Twelve of Nine.

This past Sunday I took my lucky readers on a journey across the solar system through comic book covers. Hope your luggage didn't get lost on the trip! Some worlds and planet references were easier to find than others: Mars, f'r instance, is wonderfully overrepresented in the comics world with red planets, barbarians, green superheroes and plenty of wars of worlds to choose from. There were rather less options open with, say, Uranus, and though my choice was obscure, as least I didn't have to resort to a cover of Ant bending over (think about or, or better yet, please don't).

My choice for the just-ousted, don’t-come-’round-here-no-more ninth planet, Pluto, the Rodney Dangerfield of the Solar System, was an obvious one, but the always-ten-steps-ahead Fortress Keeper showed a little more ingenuity when he unearthed a doozy of a Pluto cover that makes me green and gassy with envy. Now there's a Pluto who ain’t takin’ no guff, pallie!

And because we here at "Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun" believe in givin' you more bang for your internet buck, here's the Criterion DVD-style extra outtakes of three covers I was oh-so-sorely tempted to use, but they didn't quite make the cut—and they're all from the wonderfully wacky Strange Adventures. First, for Saturn, I loves me the Jemm, Son of Saturn series something fierce, so I couldn't resist using one of Genial Gene Colan's covers to rep the ringed giant, but this one was an exceptionally close second:


Here's a runner-up for the Earth entry that just got squeaked out by one of my favorite Legion covers, but this one has a goofy charm all its own. Hey, how much freaking bigger is that moon harpoon than the one he's about to shoot at the Earth?


Which makes me pause and think: since the comic book world is chock-full o' crossovers and team-ups, what do you think would happen if the stars of those two comics decided to band together in an issue of Planet Team-Up comics? Why, I think it would go something like this:


(All images are from the indispensible Grand Comic Book Database, a comic book cover-obsessed little stuffed bull's best pal. Bookmark it today!)