Planet Comics #1 - pt. 3

Captain Cole can't hear transmissions from Earth because he's got a giant door handle stuck over his ear. No, I'm kidding -- I can tell that's meant to be a futuristic wireless telephone receiver. It must have been a concept that seemed obvious from day 1 of the telephone, but took a long time for anyone to figure out how to make one work.

Again, the numbers are really wonky on this story. 300 miles per minute may seem super-fast -- and is for Earth travel -- but would take 6 months to reach Mars at that speed, and this story is suggesting they have traveled to a distant solar system in hours.

"We must be nearing a minor sun! Quick, let's get into heavy, fireproof suits!"

"But, Captain, we're flying near it, not into it! Won't we be hotter in asbestos suits? Maybe we should don our refrigerated suits instead?"

"Nice call, Ensign!" Cole says, sounding just like Zapp Brannigan in my head now.

We've seen sci fi zombies in comics already, but the layout on this page is pretty trippy and I thought was worth sharing.

A sulferic vaporizer sounds like something you plug in at night to help with a stuffy nose. It's hard to say what a sulfuric vaporize would do, other than shoot out poisonous gas, so I'm not sure why Cole has to release a valve rather than just pull a trigger. Because Cole and his men are wearing environmentally-sealed suits, they are immune to the saving throw vs. poison Zan was forced to make.

You have to look closely at that first panel to notice that Cole has a raygun that can wreck things.

That's a very strange prison for the men waiting to be turned into robot-zombies, as it looks like it would be easy for them to just slip under that bar and escape. There must be something more to it than that, like maybe the bar emits a paralysis field around them.

That's a pretty slick tactic to use against mindless attackers.

Now this is where the science really gets wonky. Apparently, just removing three vitamins from human bodies turns them into mindless robot-zombies, and injecting the vitamins back instantly revives them.

That might be the most impressive "number appearing" example yet in a comic book; there appears to be hundreds of robot-zombies marching on the fortress.

"Televeye" is the latest futuristic renaming of a simple television set in comics.

"Impregnable" is an odd word for an opponent. Are the robot-zombies so hard to beat, individually, or because there are so many of them?

And where did Cole find the controlling device? Wouldn't that have been an important part of the story to tell?

Bad guys often fail their morale saves after taking damage.

Now, this big twisty thing is likely meant to be a staircase, but I think it's much more fun to think of this as a slide that leads down deeper into the hideout.

In case you're curious, I checked and dynogetic gas is not a real thing. Perhaps it is an unique compound specific to the underground air on Volcus and, when the air pressure on it drops quickly, it creates wrecking-capable explosions.

Actually, this would be good for a trap...

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)