Planet Terry (comic)
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| Format | Ongoing comic series | |
| Reprint of | Planet Terry  issues 1-3
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| Original run | 1984-1985 | |
| First TFUK appearance | Issue 16 | |
| Final TFUK appearance | Issue 25 | |
"Poor kid! That's just a blank picture frame that he signed by himself! He's never even seen his parents!"
History
In 1984, Marvel Comics introduced Star Comics, an imprint aimed at younger children, in order to fill a gap in the market left by defunct publishers and gain a bigger market share by targeting kids of all ages. Star Comics produced a handful of original titles, taking influence from the Harvey Comics style (sometimes a very heavy influence, as in the case of Richie Rich and Royal Roy). Star's bread and butter was licensed titles, producing over four times as many licensed series as their original material. Relevant to us, titles included ThunderCats, Inhumanoids, and Visionaries. The Star Comics imprint was scrapped in 1988, with any surviving series continuing under the Marvel name itself. The longest lasting title was Heathcliff, which ran for 56 issues, 34 of which were published after Star's demise.
One of Star Comics' original titles was Planet Terry. It told the story of a young space traveller, also named Planet Terry, who was searching the universe after being separated from his parents at birth. On his journeys, being ping-ponged through ridiculous situations in the far corners of the universe, Terry gained something of a found family in the form of resourceful gynoid Robota and fearsome Fearzum Omnus. In some small way, each adventure took him one step closer to an understanding of his past, but the series concluded after twelve issues with no parental reunion.
Planet Terry joined The Transformers in issue 16, presumably also as a way to target younger readers. It proved a divisive addition, with its wordplay-based sub-Hanna-Barberian humour at odds with the very real childhood fear of parental abandonment. The Harvey Comics influence made it feel like a throwback to the entertainment from the writer's youth rather than anything that would interest the children of the 1980s. After The Transformers reprinted Planet Terry's first two issues and a truncated abridgement of the third, the title was dropped.
Planet Terry's next fictional appearance came years later in the 2009-2010 miniseries X-Babies, which was later collected under the subtitle of "Stars Reborn" (geddit?). Here, an all-signing, all-dancing, all-rapping version of Terry appeared alongside other Star Comics characters as part of the new cutesified and vapid programming broadcast across Mojoworld following a hostile takeover of Mojo's studios by Mr. Veech. Over the course of the story it was revealed that these were constructs based on real (and realistic) versions of Terry, Royal Roy, Wally the Wizard, and Top Dog, who had been imprisoned in VR simulations by Veech. The comic concluded with the X-Babies returning each Star character to their dimension of origin. Both incarnations of Terry had commonalities with the original, but it is unclear if either was intended to be in continuity with the Planet Terry series, and the pan-dimensional nature of Mojoworld makes it hard to definitively state that the "real" Terry was from Earth-616. Each Star character was left in a situation that is easy to imagine was a pitch for a rebooted spin-off series, and at the same time, backmatter in the individual X-Babies issues advertised the original Star Comics stories, reprinted contemporarily in the Star Comics All-Star Collection volumes.
Terry's epilogue in X-Babies was the first on-panel acknowledgement that his silver hair and distinctive space suit were reminiscent of the (pink) Kree. This was picked up and run with when an Earth-616 Planet Terry appeared in 2016's Drax ongoing series, now an adult and a bounty hunter, interacting with the wider space-faring denizens of the Marvel universe. The series implied that the events of Planet Terry happened in this Terry's backstory, though by necessity they would have to have occurred roughly when they were published and to an alien child, rather than the far future human the original Terry was implied to be. Still no parents, though.
Planet Terry stories in TFUK
Reception
- The gamut is run in issue 20's Openers: Jason Kelly of Bexleyheath, Kent, writes in to say that he has "never yet [...] read a better story than Planet Terry. It's great!" Meanwhile, Lewis Mills of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, writes: "I think The Transformers is great but I have to complain about Planet Terry. It's okay having Machine Man as a back-up strip but Planet Terry isn't needed – it's babyish!" In a postscript, he adds that The Chromobots "aren't much better".
- In issue 21's Openers, Simon Keeling (aged 14) of Littleover, Derby, writes in with a list of bests and worsts, placing "Adding Planet Terry" as the first (and only) on the list of "Best Things Ever Done In The Transformers". His "Best Thing That Could Be Done in The Transformers" integrates his worsts, too: "More of Planet Terry and The Transformers and no Matt And The Cat, Chromobots and Machine Man."
- In issue 24's Soundwaves, Mirage
(alias Zachary Gallagher of Birstall, Leicestershire) writes in to say "please get rid of Planet Terry as soon as possible." - In issue 25's Soundwaves, Jason Morris of Virginia, U.S.A., agrees with Lewis Mills' summation of Planet Terry as babyish.
