Stylin' With Dick & Flint

Back in the beginning, Flint Baker was stylin' hard. Whether driving...

...or flying...

...and not just his vehicles. His world had style, from rocket fleets ...

...to architecture...

...his world looked pretty cool. In the beginning, that is.

His first tale in Planet Comics #1 was drawn by Dick Briefer, who gave it a vibrantly distinctive look. Sadly, it seems to be the only episode he drew. After that, it was written & drawn under the house name Starr Gayza and the look and feel of the strip shifted dramatically.

Briefer went on to create his own highly unique version of a famous classic character, with whom we'll be revisiting soon. For the moment, let's enjoy that first episode of The Planetary Adventures Of Flint Baker -

I would have liked to have seen an ongoing strip done with this style. Ah, well. If that had happened, then we might not have gotten to see Briefer's other creation...

page art by Dick Briefer for Planet Comics #1 (1940)

Free-Fall With Gale & The Girls

As noted last time, there was a shift in tone for Gale Allen and the Girl Squadron about two years into the run of Planet Comics. Issue #24 featured one of the last opening splash panels with Gale attacking. We saw that splash panel in the previous post, so here's the original inks for the page:

Planet Comics #26 had a neutral, location-setting panel, and then they switched to a woman-in-peril standard opener and cranked the cheesecake factor up a bit. Here's a couple tales from shortly after that point...

For a rare change, we know who drew this next episode - Fran Hopper -

pages from Planet Comics #s 27 & 30 (1943, 1944)

Gale Force

One of the things that set Gale Allen apart from the other Fly Girls in general was her tendency to get violent, often in a hands-on manner...

 Not just Gale, the Girl Squadron enjoy shooting things, even when they're not doing any damage...

For a while there, her splash panels consistently  featured her in Attack Mode...

(getting better at cleaning up those old microfiche files)

That continued up until they let Gale on the cover. At that point, the splash panels, like the covers, switched more to damsel in distress mode -

We'll look more at that, but to wrap up this post, here's a tale that gives a look at the lengths to which Gale Allen is willing to go to get the job done...

"Dead and dying ... cover the ground as quiet reigns once more."
That ain't no damsel in distress.

As you might have noticed, Gale was also a step ahead of Janet van Dyne in the costume flexibility department.

pages from Planet Comics #s 14, 16, 18-22, & 24; covers #s 26, 36, & 42 (1941-1946)