Captain Comment

The original science fiction novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is the explicit inspiration for Beware the Synthetic Men! in Strange Adventures 17 (Feb. 1952). Rumors of green men in Washington, D.C., prompt a televised government spokesman to brand them a myth, but Captain Comet telepathically sees through that lie. “No reason to fear,” broadcasts Dr. Stanton, the “nation’s science-defense chief” (didn’t know we had one). “Great Galaxy!” says Captain Comet. “He’s saying one thing — thinking the exact opposite!” For a mutant 100,000 years ahead of his time, Captain Comet could be remarkably naïve about politics. Or is it simply that morally and intellectually advanced beings like Adam Blake would necessarily see the ultimate futility of lying? “What’s most interesting about this tale is the use of television,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost. “One of Captain Comet’s seemingly endless powers is the ability to read thoughts. After all, he explains that thought

Strange Adventures 16 (Jan. 1952) anticipates Dr. Strange with the story The Ghost of Captain Comet. When the Midwestern town of Pineville panics after dead people begin to reappear there, the skeptical Captain Comet decides to send his own “ghost” to investigate. This new power of creating a mental image of himself would be duplicated later in Stephen Strange’s astral projections. Comet learns that all the “ghosts” are really an alien energy creature trapped here by an H-bomb test, and forced into the shape of various dead people by the telepathic longings of those who miss them. The superhero is able to return the frightened being to his real form – a puff of smoke — and his home dimension. This Captain Comet story anticipated the brilliant Quatermass and the Pit, a BBC science-fiction serial transmitted live in December 1958 and January 1959. The third and last of Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass serials began with the appearance of “ghosts” and other spooky pheno

In Strange Adventures 15 (Dec. 1951), the tale Captain Comet—Enemy of Earth! uses Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1913 story The Poison Belt as inspiration, with the superhero filling in for Professor Edward Challenger. While trying to protect Earth from being poisoned by the gasses of a passing comet, the Man of Destiny is caught off guard by an amnesia ray, then told by the alien leader Sandor that he’s the “rightful ruler of Earth” and must help conquer it. Why? Sandor relies on the argument Magneto would later use — that humans will fear Captain Comet’s mutant super-powers and try to destroy him. The no-longer-good Captain cuts in on all television broadcasts (how many times would super-villains pull that trick?) to deliver a General Zod-like ultimatum about taking over the planet. Network television was only four years old in 1951, so this must have been one of the first uses of that melodramatic cliché. “The government will never accept such tyranny!” exclaims one man on the

Superman encountered several super-females during his long career, including his own cousin and various amped-up versions of Lois Lane and Lana Lang. But Susan Semple was a variation on the theme. Unlike the others, this “Girl of Tomorrow” didn’t have powers that directly paralleled Superman’s. Introduced in Action Comics 163 (Dec. 1951), she appeared instead to be a female counterpart to Captain Comet, a DC character who’d been introduced in Strange Adventures seven months before. Captain Comet was, after all, himself a Superman updated from the 1930s to the 1950s, the era of the flying saucer and the atom bomb. His extraordinary abilities were more mental than physical. This new Man of Tomorrow’s powers included telepathy, telekinesis and ESP, and the Girl of Tomorrow shared them. Bespectacled Daily Planet receptionist Susan Semple mooned over Superman, and when she heard eccentric scientist Prof. Weirton’s claims that he could transform ordinary people into super beings, she was fi

In Strange Adventures 14 (Nov. 1951), in an apparent nod to the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, a gigantic spaceship hovering over Washington, D.C. (no longer called Capitol City), announces through skywriting that it intends to collect a specimen of humanity. This issue was on the newsstands during the famous film's run . The groundbreaking Robert Wise film, which starred Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, also featured a large alien spacecraft appearing over Washington, D.C., and a menacing robot. The movie premiered Sept. 28, 1951, and this issue of Strange Adventures was available on the newsstands immediately afterward, in October, during the run of the picture. So the story similarities may have been a coincidence, or — more likely — writer John Broome and editor Julius Schwartz may have prepared theirs to coincide with the film’s release. For inspiration, they could have referred to Harry Bates’ short story Farewell to the Master, which had a

In Strange Adventures 13 (Oct. 1951), Adam Blake spends his library lunch hour rocketing off to investigate stone creatures that have mysteriously appeared in Geyser Park, Wyoming (presumably Yellowstone). Titles edited by Julius Schwartz would often spotlight natural wonders like geysers, waterspouts and the aurora borealis in their stories, providing the opportunity for readers to acquire some painless scientific knowledge through footnotes. In the course of the adventure When the Earth Was Kidnapped, our planet is dragged toward the blue sun of Alpha Centauri. Gravity goes awry, causing Midwest City citizens to float into the air. Justice League of America 5 (1961) It’s the same weird phenomenon the Justice League would encounter in the Gardner Fox story When Gravity Went Wild ( Justice League of America 5, June-July 1961). Stone giants, Earth being dragged through space, gravity upended, a city beneath the Earth, alien beings rocketed back to Alpha Centaur

DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz clearly had real respect and affection for knowledge-based professionals — so much so that he even gave us the world’s first superhero librarian, Captain Comet. His fellow librarian, Lily Torrence, kept a close eye on the mysterious Adam Blake. In Strange Adventures  12 (Sept. 1951), Torrence tries to get Blake’s attention, asking him if he’s read this new book on astronomy. “Not yet, Miss Torrence,” he replies, thinking, “But I have now.” His ‘futuristic brain” has permitted him to absorb the book’s contents as he leafs through it. Lily turns away tearfully, thinking, “I-I hate him. He hardly seemed to listen when I spoke about the book.” Sensing he’s made her unhappy, Blake remains stoic, observing that he can’t help the fact that he’s a super-advanced mutant being. “Of course, it’s not Miss Torrence’s fault either,” he thinks. “It’s just that no girl can ever hold my interest.” That’s a twist I found intriguing. Just consider —

Although Captain Comet would be publicly known on Earth, many of his adventures would occur in space, in secret. In that, he would anticipate the two Stranges — Stephen and Adam — who frequently battle menaces humanity knows nothing about. The Stranges and the Strange Adventures hero were all super-heroes protecting humanity from dangers on some bizarre frontier. Nevertheless, the hero’s second adventure, in Strange Adventures 11 (Aug. 1951), would be earthbound. Titled The Day the Past Came Back, this story by Broome and artist Infantino starts by pitting Comet against one of my favorite foes, a Tyrannosaurus rex (this one revived from a skeleton in the Midwest City Museum Hall of Fossils). Wading into the action while museum patrons panic, the Man of Destiny uses superhuman strength to handily hurl aside the dinosaur. Then he learns that Capitol City (apparently Washington, D.C.) is overrun by brontosauruses, pterodactyls, devolved humans, and other prehistoric me

Strange Adventures 10 finished Captain Comet's two-part origin and launched him on his first adventure. Captain Comet blazed the trail in a feature that looked much more like 1960 than 1940. The sleek elegance of Carmine Infantino’s art was emergent. It would be contemporary, clean-lined and sunlit, as optimistic and reassuring as the stories by John Broome. Infantino made the impossible seem pleasantly plausible, somehow putting the future within easy reach. “The mature Infantino drew everything — a hidden city of scientific gorillas, a harlequin committing crimes with toys, Flash strapped to a giant boomerang — as if he believed absolutely in its existence,” observed Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs in their excellent book The Comic Book Heroes. “But Infantino’s art could so fully evoke the quiet of a small-town afternoon or the cool of a shaded lawn that readers could forgive even plots full of beatniks, schoolteachers and singing idols.” The equally capable

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