Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Planet Terry

Battlestar Pederastia.

Planet Terry, along with about a dozen other books, made up one of the first attempts of a major comics publisher (our old pals at Marvel) to create "imprint" presses with similarly themed books meant to attract a wider audience. They messed it up. Big time. More than Impact.

Marvel had already had a great deal of success with their Epic line, a series of creator-owned books aimed towards a more mature audience (which, back then, usually meant 'soft-porn.' But I digress). Rushing to the other end of the scale, Marvel made an attempt to corner the kids market (and we mean corner, inasmuch as several of these titles deliberately aped the successful and popular Harvey line of books - Richie Rich, Casper, etc.).

Star actually gave a good accounting of itself, and survived for something like two years - largely on the strength of their licensed properties. Nonetheless, they're a big joke to comic collectors and fans everywhere - the low and derivative quality of the stories left a lot of fans in the cold, and even kids couldn't get into the amateurish product. Beyond that, the storylines were often a bit on the heavy side - Terry, for instance (along with Irona the Maid, earning some extra dollars during the Summer lull acting as Terry's robotic sidekick Robota), was searching the roughest corners of the universe for his missing parents. Wally the Wizard routinely struggled against demons and devils, and Top Dog was concerned that should the government ever discover his heightened intelligence, they'd -- well, they watered it down, but the implication was that they'd imprison, dissect or kill him. Ew.

Among the other products of the Star line were a comic book version of the popular syndicated strip Heathcliff, toy licenses Strawberry Shortcake and Thundercats, Peter Porker - the Spectacular Spider-Ham (which holds a dear place in my heart), Star Wars' licenses Droids and Ewoks, and probably some others that I'm forgetting but frankly don't give a rat's ass about. Hoo-ha.