PLANET COMICS

Golden Age Tributes

Four of today’s pop artists travel back in time to reimagine classic covers from the Planet Comics series (Vol 1. 1940 - 1953) that blazed the trail for modern science fiction fandom. These classic pulp floppies celebrated the wonder and mysteries of space and time with operatic tales of exploration and technology. Stories typically featured muscular, heroic adventurer protagonists, quick with their "ray pistols" and always running into gorgeous damsels with long bare legs in need of rescuing from bug-eyed space aliens or fiendish interstellar scoundrels and villains, against a backdrop of action and destruction.

ROLE REVERSALS

Planet Comics captured the imaginations of readers with bright, bold colors as well as breakthrough story telling. Occasionally the story formula would be reversed and it was heroines handily defeating the bad guys with little or no assistance from male counterparts, pushing a pro-equality agenda during an era that history records as time when women were suppressed in society.

POPULARIZING SCIENCE FICTION

The Planet Comics series is credited as a science fiction pioneer and the first ever cover-to-cover science fiction comic book. The space adventurer stories established the sci-fi fandom that would drive audiences into theaters for movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), It Came from Outer Space (1953), and Forbidden Planet (1956).