The Planet Run is complete! Zolnerowich would be pleased! 2 2

[Zolnerowich]

At long last I've completed the Planet Comics run. They're all here, from Flint Baker (#1) to Cerebex (#73).

Tomorrow I'll start posting these for your viewing pleasure. For now, a teaser:

[comicjack]

Not an easy feat to complete 

[Straw-Man]

now, that there is a run of funny-books!!!

[Spyder!]

Congrats Jay! I’m excited to see you display the complete run so that I too can enjoy your books.  Zolnerowich would indeed by proud! 

And that Planet 15!   

[Ricksneatstuff]

Huge congrats Jay! Well done.  I’m especially honored and humbled to have gotten you the last one.  

Amazing accomplishment 

[kelholt]

Spectacular accomplishment.  

The teaser pic looks great, excited to see post pic of each book.

[143ksk]

[Mr. Lady Luck]

[1950's war comics]

.....GULP....

[Robot Man]

What a great feeling. Congrats. I doubt I will ever be in that club but it won’t stop me from trying!

[Zolnerowich]

Hi Everyone.

Thanks for all of your comments and support. It means a lot to me, coming from the boards' best boardies!

My Weird Adventures on Other Worlds began in April 2007, with the purchase of Planets #30 and #31. These Weird Adventures came to a close in October 2018, with the purchase of Planet #56. So my travels through the Universe of the Future took a mere 11.5 years. Not sure what that is in parsecs...

The start of this journey more or less coincided with my return to the land of funny books, much to the great dismay of my wife. I'd been one of those young teenage geeks in the late 1970's and early 1980's dazzled by Marvel's finest: X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, and Conan the Barbarian (yes, Conan). <<fast forward through a few comic-free decades here>> In 2006, I became reacquainted with my collection of comics, and a long-dormant seed took root, rapidly sprouting into a great pulpy vine of 4-color books. At first I stayed well within my comfort zone, filling in gaps in my Marvel gallery, and even dipping into Silver Age Flash and JLA. Good stuff. Great stuff! I also started attending comic cons in Chicago. More good stuff. And among all of those dealers' racks, I kept noticing a wide array of bizarre looking books, with covers and characters that seemed to have very little in common with my Silver and Bronze age concepts of comic books. Of course these were the "Golden Age" books, and there were so many different kinds, it was difficult to know even where to begin. Like a kid in the 1940's trying to decide where to plunk down his dime for that week's comic book, I followed the same subconscious formula (maybe not so subconscious): spaceships, blasters, fantastically grotesque monsters, and attractive damsels in distress, not necessarily in that order. Enter: Planet Comics.

To be honest, when I started buying Planets, I never thought it would be possible to collect them all. It didn't even really cross my mind. Yeah, I drooled over the covers at comics.org, but it just seemed like too daunting a task, especially because they were so hard to find! Early on, my two main sources were Heritage Auctions and eBay. Mostly all that was out there were issue numbers between the 30's and the 50's. There were very few rivets available. As a green Golden Age collector, I was pretty clueless about other sources, such as ComicLink and ComicConnect -- if I'd known about these auction sites pre-2015, I might have saved myself a lot of moolah! But beginning in 2015, it was CL and CC, along with key purchases from some dealers and from some of our own cherished boardies, that made it possible for me to complete the run, with shout-outs (in alphabetical order) to Richard Evans/Bedrock City Comics @MrBedrock, Rick @Ricksneatstuff, Rick @catrick339, Steve Ritter @ Worldwide Comics, Soft-Serve @Soft-Serve, Bob Storms/High Grade Comics @blazingbob, Nan and the late great John Verzyl @ Comic Heaven, and Harley Yee @ Harley Yee Comics. 

I know of two other boardies, @Artboy99 and @jhutton2, who posted their completed their Planet runs (maybe there's more? apologies if I've left anyone out), and a few other boardies have posted large stretches of Planet books. These threads usually unfurl either in ascending order from #1-73, or in descending order from #73-1. I've decided to take a unique path, by going in chronological order of when I obtained the books, from 2007 to 2018. As I built up my run, I learned a lot of things about Planet Comics and about the trials and tribulations of completing a run, which might be fun to discuss as I post the individual books. I'll try posting at least 4-5 books per day, work and life pending.

In keeping with the chronology theme, I've assembled two bar graphs showing how my Planet run evolved over 11 years.  

 

[Zolnerowich]

I'll begin with the initial bounty of six Planet Comics books that started me off in 2007. Many of these books were purchased raw, or removed from their plastic cases, so that I could enjoy the interiors, more for the art than for the stories per se. It is worth noting that it was the interiors -- as much as, or even more than the covers themselves -- that really got me hooked. Back in 2007 I was a sheer Planet novice, with little awareness of the variable color strike of a Planet cover (as you can see below, I lucked into a nice blue #30), or for unrestored vs. restored (this one had slight color touch, which back then didn't trouble me in the slightest). By the way, all of these photos were taken by my talented son, whose incentive was 30 cents per comic, and 15 cents for reshoots! 

PLANET #30

Looks like trouble in Paris!  

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #31

Purchased at the same time as #30. About VG grade, perfectly readable, not falling apart, good price point, just what I was looking for.

Granted, kind of a bizarre cover, and the woman has slightly mannish arms and shoulders, a rare misstep for Joe Doolin that was most pronounced in his cover to #46. 

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #40

One week after #30 and #31, another issue came my way. I was on a roll!

I love blue goblins.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Zolnerowich

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #38

And next week another! I love the steely intensity of Mysta of the Moon, "The newest THRILL-FEATURE!" 

There's a lot of great things going on with this cover. Doesn't quite get the regard it should, IMHO.

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #49

Still 2007. This book represented my first lesson about cover colors in the Planet Comics series. 

When I bought this book, I was thrilled with the cover. And why not? Sucker-fingered mermaid is all good! I had noticed the patch of blue in the upper right corner, but didn't make much of it at the time. It was probably a few years later when I saw another copy of this book for sale, where the grey areas of the cover (in my copy) appeared as all blue.  Whether this was a case of color strike variability, or possibly, selective fading of the blue ink (whereas the red remained strong), isn't clear. Realistically, the inside hull of a ship (or is it a submarine?) should be grey, not blue, so who knows what was even the intended color. Probably blue!

I decide not to upgrade this book, keeping it as a kind of reminder about what I didn't know then, and what I do know (slightly know more) now.

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #25

This was the last Planet cover by Dan Zolnerowich (July 1943). There's so many awesome crazy details on this cover, including her hair, the monster's hair (same barber?), the campfire-interruptus complete with barbecued lizard and a coffee pot, the pink planet with the confetti-like ring, and the dude in long johns.

[Zolnerowich]

Entering 2008, my early successes in landing some Planet Comics began to wither. In 2007 had acquired 25, 30, 31, 38, 40, and 49. But between November 2008 and October 2013 I only acquired five Planets: 34, 39, 41, 44, and 47. This slow-down was due to multiple factors, including my ongoing difficulty finding Planets (or at least those in my price range), a focus on additional GA and SA titles, and a brief foray into wine... which, unlike comics, has the drawback of disappearing at the end of the bottle and inducing headaches and slurred speech. 

These were my lean years of Planet collecting.

PLANET #34

Nice greens and ivory-sheened baddies. Hard to find with good greens. This issue is pretty popular among the cognoscenti.

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #39

My first Lily Renee cover. I don't think I knew much of anything about Lily Renee at the time I got this book. I'm a bit wiser now.  

[Zolnerowich]

PLANET #41

This harpy always reminded me of the witch in Wizard of Oz, though I know Doolin was going for the Medusa thing. Not sure if that robot guy is offering to assist Medusa in the procedure or trying to save the girl?!?