June 1953: Empire of the Bees


Two H.G. Wells stories helped inspire Strange Adventures 33 (June 1953).
In The Human Beehive, Adam Blake travels to an irradiated South Pacific island to find tiny mammals and gigantic insects, including a super-intelligent colony of bees that has apparently enslaved the tiny human islanders.
“Captain Comet is always going on journeys to other places: often planets, here an island,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost.  “(Writer John) Broome often liked his heroes to travel. We also learn here that Captain Comet is resistant to all forms of radiation, just like Broome's Atomic Knights to come. This story is crammed with small details and little plot ideas of all kinds. Although the Captain Comet tales are short, usually six pages, Broome tried to get as much story into them as possible.”
The discovery of a monstrous minnow near a nuclear test site sends Captain Comet to the South Pacific. In fact, the U.S. had detonated its first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands just six months before.
The superhero finds a tiger smaller than a house cat, and a gigantic butterfly that’s attacking scientist Eric Jason. Once rescued, Jason tells the Man of Destiny that his experiments have gotten out of hand.
Jason has anticipated Henry Pym (Ant-Man) and Ray Palmer (the Atom) in successfully changing the size of living beings. He’s also following in the footsteps of Dr. Moreau, who retired to a Pacific Island to create intelligent animals in Wells’ 1896 novel.
“It’s been a living nightmare for me!” Jason says. “They’re out to kill me — in order to use my great discovery for their own ends, Captain Comet!”
The superhero finds tiny enslaved island natives serving a giant beehive, and is stung by giant bee that gloats at him via telepathy.
“We shall now transform you into one of our hive creatures, Captain Comet — by means of this reducto-ray!”
But the superhero has some gloating of his own to do. “An ordinary human would be paralyzed for a week by one of your stings — but my futuristic body threw off the effects in seconds!”
Scattering the super-bees, Captain Comet confronts Dr. Jason, who was secretly controlling them — something the superhero deduced because the bee knew his name.
Jason attempts to shrink Captain Comet, but is thwarted by the superhero’s immunity to radiation. In his excitement, the scientist plunges off a cliff, carrying his reducto-ray to destruction with him.
Luckily for the islanders, the effects of the shrinking ray prove only temporary. “Thank you, Tuan! Thank you!” exclaim the natives, calling Captain Comet by the Malay word for “sir.”
Alien super-bees would enslave the JLA a decade later in Drones of the Queen Bee! (Justice League of America 23, Nov. 1963).
In Wells’ 1905 short story Empire of the Ants in The Strand Magazine, large and highly evolved black ants use tools to wage war against humanity in a remote Amazon River town.
Invisible men, Martian military attacks, giant insects, intelligent animals — Wells’ imaginative pioneering proved to be an ongoing inspiration for Broome and editor Julius Schwartz in their stories.
DC Comics on sale in April 1953

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