September 1951: Mind Over Maiden

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 — what if Superman regarded Lois Lane as inferior to him, and of no real interest?
Today, we’d be tempted to make something else of Captain Comet’s admission that “no girl can ever hold my interest,” but in the context of the times it served only to underline Blake’s loneliness — and to set the reader up for what would become a Silver Age superhero convention, the distaff duplicate like Batwoman, Fly Girl and Supergirl. Here, Comet’s female opposite number is the 19-year-old mutant Radea of the planet Hyperba, The Girl from the Diamond Planet.
In this story written by John Broome and drawn by Murphy Anderson, the super-pair overthrow a planetary dictator who’s running an alien precursor to the Hunger Games, establishing another Schwartz theme, the capable and fully equal female partner.
Fourteen months later, in Strange Adventures 26, Captain Comet would encounter his second beautiful, futuristic superwoman, Miss Universe.
And in 1967, Schwartz would also give us the world’s second superhero librarian — Barbara Gordon, a/k/a Batgirl.
DC Comics available on the newsstand in July 1951

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