The Search

Planet Terry »
The idea of a kid hero being reviled by everyone in the universe is funny, and probably not for the reasons they intended.
Planet Terry in The Search
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Published in	The Transformers issue 16
First published	20th April, 1985
Writer	Lennie Herman
Pencils	Warren Kremer
Inks	Vince Colletta
Colours	Peter Kremer
Letterer	Grace Kremer
Editor	Sid Jacobson
Executive editor	Tom DeFalco
Editor-in-chief	Jim Shooter

A little boy searches through all of space for his lost parents and finds nothing but ridicule.

Synopsis

It's a pleasant sunny and partly sunny day on the distant planet Bznko when a trio of locals hears the engines of a familiar space ship. It's Planet Terry, once again pestering all and sundry with questions about his missing parents. Everyone in the vicinity is sick of him, especially now, as a hunched, frilled alien notes, that they have the most feared creature on the planet due to visit any minute – the Yungmun!

Picturing some sort of hulking brute, Terry is surprised when the most feared creature on the planet turns out to be a grinning nebbish with a speciality in one-liners. As the Yungmun continues delivering his groaners, the locals explain to a confused Terry that the comedian's jokes have literally bored planets to death. If those are the stakes, Terry asks why no-one has ever thought to boo him.

The Yungmun recoils at the sound of that dreaded word, so Terry boos him again. This inspires the assembled crowd to join in, and the Yungmun, dismayed at his treatment, decides to leave and never come back.

Grateful to Terry for driving away the Yungmun, the assembled crowd decides to give them their highest honour. Dashing Terry's hopes of help in his quest, they tell him to take the pick of the litter – literally, encouraging him to take anything he wants from a scrap heap. Terry isn't expecting to find anything useful, but his probing hands hit a switch, and a disused gynoid thanks him for reactivating her!

Featured characters

Planet Terry's crew	Antagonists	Bznko inhabitants
Planet Terry	The Yungmun	Bznko bickerers Hunched dragon man Three antennaed lizards Piscine alien Simian alien Two-headed alien Horned lizard Polo-shirted frog Upright horned crocodile Upright crocodile Frog with a necklace Four lemon plant aliens Antenna reptile Green pinhead Shirted ant Tunic frog Scaly pink overbite Shirty turtle Blue dragon man Clothed upright crocodile Pleased frog man Mother and daughter fish people Robota

Quotes

"We knew there was a word to show our dislike, but we could never think of it!"

—A Bznko inhabitant justifies the Yungmun's continued presence.

"You're going to help me look for my folks?"
"We're grateful, Terry, not crazy!"

–Terry gets no help from the locals.

Notes

Planet Terry issue 1 on Marvel Database, an external wiki

Original printing

• Planet Terry issue 1, 25 December 1984

As originally published, each issue of Planet Terry contained multiple separately-titled but interconnected chapters. "The Search" is the first of four chapters from the first issue.

Edits

• Peter Kremer's "colorist" credit is changed to "colours".
• The fifth page is printed in black and white.
• The original closing caption "Continued in this issue..." is replaced wholesale by "Continued next issue".

Artwork and technical errors

• On page three, there's an upright red crocodile with yellow boots and horns. Two panels later, there's an upright green crocodile with no boots and horns not visible or obscured. That bit's an error if these are meant to be the same guy... but on the next page, the green croc's undies are red instead of white. That one's definitely an error.
• On page four, one of the bickerers is drawn without his ears.
• The hunched dragon man is blue instead of green at the end of page four. (This error is more pronounced in the U.S. printing, where he's blue in the first panel of page five, and then another blue alien with a similar face turns up in the next panel, this one fully dressed.)
• On the fifth page, the U.S. spelling "honor" is left unedited.

Continuity notes

• The simian alien tells Terry to go bother the Earthlings instead, implying humans have made it to space by the time of this story. Though it's unclear if the simian is telling Terry to go to Earth or merely another part of Bznko in this issue, "A Clue" shows humans (or at least human-like aliens) have established a robot factory on the planet.
  • Similarly, the Yungmun knows enough about "Eskimos" to know that it'd be tough to sell them refrigerators.

Real-life references

• The two inhabitants of Bznko bicker about the days of the month, with one paraphrasing the traditional mnemonic Thirty Days Hath September.
• The Yungmun is named after one-liner comedian Henny Youngman, even getting to recite Youngman's signature line "Take my wife... please!" He's not especially based on him otherwise, lacking any facial resemblance and Youngman's ever-present violin.

Other notes

• Dang near all the weird background aliens introduced in this story go on to appear in the 2009-2010 miniseries X-Babies,  with the bickerers, hunched dragon man, antennaed lizard species, piscine alien, simian alien, two-headed alien, upright horned crocodile, and mother fish person all appearing in the first issue,  being joined by the Yungmun, green pinhead, shirted ant, scaly pink overbiter, shirty turtle, and least one of the clothed frogs in the second issue.  They're not particularly coloured to match their Planet Terry appearances (probably intentionally, given the fever dream feeling of the story), but artist Jacob Chabot  definitely did his research.