(Planet Comics 005, 1940) Rocko is a totally awesome alien (from a species called the Nethermen, a totally awesome name) who looks like a human with one great grandparent who was a toad and dresses in pulp sci-fi armour as he scours the spaceways for a star of sufficient heat to run all of his planet’s industry. Bad luck for humanity: the first adequate star that he manages to find while aimlessly noodling around in space (as opposed to picking…
Time for the second Bullseye Bannon mystery: everyone get ready to cut up some comics for a chance at a small cash prize. This time, Bullseye Bannon is for some reason reading the will of the late Dean Earl, who has carefully crafted the kind of situation that murder mysteries thrive on. By the terms of the will, son Titus Earl gets everything, unless he dies, and then someone else gets everything. Bullseye Bannon doesn’t exactly help things by pointing…
In 1940, Fiction House tried an innovative new method to sell their comics: a serialized contest! Specifically, they printed a series of adventures by detective Bullseye Bannon across issues of Fight Comics, Jumbo Comics, Jungle Comics and Planet Comics, and to enter the contest you had to send in your solution to the mystery along with four little coupons clipped from the issues. I can only assume that the whole exercise was more trouble than it was worth, because they…
Don’t bother asking to see their degrees. This unnamed scientist has been kidnapping preteens and changing them into hulking brutes via some pretty fantastical brain surgery. He of course gets his ass fatally handed to him by the Red Panther but not before he goes on about producing a new super race and as always I have to question your devotion to science if you think that your physical alterations to these kids are going to be passed on. Who…
(Planet Comics 004, 1940) Flint Baker and co are making their return trip from Mars and due to an unscheduled diversion to Pluto in Planet Comics 003 they end up passing Jupiter on the way, at which point they are forced to make landfall to avoid an attack by outer space organisms referred to as “stratosphere serpents” despite being more like starfish crossed with octopuses. While there, Flint and gal pal Mimi Wilson do a bit of exploring and discover…
(Planet Comics 003, 1940) The work of the Lord of Jupiter is never done, as Auro (Lord of Jupiter, natch) learns one day when he receives the alarming news that a giant flame-breathing dragon has been carrying off dozens of his subjects. And indeed, not only is there a dragon running around causing trouble but that dragon is actually a guy who can turn into a dragon and who has used his humanoid powers of reasoning to correctly identify Auro…
(Planet Comics 003, 1940) In his first appearance Felon is a fairly ordinary space pirate captain, terrorizing the spaceways with a fleet of cool black delta-shaped ships and a device that intercepts and disrupts communications across the Solar System. In this capacity, Felon gets absolutely trounced by Captain Nelson Cole: his men are beaten up and then blown out of the sky by Cole and the Solar Force. The survivors are taken into custody – Felon is not specifically mentioned…
(Planet Comics 003, 1940) We open on Spurt Hammond, the Planet-Flyer himself, intercepting an alarming series of images from the planet Mercury. Giants? Explosions? Girls!? What could it all mean? It turns out that the girl in question is Princess Zilla, erstwhile ruler of Mercury but recently deposed by her Prime Minister Radgio, who schemes to conquer the world using mutated Mercurians such as the previously-seen giant. Which I suppose strongly implies that Zilla was the ruler of only a…
(Planet Comics 002, 1940) We are introduced to Agra when Earth-woman Ava bursts in to Auro. Lord of Jupiter’s court to warn him that Agra intends to kill him. She really talks up Agra’s prowess vis-a-vis elephant- human- and tree-slaying, and hopefully takes the time to describe his outfit which for all the world looks like it was designed by Mike Grell just after he finished with Disco Era Cosmic Boy. Auro of course does not know the meaning of…
Here they are! Some guys you’ve never heard of! the Press Guardian: In the Press Guardian’s first outing he is known as the Falcon, but he has the same core mission as he will throughout his career: to clean up crime in Central City via the free press, even if he must do so in a pretty bad costume. A fair few places online list reporter Flash Calvert as the Falcon’s secret identity but this is one of your classic…