responsible for stopping Quorak’s evil plans; a unlucky break caused by his own torturous death plans are. What a lame story to end on.
overall
I will not be returning to this comic. If this is an example of how things go, it’s not got the best writers working on it, a strange publisher name if it’s own by the same people who make the equally weakly named Jungle Comics, Fight Comics, and Jumbo Comics, and only one story was actually worth reading. This is where we learn quality over quantity, something video games had to learn in the 1980s and Hollywood is failing at right now. This whole line of comics is a wash, frankly.
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