Tuesday, August 10, 2010

My Name Implies I Have Enslaved Entire Planets, but That's Actually Misleading Tuesday!

Calendar Man may not have been a big hit with.... well, with anyone, but compared to Planet Master, he was Black Freakin' Adam. I give you Detective #296:


So, he runs around in an asbestos suit? I think this particular problem will solve itself if you give it a few years.

Check out this dialog exchange:


First, why is Batman asking this guy to stop what he's doing? That's not the voice of authority we've come to expect after almost 275 issues of Detective Comics there, Bruce. Punctuation counts, kids!

And second, I love how this guy just blurts out his m.o. the second Bats shows up. I'm basing all my attacks on planets! But don't you study up on planets, or you might be prepared! Especially since I'm doing my crimes in the order of planets distance from the sun:


Naturally, you'd think that the costume based on the planet Saturn would make him look stupid. Well, prepare to eat those words, Negative Nancy! In fact, let's skip the whole Jupiter nonsense and skip to the good stuff:


Okay, that not only looks stupid, but seems dang impractical. How do you eat with that thing on? Do you have to have a henchman throw chicken nuggets in your mouth or something?

So, what's the cause of all this? Well, it's a 1950's Batman story, so someone either got hit with a ray, hit on the head, exposed to radiation, or....


... ah, breathing in strange gases. The classics never die. I think the recurring theme is that in the 1950's, if you worked in a lab (or for that matter, had an occupation in a field involving almost any of the applied sciences), you were going to turn into a criminal against your will. Sooner or later, it would happen, so you might as well get to work on your costume designs now.

Hey! It's time for Fun with Out of Context Dialogue!(tm!):


Yeah! That was a good one. Did you know Dan Didio, editor in chief of DC Comics, is refusing my friend request on Facebook? And he friends dang near everyone. I'm really not sure why, because more vocal of my support of modern DC Comics (and most Marvel titles, for that matter) I could not be. Oh, well. See if I send a virtual cow to his farm.

See you tomorrow!

10 comments:

Aaron Carine said...

That second to last panel recalls H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space".

Britt Reid said...

"That's not the voice of authority we've come to expect after almost 275 issues of Detective Comics there..."

Don't forget, Batman started in Detective #27, so it's not quite 270 issues at this point.

As to Planet-Master's themed crimes...it's a good thing we didn't know then that the clouds of Venus are actually carbon dioxide and hydrochloric acid or someone really could've been hurt!

But, even then, we knew there weren't any canals on Mars...

And I gotta ask...what did he have for Uranus? After all, it's a gas giant... (It's the 10-year old in me!)

Anonymous said...

I can't help but wonder what he would be like if the DC staff ever decided to recon him and update his look for the newer comic books.
depending on who writes him... he could end up being an bad-ass who actually conquered whole planets.... or actually used the energy from each planet.

in fact, If I recall there was actually an artifact in the DC universe that allowed you to use the energy of the planet, both for yourself or against somebody. so if you punched somebody, it felt like an whole planet hit you. This was in the Superman/Batman series. planet master could had used something like that, eh?

man. the name was kind of cool and they wasted it on this guy. :P

J sub D said...

Especially since I'm doing my crimes in the order of planets distance from the sun:

He does Venus and then Mars. What the heck happened to Earth?
All good plantetary criminals should know that "Mother Very Earnestly Made a Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest".

Justin Garrett Blum said...

Planet Master does sound like a pretty awesome villain, but not for an installment of DETECTIVE COMICS. If a character with that name had appeared in one of Jim Starlin's Warlock comics, or something, he would have been cool.

Zocktastic said...

Some 20 years after this, the Kinnikuman baddie "Planetman" appeared. He could slice through things with Saturn's ring, freeze you with a Neptune-Pluto leg lock, manipulate gravity, and rearrange the planets that made up his body for special attacks. He could've taught this poser a thing or three.

Britt Reid said...

"He (Planetman) could've taught this poser a thing or three."

Hell, even Calendar Man could've taught the so-called "Planet Master" a thing or three...

"All good plantetary criminals should know that 'Mother Very Earnestly Made a Jelly Sandwich Under No Protest'."

What do they say now, since Pluto is no longer a planet? ;-)

Anonymous said...

(1)
Pluto should never have been a planet in the first place.

(2)
This dude could make all these suits that could do all kinda cool ass shit, why not make one that could do all of that stuff at once? He would have been able to defeat Batman easily. Or he could have just patented some of his inventions.

Anonymous said...

"Pluto should never have been a planet in the first place."

Oh Yeah,...

Well The third planet from ths Sun is mostly made of water, so it shouldn't be named "Earth."
:P

MarvelX42 said...

Anoymous said...
"Well The third planet from ths Sun is mostly made of water, so it shouldn't be named "Earth.""

The third planet from Sol is mostly COVERED by water. If you coated a billard cue ball with one coat of nail polish and then made it the same size as Earth that coat of nail polish would be thicker than the deepest spot in the ocean. Also if you went the other way and shrunk the Earth down to the size of a nillard cue ball it would be smoother than the cue ball.