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June 1951: Comet at Dawn

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The conformist Cold War decade of the 1950s had dawned, and the detectives had vanished. They had been the colorful, uncanny ones, the ones who had cheered children from the end of the Depression through the turmoil of World War II into this uneasy peace, this era in which even comic books themselves would become suspect. In All-Star Comics 57 (Feb.-March 1951), the Justice Society of America ended its 11-year run by solving The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives. The title was writer John Broome’s sly hint to readers of what was to come, but astute fans may already have seen the handwriting in the margins. The Flash had lost his feature in 1949. Green Lantern did too, having already suffered the humiliation of being elbowed aside by a dog — a “wonder dog,” granted, but still. Captain America had taken a back seat to horror, his comic renamed Captain America’s Weird Tales before the hero vanished in 1950. The Human Torch packed it in on a nostalgic note, retelling his origi
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August 1987: The Secret Origin of Captain Comet

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  In 1951, when he debuted in Strange Adventures 9, Captain Comet was DC Comics’ new Jet Age version of the Depression-era Superman.  But 36 years later, by the time writer Roy Thomas retold his origin story in the first Secret Origins Annual, Comet seemed fairly old hat. However, an obstacle can sometimes be flipped over into an asset.  That very distance in time provided a perspective that Thomas used to advantage, positioning the story in overarching histories both real and fictional. So in addition to references to Reds, Rosenbergs and the Korean War, we’re entertained by this mutant Man of Tomorrow’s reflections on the recent fate of the Justice Society of America. Recalling how they were hounded into hiding by a McCarthy-era congressional committee, he grimly considers what that might mean to his own nascent career as a superhero in the gray flannel 1950s. “I was thrilled to see ‘Captain Comet’ appear so soon after All-Star Comics folded,” Thomas said, recalling his experience
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March 1986: When Men of Tomorrow Meet…

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Given that Captain Comet was a 1950s makeover of the 1930s Superman concept, emphasizing the mental more than the physical, it’s not surprising that the two might meet. But it was a long time coming — 29 years, in fact ( DC Comics Presents 22, June 1980). The Captain Comet feature’s emphasis on knowledge and science — or rather pseudo-science — was inevitable, given the world-shaking detonation of the atom bomb six years before. “Captain Comet was one of those superheroes created in the almost barren 1950s. J’onn J’onzz, Fighting American, and Captain Flash followed Captain Comet by a few years, and then the Flash led the revival,” observed Vincent Mariani. “All of these characters displayed new wrinkles on the superhero concept. “During the ’50s, there were so many genres being published that the superheroes were just part of a much more diverse business. The idea that superhero comics would ultimately completely dominate mainstream comics publishing was not imaginable to baby boomer
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August 1976: The Return of Captain Comet

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In 1976, Captain Comet took a leaf from another stalwart captain’s book, the one called America. Like that Marvel superhero, Adam Blake reappeared after having been missing for decades, apparently unaged. “He’s been across the galaxy twice aboard his Cometeer, visiting a thousand worlds with his flight belt, seeing sights no man has seen before him, or will ever see again,” wrote my old friend David Anthony Kraft, collaborating with Gerry Conway on the second issue of a fun title called The Secret Society of Super Villains (July-Aug. 1976). Pablo Marcos penciled. Out of touch in deep space for two decades, Comet couldn’t be expected to tell a superhero from a supervillain, so he waded into a skirmish against Green Lantern on the side of what he presumed to be underdogs, Grodd the Super Gorilla and the playing-card themed Hi-Jack. Actually, given his own past experience with evil super-gorillas and the fact that he’s telepathic, Captain Comet might have been a bit more suspicious. Whate
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October 1954: Comet at Twilight

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In Captain Comet’s final adventure of the 1950s, the fictional futuristic man faces off against a symbol of society’s actual future — the computer. Or so it seems. In The Revolt of the Thinking Machine (Strange Adventures 49, Oct. 1954) , the Man of Destiny communicates the history of what he presciently says may be his “final battle” to Prof. Zackro through the professor’s TV. As newsboys shout that a Midwest University “thinking machine” has locked out the scientists who built it, Captain Comet tells Zackro, “I got to the Physics Building, of course, only moments after the story got out…” Communicating through a typewriter, the “giant calculator” warns, “No one must interfere with what I am doing! If anyone forces his way into the room, I shall destroy him!” The Man of 100,000 A.D. does just that as the machine blasts him with electric energy. “The bolts, of course, had no effect on me!” Comet tells Zackro. “My unique body instantly set up an immunity to the p
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July 1954: This Objective Earth

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Colonial imperialism is satirized in Interplanetary War Base! ( Strange Adventures 46, July 1954). With artist Gil Kane taking over for Murphy Anderson, the story begins with one of writer John Broome’s quotidian mysteries. Rancher Jeb Hawkins awakens to find that his clock-radio and his wristwatch have stopped at six minutes after three. So has his wife’s — and it’s still dark when it should be daylight. Meanwhile, while using the excuse of rearranging the Midwest City Public Library’s newspapers, information clerk Adam Blake actually reads them all within seconds and coordinates the information in his futuristic brain. Blake correlates an article about a western “black bubble” spotted by a pilot with another about a cattle buyer who was unable to find the Hawkins’ ranch despite having visited there before — and decides that Captain Comet had better look into this. Speeding west in the Cometeer, the Man of Destiny discovers a black dome that nullifies all electronic and
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May 1954: Amid the Alien Corn

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A Cold War “enemy within” vibe continues in Strange Adventures 44 (May 1954), when evil, intelligent alien plants disguise themselves as terrestrial trees.   “Without detection, the aliens landed on Earth — threatening the very existence of humanity!” proclaims the splash-page narration. The trees that loom menacingly and grasp at Captain Comet and his companion Joyce Rollins look a good deal like the hostile anthropomorphic trees in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz — a film that CBS would begin airing annually two years later, on Nov. 3, 1956. The Plant That Plotted Murder provides another echo of John Wyndham and his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids . The tale anticipates The Plant That Hated Humans ( Strange Adventures 150, March 1963). That Atomic Knights story — also by John Broome and Murphy Anderson — features telepathic, malevolent plants. Cold war fears involving alien plant life would be famously spotlighted in late 1954 with the serial publication of Jack Fi
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April 1954: Thinking Outside the Boxer

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Captain Comet’s friend Prof. Zackro takes center stage as a stand-in for Arthur Conan Doyle’s Prof. George Edward Challenger in The Phantom Prize Fighter ( Strange Adventures 43, April 1954). Just as Challenger was mocked by London scientists for claiming to have found a “Lost World” of dinosaurs in Doyle’s 1912 novel of that name, Zackro faces rueful researchers who claim that Captain Comet’s alleged mutant telekinetic abilities are impossible. The Man of Destiny agrees to fight the heavyweight champion of the world to prove what he can do, but during the bout something happens that even Comet finds weird—the champ’s fist sails harmlessly right through him. Comet discovers that the anomaly was the result of an assassination attempt because a one-eyed, slug-like alien, disguised as an electrical technician, had tried to disperse his atomic structure. And once again, Captain Comet proved to be a precursor for the Silver Age. The cover image, of a prize fighter’s fist slipp
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