May 1952: The Siren Song of Atlantis


From the heights of Olympus, Captain Comet turned to the depths of Atlantis to find trouble in Slaves of the Sea-Master (Strange Adventures 20, May 1952).
The narrative hook on this John Broome/Murphy Anderson story is a strong one. All over America, as if sleepwalking, people begin marching toward the Atlantic Ocean — even a prisoner serving a life sentence whom guards machine-gun to death as he blindly climbs a prison wall.
The story has something of the vibe of British novelist John Wyndham’s “cozy catastrophe” science fiction novels, which begin with some fascinating, inexplicable event — a worldwide meteor shower blinding everyone who watches it, an entire village falling asleep for a day — and build from there. The first of those, The Day of the Triffids, had been published the year before.
Using the Cometeer to construct a glass wall at the ocean’s edge to prevent somnambulant citizens from drowning themselves in the Atlantic, the Man of Destiny deduces they were converging on that spot in the ocean where the lost continent sank 10,000 years ago.
There, he finds a whirlpool into which he plunges, using the Cometeer as a “super-powerful submarine.” Deep beneath the sea, he discovers a dry grotto.
“The air pressure here — keeping out the water — is tremendous! But my futuristic body has already adjusted to it!”
Captain Comet tended to be rather self-congratulatory about his super powers, but, hey, I would be too.
The sole survivor of Atlantis, an immortal king with telepathic powers like Comet’s, mistakes the superhero for one of his slaves.  Comet plays along, and learns that the descendants of the original Atlanteans are sensitive to the king’s telepathic commands. The king had designed a system to raise Atlantis back to the surface so he could rule over his new slaves.
Engaging in a telepathic duel, Comet desperately senses that the ancient man’s psychic powers are actually stronger than his own. So he feigns death by stopping his heart, then activates the hydraulic system to raise Atlantis from the depths.
After the sudden change in pressure kills the king, Comet sinks the continent for the “…second and last time.”
Flying home, the Man of Destiny hears a news bulletin: “Suddenly … the Walkers have come to themselves … Dazed but safe. But none can explain what happened to them.”
Back at Midwest City Library where he works, Adam Blake tells Lily Torrence he can’t explain the Walkers either.
“No, Miss Torrence … Only Captain Comet can, and — er — he won’t talk!”
All that was missing was Clark Kent’s wink.

Comments

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

December 1951: Captain Comet Forgets Himself

Image
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 ...
Read more