Planet Comics (1984) #1

This may be the last thing Pacific (under the Blue Dolphin guise) published before they went under, and it’s the fourth Caplin-Iger book: I guess they’d gotten access to this material somehow (from Iger himself?). I believe this material was in the public domain at the time, so perhaps they didn’t have to pay anybody.

Planet Comics reprints a bunch of stories originally published by Fiction House in the 30s, I think.

Ray Funk writes the introduction, and he explains that perhaps Planet Comics wouldn’t be the first thing you’d look at if you were collecting comics.

In particular, he talks a lot about Planet Comics #1 and how crude it is, so I thought that this was a reprint of that issue. But the book doesn’t say, and it doesn’t list the writers or artists involved, either.

But comics.org spills the dope:

Contains reprints of nine stories from Planet Comics (Fiction House, 1940 series) #5 and one story from #25. (Only the Gale Allen story from #5 is not reprinted here.)

I’ve tried reading Fiction House comics before, and like Ray Funk in his younger years, they hold little allure for me. But I’m totes old now, so perhaps I’ll be enthralled!

Er no. Still bored.

These comics do have a zany zip to them: It’s like the people who did them had absolutely no sense of pacing or logic, and were just drawing whatever came into their minds, filling up panels as fast as they could.

And perhaps that’s what they did?

Some of these comics have more accomplished artwork, though, even if the stories are as hopeless as ever.

You can’t fault the outfits, though.

In addition to the stories, there’s a couple of “Wonders that are true” pages to fill out the 72 page package.

And, no, I haven’t changed.

Even the ad talks about “he very rare first issue” of Planet Comics #1, and that this is a reprint of that. Very odd. Is comics.org wrong?

Steven Schanes went on to publish more issues of Planet Comics under his Blackthorne imprint.

And that brings us to the end of this blog series!