August 1953: If They Only Knew...

One of my favorite Captain Comet stories is The Cosmic Chessboard, both because of a sly wink writer John Broome built into the tale and because the concept was echoed in a couple of Silver Age classics.

As a writer, I like to retain, recycle and recast material I’ve written when it might be useful again, and DC Comics also long practiced this form of intellectual thrift.

For example, compare the Murphy Anderson covers of Strange Adventures 35 (The Cosmic Chessboard, Aug. 1953) and Justice League of America 1 (The World of No Return, Oct-Nov. 1960).

In both cases, heroes are playing a cosmic chess match that imperils real people, and both stories even feature a dinosaur fin-headed alien who sports a third eye, (one is green-skinned, the other red-skinned).

That’s one easy “tell” for recognizing the hand of particular comic book artists, of course. They all tend to have distinctive types of fantasy aliens that they draw.

For DC, publishing in an era in which it was expected that readers would start and then stop reading their product within a span of five to seven years, it made good business sense to recycle fantasy ideas that had proven popular. Hence all those intelligent gorillas…

This exploit marks the second appearance of Guardians of the Universe, an idea that would be recycled for the Silver Age Green Lantern. Informed by the golden-skinned, white-maned Guardian chief Nestro that an interplanetary chess tournament is to be played on Pluto, the superhero is told that he must attend as Earth’s representative.

“We are prevented from revealing the future to you, Captain Comet,” the Guardian says. “All we are permitted to tell you is that your presence at the tournament is vital — for the safety of your solar system.”

The puzzled Man of Destiny complies, and finds himself pitted against the fin-headed, three-eyed Xtanl of Venus in his first match. The story once again demonstrates editor Julius Schwartz’ and Broome’s high regard for the intellect.

“Hmmm … He is starting a 278-move combination!” Comet thinks. “But I can see that on the 279^th move I can surprise him.”

An invisible, odorless gas puts the contestants to sleep, and they awaken trapped in those transparent glass tubes that would become standard operating equipment for the display of captured super beings.

Their Plutonian host Pygr-Gar reveals the chess tournament was merely a pretext to lure super intellects from other planets.

“For years, my rivals, I have sought the secret of life!” Pygr-Gar explains. “But the problem is too great for any one mind to solve! Now, however, I shall solve it — by tapping the brainpower of all of you simultaneously — thus creating a single super-brain of enormous thought-potential.”

The Plutonian reprobate plans to bring his horde of synthetic soldiers to life so they can control the solar system for him, using his telepathic ray to drain the intellects — and the lives — from the super beings.

That same setup — robot, transparent tubes, energy-draining ray — would be used by Professor Ivo to siphon off the super powers for the Justice League of America for his android Amazo (Brave and the Bold 30, June-July 1960, also with a cover inked by Anderson). Ivo turned out also to be seeking the “secret of life,” immortality in his case.

Captain Comet demonstrates necessity’s well-known relationship to invention by discovering a new application for his telekinesis.

“Even my futuristic mind had never done anything like this,” he thinks. “But theoretically it should be possible — if I can hit on the right frequency of vibration!”

And so he does, shattering his cylindrical cell. Superspy Derek Flint, wielding his belt-buckle isomerism ray, would use the same technique to escape a glass freezing chamber in the 1967 film In Like Flint.

What messes these heroes get themselves into.

Rather than risk a ray-gun showdown, the cagy Plutonian despot proposes a chess game with the loser forfeiting his weapon.

“You … you are uncanny!” Pygr-Gar tells Comet. “In 10 moves, you have beaten me!”

But the superhero isn’t fooled. Deducing from the odd way Pygr-Gar is holding his chess piece that it’s a concealed gun, he dives aside as the villain fires.

“You’re a bad loser, Pygr-Gar!” Captain Comet says, underlining the admonishment by beating the alien senseless.

The tale finishes with Adam Blake playing park bench chess with fellow librarian Lucy Torrence — and losing!

“Somehow I can never keep my mind on the game when I’m playing against Lucy…” Blake thinks.

Note how his attitude has apparently changed since the earliest stories in which he regarded Torrence as essentially a lower life form.

Note, too, how Broome’s Captain Comet adventure might slyly be read as merely the Mitty-esque daydream of a frustrated librarian.

The story begins with Blake offering a friendly suggestion to a chess player in Midwest City Park, and being rebuffed by the player, who sneers at Blake’s intellectual abilities. Then the inconspicuous librarian muses that he is really a secret superman who saved Earth and other planets in a recent cosmic chess match against an extraterrestrial fiend, but of course nobody on this planet knows that…

Uh-huh. Sure, right, Adam.

Super-heroes as mere wish fulfillment?

Could it be?