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 523


Rudy Palais pops a sweat!


Golden Age comic art by Rudy Palais can be spotted easily by looking for flying sweat drops. This past Monday I showed you a couple of stories by Johnny Craig, who also used perspiring faces to indicate stress or fear. But Palais used the type of sweat drops usually associated with funny animal comics. I'm thinking of Chad Grothkopf (Captain Marvel Bunny) or Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse). Both of those cartoonists drew characters with bullets of sweat flying from their heads. Sweat as Palais portrayed it wasn't usually used in more illustrative comic art, and I can think of no other artist who used sweat or tears in the bulbous and exaggerated way Palais did.

Here are originals for four stories by Rudy Palais I culled from the Internet, all of which show his signature flying sweat. "The Scarecrow's Revenge" is from Witches Tales #14. "The Clock Struck Doom" is from Black Cat Mystery #37, "Army of Scorpions" from Black Cat Mystery #33, and "The Man With the Iron Face" is from Witches Tales #12.

I also showed two crime comics stories by Palais here and here.

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Number 340

Whodunnit? Rudy dunnit!

Longtime comic artist Rudy Palais contributed this story to Crime Does Not Pay #49, from 1947. It's easy to spot a Palais story even without his distinctive signature. Just look for the flying sweat drops. Funny animal comic artists like Floyd Gottfredson of the Mickey Mouse comic strip did this regularly, but they seem wildly out of place in an otherwise melodramatic crime story.

This potboiler of a "mystery" is straight out of some 1940s Hollywood B-movie programmer. Like one of those old movies you don't want to take it seriously, but it's fun to look at.

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Number 257

The Lovesick Clown

Rudy Palais does a "true" crime comics version of I Pagliacci in Crime Does Not Pay #43, January 1946. The clown gets turned down by the woman he lusts after, then goes into a murderous rage.

I empathize. Without killing anyone, at one time or another every guy has made a clown of himself over a woman. So many times for me I coulda gone to work for Ringling Brothers-Barnum and Bailey!

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