Planet Comics

Planet Comics, launched by Fiction House in 1940, was one of the earliest American comic books devoted entirely to science fiction, and it remains among the most visually distinctive. Rocket ships, ray guns, alien worlds, and imperiled heroes filled its pages in a pulp-derived vision of the future—Fiction House had begun as a pulp-magazine publisher, and it carried that sensibility straight into comics.

The title is remembered today as much for its exuberant, sometimes lurid cover art as for its stories. Its interplanetary adventurers and recurring features gave Golden Age readers a steady diet of space opera years before science fiction became a television and film staple. Like much of Fiction House's output, Planet Comics leaned on dynamic action and glamorous, capable women alongside its square-jawed spacemen, a house style that made the publisher instantly recognizable on the racks.

Because Fiction House is long defunct and its copyrights lapsed, Planet Comics now sits in the public domain—which means these vivid slices of Depression- and wartime-era futurism can be preserved and freely enjoyed today, a window into how mid-century America imagined the cosmos.