May 1954: Amid the Alien Corn

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 Finney’s science fiction novel The Body Snatchers in Colliers Magazine. Space seeds drifting to Earth produce pods that perfectly replicate and replace sleeping human beings — sans emotions. The novel has been filmed four times — in 1956, 1978, 1993 and 2007.

In Captain Comet’s adventure, an expeditionary force of Skykarans, whose members disguise themselves as plants, becomes alarmed by the knowledge that a powerful telepath exists on Earth.

“This Captain Comet must be sought out immediately and destroyed!” the alien commander Uno mentally proclaims. “Flash the orders to Sectors 3, 4 and 8 … Those nearest to Midwest City. Hurry…”

Meanwhile, the Man of Destiny is at the Midwest City Daily Clarion, asking reporter Joyce Rollins about her article concerning a boy who claimed he’d seen trees walking.

The pair speed to the suburban scene in the Cometeer as the superhero explains that he’s been “…disturbed by telepathic impulses which I determined did not arise from members of the animal kingdom… of which man is a member, of course.”

Attacked by a giant tiger lily, Comet breaks free with the girl, determined to confront the alien commander.  The two simultaneously fire ray guns at each other, but neither is harmed.

“Not being able to finish me off as quickly as he expected seems to have enraged him,” Captain Comet observes.

Brushing against a tree branch, the angry Uno blasts it, telepathically exclaiming, “Idiot of a mindless plant!”

The tree topples and crushes him, and his leaderless task force is quickly routed.

So an Earth tree saved us from an invasion by alien plants.

“How ironic,” as they say in the funny papers.

One nice touch is that the story of the failed invasion attempt is told entirely in flashback from the enemy point of view by a “recording thought machine.”

“I have duly recorded all occurrences that seemed to my control apparatus of the greatest importance in the invasion!” the device transmits. “But now my energy-spool is running down. So I must say … farewell! I have done … my duty!”

One of Broome’s distinctive touches was to sometimes give readers a poignant insight into the feelings of machines or monsters that might otherwise be incidental to the story. We’ll see it more than once in his Green Lantern run.

DC was starting to deemphasize Captain Comet, shifting his feature to the back of the magazine and sometimes skipping issues. 

Inconsistencies began to appear in the feature, an indication that writers and editors weren’t paying it much attention any longer — Miss Torrence’s uncertain first name, Blake’s contradictory relationship with her, Captain Comet’s on-again, off-again secret identity.

The captain went AWOL in issue 45, then again in issues 47 and 48. The clock was audibly ticking for Comet, and not even the Guardians of the Clockwork Universe could do much about it.