Number 1589: Invaded Earth

This is the first posting of a theme week. I'm calling it Skiffy Week, recognizing those science fiction fans who deplore the term “sci-fi,” pronouncing it skiffy. These are the kinds of stories that probably qualify for such a title...old-fashioned, corny, oddball. You know, skiffy.

First up, a chapter from the long series of post-invasion tales, “The Lost World,” illustrated by Graham Ingels. The villains are the usual Voltamen, but it’s early enough in the series (it began in Planet Comics #21*) that the Voltamen had not yet adopted their Yoda-speak. Dialogue that in this that story reads, “The old one is dead. We will take the female,” would soon be written as, “Dead the old one is. Take we will the female.”

This story shocks my sense of cultural heritage when our two protagonists, Lyssa and Hunt, burn movie film. Outrageous!

From Planet Comics #26 (1943):

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*I posted that first story last year. Click on the thumbnail to read it.

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Number 1351: Planet Comics #21: the first “Lost World”

In 1942 when Planet Comics' popular feature, “The Lost World” began, America was in its first year of World War II, and many comic books reflected the war reality. Planet Comics went a step further by introducing the last man on Earth, Hunt Bowman, and a post-apocalyptic vision after invasion by the aliens-from-space, the Voltamen.

The story drops us right into the action, and without dragging out any preliminaries quickly introduces us to Lyssa, Hunt's companion/girlfriend for the rest of the series. It also presents Voltamen before they acquired the quasi-German Army uniforms, or their Latin-based speech patterns (“Me to your leader take!” by Richard Ellington, from All in Color for a Dime, 1970).

The writer is “Thorncliffe Herrick,” which is a grand and fancy name, but a house name. Various writers worked on the series, including science fiction author, Jerome Bixby. The art, according to the Grand Comics Database, is by Rudy Palais, a comic book journeyman then in an earlier stage of his career. Palais' art at this time looks like it was inspired by Lou Fine. Later artists who worked on the feature included Graham Ingels, Lily Renée, and George Evans.

From Planet Comics #21 (1942):

More “Lost World”...just click the pics.

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Number 1264: The replacement Planet

My apologies. This is a replacement posting, done on February 21, 2013. The original, posted on November 18, 2012, which had stories from Fight Comics#36 and Rangers Comics #23, plus this story from Planet Comics #41 (1946), was accidentally deleted.

I don't have the original to look at, but as I recall, I mentioned that this story of ’The Lost World” was reprinted in IW Reprints Planet Comics #1 in 1958, and was the first time I had ever seen it or the work of Lily Renée, who did the artwork.

If I'm able at some point to recreate the original post I will.

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Number 1250: The visible Invisibility Helmet

This episode of Star Pirate immediately got my attention with that startling splash panel. Girl with open shirt and white bra being crucified! Yow. That's eye-catching. But nothing of the sort happens in the story.

The next thing that got my attention was the Invisibility Helmet. The idea is for the user to put on the helmet and disappear from human eyes. The problem is the helmet stays visible, so the wearer can be easily spotted. If I were the inventor of this device I wouldn't think it was quite ready for marketing.

Despite those observations I like this strip; Star Pirate is a fun feature that appeared in Planet Comics, and other episodes I have seen have early work by Murphy Anderson. Here Maurice Whitman is credited with the art. Whitman was one of those top notch art talents that Fiction House was blessed with.* The art usually made the book, because as is shown with this example, some of the stories have holes big enough to fly a spaceship through.

From Planet Comics #53 (1948):

*Go back to Sunday's posting of Pappy's #1248 for some great Fiction House art by Joe Doolin.

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Number 1079


Goodbye to the future


We're winding up 2011 in fine fashion, with a couple of beautifully illustrated stories from Planet Comics. Artists Lily Renée and Murphy Anderson were two of the top artists at Fiction House.

I told more about Ms. Renée's work and personal story in Pappy's #1015.

The future presented in the 'forties is pretty much long gone, replaced by the actual future. I love to look back on that never-to-be future. There was really a lot of optimism in it, considering the most terrible weapon in the history of humanity had been unleashed just two years earlier. Some popular magazines of the day painted a glowing future full of leisure time and personal uses of technology, others a more dystopian view of what would be left of humanity, staggering across a nuclear landscape. (Or in the case of "The Lost World" series in Planet Comics, being under the heel of the alien oppressor, the Voltamen.) A lot has happened since this issue of Planet Comics appeared and then disappeared from long-ago newsstands.

Here's to the future that will be, and to the one that never was. Happy New Year.

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