"But Holy Moley! I can't understand why you changed, Steamboat! How could you say...the word...and be given the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury? They're all white--and you're a black man!!"

I see on the comicbookplus site that Marc Swayze was credited with the art on the Mary Marvel debut story, and that the "art is totally by Swayze according to P. C. Hamerlinck in Alter Ego #147 (2017). Mac Raboy credits for Captain Marvel Jr. figures removed." It sure looks to me like there's visual evidence of a paste-up around Freddy's head here:

All of the Freddy/Jr. images look like the work of a different artist to me, so I don't know if I'm convinced that Hamerlinck was correct.

That's funny. I thought that the Freddy and CM Jr. figures looked more like Raboy's work, too. 

Ah, when Fiction House was focusing less on Buck Rogers and more on female eye candy, as well as more dynamic artwork.

The earliest Planet I ever had. Not a lot to say about it. The stories are very basic and short so the main value is in two Fran Hopper illustrated stories, one Murphy Anderson, and one Lily Renee. Although George Evans' The Lost World was the best looking version, Renee's alien nazi zombie type villains were very lurid, she'd had first-hand experience of the real nazis after all. Futura hadn't started yet which was one of the better later serials I thought. Exploding plant men in Mysta was more fantasy but fairly memorable.

In 2002, the first Mary Marvel story and that painted cover were available in Shazam Family Annual #1 which I have. I think Mary Marvel was great but her intro isn't near the classic Captain Marvel Jr.s was over a few issues of Master Comics.

Planet Comics #37 -

Definitely an improvement over the earlier one, especially the art! The first couple especially were really great! The quality did go down hill as the book progressed though.

I really enjoyed Lost World... get a bit of history, cool aliens, and a fun post-apocalytic setting. The only thing missing were characters... which were not very exciting at all.

Mysta seems very much like a female Buck Rogers... I did like the villain alot, but the plot didn't make much sense... why did she try to be one of the soliders, when she was so easy to pick out? Why not use the robot for that? Turns out it was because she wanted to do SOMETHING, since the robot was clearly the hero.

In both stories, there's a female lead, but neither one does much from a 'hero' standpoint, so even though they are the title characters, they seem only a couple steps about the usual damsel in distress.

Red Comet - The art improved, but not much story. The captions says it was a redrawn reprint? That seems weird... or maybe they knew how much better the art is too, and had some deadline doom?

The text piece I read this time, since it was 3 pages, to see if there was more to it. It was a story that was pretty generic from today's standards, but that might not have been the case at the time.

Space Rangers felt like a Silver Age DC story... just goes to show how some of those early ones borrowed from the past. The art is only a bit better than the older issue, and far inferior than the 1st 2 stories.

The last two features, Gale Allen and Star Pirate were just bleh.... Gale is actually a damsel in distress (tied up and everything).. no idea if that happens every time, but it was a boring, non-sensical story. Star Pirate (which was actually his name, not a title or occupation.. the other characters call him 'star') had some cool robots, but that's about it.

Not as much of an improvement as I thought when I flipped through one from 1947 or so, but still a good upgrade.

I dislike the white costume because it always looks unfinished to me. They ought to have given her a blue cape, that way each of the primary colors (red, white, blue) would be equally balanced between uniforms & capes.

Yes. Seems like the entire book is just heroes we already know with slightly different names. Kind of amazing that a legitimate superhero somehow grew out of these embarrassing roots.