The Saga of Princess Ugly part 6

"Terry's Quest reaches its end.."

« Planet Terry
The Saga of Princess Ugly part 6
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Published in	The Transformers issue 25
First published	24th August, 1985
Writer	Lennie Herman (uncredited)
Pencils	Warren Kremer (uncredited)
Inks	Jon D'Agostino (uncredited)
Letterer	Grace Kremer (uncredited)
Editor	Sid Jacobson (uncredited)
Executive editor	Tom DeFalco (uncredited)
Editor-in-chief	Jim Shooter (uncredited)
Chronology	Planet Terry's future

Synopsis

Planet Terry and friends are under attack by a Devourer, a threat the boy recognises from video games! Monstrous creatures like these are always hungry, and as it approaches them, it gobbles up rocks... and starts to close in on an innocent alien! Robota zaps the Devourer with her robot ray beam, but is shocked when it eats the beam as well.

The Devourer announces its intent to eat Terry, but Omnus steps in the way and takes it on hand-to-hand, knocking it with so much force that it is launched over the horizon. The squirrelly aliens chitter with excitement, and Terry guesses they must be expressing gratitude. He tries to ask them if they've seen any people who look like him, even showing them the signed frame of his parents... before realising the frame has no picture in.

Nonetheless, the aliens consult each other in their own language, and one of them leads the trio over a ridge. Terry gasps, and Robota confirms what they're seeing: a man and a woman who look just like him. The boy dashes to the two figures, reunited with his parents at last!

Featured characters

Planet Terry's crew	Antagonists	Incidentals
Planet Terry Robota Omnus	Devourer	Three Chippas Planet Terry's parents

Quotes

"Your teeth look kind of dingy! Don't you see your dentist twice a year? Since you like to eat so much... I'm sure you'll enjoy my blue plate special... a knuckle sandwich to go!"

—Omnus is a Marvel Comics character.

Notes

Planet Terry issue 3 on Marvel Database, an external wiki

Original printing

• Planet Terry issue 3, 26 February 1985

Transformation refers to this story simply as "The Secret Of The Space Warp", though the comic itself goes with "The Saga of Princess Ugly part 6".

For the purpose of wrapping Planet Terry up as quickly as possible before The Transformers relaunches as a full-colour weekly with issue 27, this strip is an abridged version of the back half of "Found", the final story from Planet Terry issue 3, with a recontextualised conclusion.

Edits

• All pages are printed in black and white.
• The first page is mostly from "Found":
  • A recap panel, similar to that used for "The Saga of Princess Ugly part 4", is added to the top of the page.
  • Terry's dialogue in the first panel is changed from "It's the Devourer who escaped Game One!" (referring to the events of the previous story, "Deadly Games") to "It's a Devourer – I've seen them in video games..."
  • The second panel is replaced wholesale with the final panel from the fourth page of "Deadly Games"; in its original context, Terry was using a device provided by the Gamesfolk to defend his ship from a fleet of Devourers. Here, it is used as a flashback to Terry's video game experience, gaining a jagged panel border and new narration boxes ("They're always hungry." and "But I didn't know there were real ones.") and replacing Terry's orphaned dialogue ("It does!", replying to his hope that the device works) with "Chew on that, big mouth!"
  • The rest of the page is unaltered.
• The final page adds a new caption reading "Ahhh! A HAPPY ENDING!", replacing the more cliffhangery "Continued next issue." and obscuring Terry's parents' feet.

Artwork and technical errors

• Not an error, but the increasingly Americanised spellings of the modern internet may cause current-day readers to interpret "Ahhh!" (as it was spelled at the time) not as the heart-warming onomatopoeia now more commonly represented as "Awww!" but instead as, y'know, screaming.

Continuity notes

AHHH!

• Considering he's pretty heavily hinted to be a far future human, the dialogue plays it coy with Terry's species, with Robota referring to "A man and a woman... and they're humanoid, Terry... like you!"
• In its original form, this was the cliffhanger to Planet Terry issue 3,  with Terry's parents stock-still poses being a clue that there is more going on than there appears... and the very next thing that happens at the start of issue 4  is them crumbling into sand at Terry's touch, revealing them to be incredibly lifelike statues in a manner the boy is surprisingly not traumatised by. Planet Terry would end at twelve issues; there were a few more fake-outs and swerves along the way, and he never actually found his parents.

Real-life references

• A blue-plate special is a discount meal in a diner that typically changes daily.
• The Devourer is influenced by the 1979 arcade game Space Invaders.