Planet Comics #3 - pt. 3

We're going to look at two more features from this issue of Planet Comics today. First is Buzz Crandall, who lives in a future where the Moon is like the Wild West, with isolated outposts surrounded by danger. This is far from the last time I'll be making a space-cowboy parallel observation on this blog.

The autoped reminds me just enough of the real moon lander to intrigue me. Use your imagination; if you redesigned the moon lander to be mobile, wouldn't it look something like this?

But more interesting are moon bats which, to a D&D player, loo exactly like giant stirges! Look at how that one in the last panel is the same size as the autoped and can damage it just by diving into it! I'm thinking 4+1 Hit Dice, and those  probiscises can suck 1-8 hit points' worth of blood out of you per turn, or it can crash into you in a dive for 1-10 points of damage.

Now how did our astronauts manage to avoid the lunar land squids? Look at the size of that baby -- I'm thinking 16 Hit Dice for this one, and maybe using d10 for those HD. It's big enough that it has a chance of swallowing even a large opponent whole (maybe on a 20), and a medium-sized foe on a...18-20? Anyone not swallowed takes 4-32 points of damage from those giant teeth.

Like Noah and the Whale, Buzz winds up alive in its belly -- but that situation seems like it could change because the missing people from the outpost are all skeletons in his belly (in the next page I'm not bothering to show you). Being in the autoped seems to buy him some time, as the digestive enzymes need some turns to wreck it down (1-4 turns?).

Now we're going to look at the next story with Nelson Cole. Those pirate ships remind me of Zaxxon! But the real reason I'm showing you this page is "We'll keep in constant touch with you by radio." Now, radio waves travel at the speed of light, which is plenty fast, but it's not instantaneous in space-sized distances, so Cole is essentially on his own.















Where the heck in space is this? Are they flying through a nebula? This is a really busy nebula, with a lot of planetoids of varying size inside it.

The concept of "attractor-beams," or tractor beams as they are more commonly known today, comes from SF novelist E.E. Smith, but had not come into common comic book parlance yet by 1940, where we still see things like "magno-rays" doing the same affect.

I appreciate the cutaway map of the inside of a spaceship in panel 2. Those ships sure don't provide you much protection out in space, do they?

Now this is remarkable because I think it's the first page of a comic book story to show how different styles of planes (or spaceships in this case) have different degrees of maneuverability that give one an advantage over another.

A previous page I didn't show you told us that Cole had a raygun hidden in his belt buckle, but I assumed it was a tiny gun he would pull out when he needed it, not that he would be shooting it from inside his belt buckle. I wonder what the triggering mechanism is -- voice command? "Pew pew"?

Yet another story that assumes spaceships would land on the ground like conventional planes.

I guess Cole was shot by an electric raygun and the conductive lever saved him? More likely he just made his saving throw vs. science -- but it's always nice when you can come up with an explanation using science (or something that passes for science!).

Didn't I say Cole was on his own? I'm not sure how the Solar Force just happens to show up here, since Cole never called for them. Cole is able to use radio to talk to them without breaking science because the battle is taking place in low orbit.

Only a charitable Editor would give the Solar Force bonuses to hit thanks to Cole calling out plays on the sidelines.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Planet Comics #2 - pt. 3

Well...that was a disappointing debut for the Taloned Man. We don't even get to see if Tiger Beat punched him off the roof or just pushed him off. At least we know he's okay, as he must have fallen into the same moat.

That is some sword Tiger Beat has; he just whacks a diamond and it shatters into a thousand pieces? That's better than a Ginsu knife!





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That's also a really improbable example of the wrecking things mechanic from Hideouts & Hoodlums. This would be like wrecking a dam, but at a -1 or -2 penalty.

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There's a whimsical naivte to thinking that we'll still have a Washington in the year 40,000, not to mention the notion that we'll be launching our spaceships from giant mortars.

The notion of our power source being special elements only found on some planets, though...well, that's textbook Star Trek with its dilithium crystals.

As Spurt Hammond might conceivably go on to become an obscure influence on Star Trek, so does this page show us how Spurt is inspired by the John Carter of Mars series. Well, "inspired" might be too generous, as the Red Men of Mars are blatantly ripped off from A Princess of Mars here.

Even the Martian ships look like they were taken straight from Edgar Rice Burroughs' imagination, while the Earth ships are more boring rocket-like ships.

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This is a large scale aerial combat. I have no plans to produce game mechanics for such; it would need to be handled by someone with a firmer grasp of wargames than me.

Spurt uses a raygun to wreck his way inside, takes out a guard, and uses the guard's cloak as a disguise -- some of the details are different, but the tactic has been used a thousand times in fiction up to this point.

Now, how Spurt knew this was the ship that the prince was on, that part is much harder to follow. Was he somehow able to detect that this ship was more heavily protected than the others?

You would also think that at least one of the prince's guards would have a weapon on them, but Spurt catches them all empty-handed and gets to wale on them with his fists!

Now we're moving on to the next story, with Buzz Crandall of the Space Patrol. Here we get a new mobstertype -- crab-men! Crab-men are numerous in appearance, outnumbering a spaceship's crew. We also find out here that crab-men are vulnerable to radiation, and this makes them susceptible to commands.

Look at how tough this crab-man is, picking Buzzup and just throwing him on the ground like a rag doll. These bad boys have got to be at least 4 Hit Dice.

Being trapped in giant specimen jars is an unusual form of trap too.

Spoilers: Buzz wins.

...So we're going to jump ahead now to the next feature, Captain Nelson Cole of the Solar Force. 

Dwight Field Airport is a real place, and I strongly support using real world locations in comic book stories for realism, though the ground-based, sideways-launching spacecraft then take some of that realism away.

There's also no such thing as  "light mile," though this might just be future shorthand for miles traveled at the speed of light. If 250,000 is the number of light years, though, that makes the number of miles 1.4696563 x 10¹⁸. Conversely, if it means 250,000 miles, that is just the distance to Earth's Moon, and reaching it at the speed of light would be like teleportation.

The object that can take out two spaceships moving at the speed of light? A shooting star, or meteor. Meteors, of course, move nothing close to the speed of light.

"Poor fellows! Oh well, they were newbies and kinda deserved it for being dumb. Full speed ahead, and let's skip contacting their families back home!"

Note how spaceships are controlled by simple levers.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Planet Comics #1 - pt. 5

If you've been following along, I think you've guessed that I didn't really enjoy this issue -- but that doesn't mean there isn't a lot of source material here to talk about. So we have to dive in one final time for...

Sea spiders.  Yes, they look like green crabs, and the idea of spinning webs underwater seems farcical, but there is a real world analog here, the diving bell spider.

Perhaps more important is the question, is this really an underwater adventure? It's very hard to tell from the art if Buzz Crandall's adventure is meant to be underwater or not.

This room is clearly dry, or a gas gun would have no effect.

It's an odd bit of hideout design that the control room for the torture chamber are on top of a high wall overlooking the chamber. More interesting is that the "shark-men" are not interested in medieval torture, but use hi-tech methods like freezing gas.

I kind of like the look of this one; it reminds me of a Marvel story circa 1960 (which is a good thing, in my book).  I like how the author predicted that humans would have spread from Earth to the "outer edge of the universe" by the year 2000. Now that is optimism!

I wonder who Quorak is talking to/looking at?

Okay, there's some science-y nonsense about "lodium" being a naturally magnetic element that powers a raygun able to cross the entire universe, but what interests me here is that the most important planet in the universe isn't Earth, but Pluto!

So what's so special about Pluto in the year 2000? The colonists on Pluto have clearly mastered climate control, because they've changed the planetoid from 387 degrees F to temperate enough that all the men go shirtless there. 

This starts out as another unexpectedly nice touch, having the action on Earth start in India, rather than the U.S. Then it takes a peculiar turn by having the men in the Indian observatory be white. Is this a nod to globalism, or just a racist thing? You decide!

Also, look at that magnification! That is also a more powerful telescope than any we had in the real 2000.

Ooo, more future predictions that nationalists would not like. This 2000 has one world government already!  Also interesting is how it is based in Switzerland, giving this future still more Euro-centrism. 

These were called "sky dreadnaughts" on the previous page, which is a cool name for a fighting transport ship, so it's a shame that these wound up looking like such "traditional" rocket ships. 

Lt. Blake is either delusional, tripping on acid, or these sky dreadnaughts can go Warp 60. It takes light about an hour to travel from Mars to Saturn. 

Also bear in mind that it's been minutes, maybe even an hour, since Pluto was attacked -- not one of the inhabitants has bothered to put on a sweater or even a shirt in all that time. Maybe, despite how important this planet is, they don't own any.

I'm beginning to doubt that Quorak is really on the other side of the universe.

One bit of real science here -- a magnetic ray would likely disrupt electrical equipment on a space ship, like an EMP.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Planet Comics #1 - pt. 4

So much to talk about Planet Comics! I really think someone could run a great, if campy, sci fi campaign using Hideouts & Hoodlums, and I hope someone does someday and tells me about it.

A couple of things about this page: one, making heroes wait for a reward at the end of the adventure not only gives them more XP, but it motivates the players to play out the return trip home, rather than just wind up a scenario right after the battles are over.

And another thing -- one of many that bugged me about this story -- who is that woman? She's been standing around Zan the entire story, and even in jail she's forced to keep the same gown on, but she never says a word. What's her story?

Ah, Spurt Hammond, the most awkward comic book character name of all time!  Spoilers abound here, as we learn that Spurt is going to run afoul of Amazons on the Moon (so, Lunerzons). This is sometime in the future after Mars has been colonized, so in the Amazon entry in the AH&H Mobster Manual, I'll just add a mention about them having a moon colony in the future.

Now this is kind of a cool cultural tidbit -- despite being armed with scimitars, the Lunerzons only beat Spurt into submission with their fists. This could be a code of honor like is found in the Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter books, where no one on Mars attacks with a weapon better than their opponent is using.

Those are some funky-looking plants for making explosives.

Speaking of funky-looking, the droopy-nosed Mooniacs are said to be "powerful," which should translate into at least 5 Hit Dice. But how powerful? Hopefully we'll see clues soon.

All we learn here is that the "dullwitted" Mooniacs are still smart enough to use tools (or at least can throw weapons), and that they can walk on two or four legs like a bear.

I guess mooniacs aren't so powerful after all, as Spurt can not only defeat them with his bare fists, but he beats a bunch of them. Oddly, despite the fact that I can clearly see four mooniacs in that lower left hand corner, they only attack him one at a time (maybe they are dullwitted after all).

Spurt clearly has no code of honor, threatening women with a gun that refused, twice, to use weapons on him.

Oh come on!  I guess the Amazons are attracted to douche-nozzles with no code of honor. I can honestly say I've never read a Golden Age story until now where I wanted the hero to get beat up by a moon monster.

I can tell getting through Planet Comics is going to be tough; here's another interchangeable space hero. Maybe this story will have more to offer us, though, as we already get the concept of plastic armor (AC 6 maybe?) and a mention of Neptunian Shark-Men.

Okaayy...I don't know what those shark-men are supposed to look like, but it sure isn't sharks.

Despite the fact that Buzz seems to be a fighter, Buzz appears to be using the Sleeping Nerve Pinch power of a superhero on the control room shark-man.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)