Planet Comics #2 - pt. 1

If this issue looks familiar, it's because I reviewed Fox's Science Comics not too long ago, and both were farmed out to the Eisner/Iger shop -- and both done on the cheap. Although four-panel pages are not so rare nowadays, in 1940, this was purely a cost-saving measure to stretch out stories to fill more pages. You'll see much more of that on the pages to follow. Indeed, much of this post will be more of a rant than any constructive discussion of how to emulate golden age comic books with Hideouts & Hoodlums.

For instance, it's impossible to ignore the blatant plagiarism in these early comic books, particularly when it comes to swiping from successful comic strips. Here we have hawkmen, straight out of Flash Gordon. 

This feature is a new one, by the way, Planet Payson. Is Planet his first name, I wonder? I doubt we'll ever know.

Despite my rantings, there are interesting fantasy elements here -- the completely impossible castles in the clouds, and the mythological aspect of explaining how thunder and lightning happen.

The artist here is George Tuska, practically the Sal Buscema of 1940, given how prolific his work was. You can see he was fast by how much empty space he leaves, giant panels he uses, and sometimes appalling lack of detail. Like panel 2, with the nearly empty spaceship. Planet is standing behind the steering column, with no seat. There's a door, some...air vents over the door? ...and that weird row of rivets that runs down the wall and into the floor (and that was clearly a mistake left in, since there's no change in perspective for the rivets on the floor). And yet, George still found time to draw Planet's personal masseuse giving him a shoulder rub...

The proportions look all off on that one-man tank, like there is only a head inside it (maybe there is...?), but a one-man tank should be a good trophy item. Unfortunately, it's slow to turn at corners, so corners must be the best place to ambush them from.

It's never mentioned what race Buzzlark's people are. It's tempting to say the buzzard-men vs. the hawk-men, but the "buzzard-men" have no birdlike features.

Roland has never heard of honor in combat; although the guard is running up to him unarmed, Roland still shoots him in the face at point blank range with his rifle (it looks like the helmet is melting from it -- heat ray?). At least Planet turns his gun around to use as a clubbing weapon.

Four-to-one odds are too much for Planet, which makes sense, with him being a 1st-level fighter/beat cop.

At first it seems odd that the "buzzard-men" stripped Planet and Roland down to their underwear before putting them in the "electro tubes." But then, when I think about how often good guys have managed to escape with concealed gadgets, maybe this makes a lot of sense.

Electricity doesn't, technically, dissolve things. I wonder why they aren't just in acid tubes if they wanted to do that.

A sting ray gun is a curious thing. Does the ray somehow project poison into the target? 

This is from inside the next feature, Flint Baker. Flint is an Earth man on Mars, having to deal with problems like this four-armed giant. Although not white, the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs' white apes is unmistakable, and the size of this thing oddly presages the white apes in the 2012 John Carter movie more closely than the book versions do.

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White apes are 4 Hit Dice. If we applied the large/huge/giant structure to that, then giant white apes would be 16 HD, which is indeed pretty fearsome.

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10 miles per minute is 600 MPH. A car won't go this fast until 1970, and of course most cars still don't go this fast today.

I'm going to spare you the gruesome page of how they kill the giant "white" ape...but you may be able to guess it by the trajectory of the spaceship...

This page highlights some of Flint's equipment, including "rocket-propelled degravitation rods" that look suspiciously like pogo sticks. Or maybe they operate more like vertical witches' broomsticks?

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The rayguns seem to allow to wreck at range, which we've seen before. Being able to crumble the ground, even if the ground was thin at that point, should require being able to wreck as a 4th-level superhero, at least. Of course, this could be the Dig power instead (and might make more sense to be).

This page poses an interesting game mechanics problem. If you're trying to move a giant object -- like a dead hand -- what do you roll for that? It can't be grappling, because the dead hand can't grapple you back. It *could* be pushing, moving the hand 1' per point of damage, but that rule assumes your opponent is roughly your size or smaller. Although I'm not a big fan of ability score checks, I think a Strength check -- rolling your STR or less on 1d20 -- is the best way to go with this.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)