December 1951: Captain Comet Forgets Himself

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 street.
“But how can we combat Comet — with his incredible powers?” wonders another.
“We’ve got to!” replies a woman.
The U.S. army tries and fails to do just that.
“Captain Comet, you are my prisoner! You must come with me!” says a general.
Unimpressed by hundreds of troops, Comet replies, “Your mistake, General! I haven’t been captured yet…” then uses “an amazing, invisible force” to send the soldiers marching away.
“Mind over matter, Sandor,” Comet explains. “It works on humans as well as bullets.”
Finally turning on the alien invaders, Captain Comet gives them a pedantic, long-winded explanation about how his futuristic body developed an immunity to their memory ray even as he casually destroys them with a “withering mind blast.”
Two years later, in December 1953, a similar story called Panic in the Sky would air on The Adventures of Superman TV series. In both cases, an uncertain, amnestic superhero who’d forgotten his identity would, upon discovering his costume, decide to put it on in order to impersonate himself.

Comments

  1. Dan HagenJune 21, 2022 at 4:10 AM

    Bruce Kanin wrote:
    If Captain Comet was a Marvel character, we'd have already gotten a movie or Disney+ series about him. Unfortunately, he belongs to DC, which can barely do films about its major superheroes.
    As said before, I would love a Captain Comet compilation. Heck, I'd even by a DC Archive Edition or three with his stories, but those aren't made anymore.
    Love your comparison to my favorite The Adventures of Superman episode, Dan!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dan HagenJune 21, 2022 at 5:31 AM

    Bob Doncaster wrote:
    The Poison Belt. It’s probably been 50 years since I read or thought about it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dan HagenJune 21, 2022 at 6:19 AM

    Vincent Mariani wrote:
    An example of EVEN DC bringing some depth to a story in the pre-Code environment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dan HagenJune 21, 2022 at 7:37 AM

    Gary Mason wrote:
    I was always sorry that Captain Comet didn't do better and last longer. I think 1951 was just the wrong time to be launching such a strip -- maybe 10 years later it would have been a smash hit, like Adam Strange was.

    ReplyDelete
  5. jimboylan2June 21, 2022 at 11:13 AM

    At 1st, I thought Capt. Comet Was Adam Strange.

    ReplyDelete
  6. jack brooksJune 21, 2022 at 12:58 PM

    This might be a little off topic but, there were actually FIVE Challenger stories/ novels, 3 besides The Lost World and The Poison Belt.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Dan HagenJune 21, 2022 at 2:02 PM

    Steve Guy wrote;
    Captain Comet kinda sounds like Super Wizard Stardust. "And then it was all over because he's just so perfect and powerful and the bad guys exploded coz screw them and that's pretty much it g'bye."

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

August 1976: The Return of Captain Comet

Image
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...
Read more

August 1987: The Secret Origin of Captain Comet

Image
  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 ...
Read more