November 1953: Comet’s Cozy Catastrophe

A classic science fiction story, The Day of the Triffids, gets a wink in Strange Adventures 38 (Nov. 1953).

In John Wyndham’s 1951 novel, a freak meteor shower blinds most people on Earth, unleashing a plant menace and leading to the enslavement of the few remaining sighted people.

DC’s science fiction stories often had a vibe similar to the “cozy catastrophe” novels for which Wyndham became famous. Whether the author was John Wyndham or John Broome, inexplicable and weird events would suddenly intrude on everyday reality, presaging some literally earthshaking menaces that would finally be resolved by cool-headed, rational professionals.

For example, when everyone in a sleepy English village literally falls asleep, all the women become pregnant with super-powered alien babies in Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed twice as Village of the Damned). And fireballs falling from space into the worlds’ oceans herald the arrival of unseen undersea alien invaders in Wyndham’s 1953 novel The Kraken Wakes.

In The Seeing-Eye Humans, a sharpshooter, a professional baseball star and an astronomer all disappear mysteriously. Captain Comet examines all available evidence using charts — part of the paraphernalia of scientific rationalism that editor Julius Schwartz always celebrated — and learns that the single thing these people had in common was perfect eyesight. But then of course, so does Captain Comet, whose “…futuristic vision is the keenest on Earth.” And right on cue, the weird kidnappers appear.

They are the Reynans, green-skinned, antennaed aliens who threaten the superhero with their ray guns. Feigning helplessness, he uses a telepathic probe to learn their story, which parallels Day of the Triffids. After watching a star go nova, the Reynans discovered that they were all slowly going blind.

“They are only a few hours of sight left to us now!” one of them thinks as the Man of Destiny reads his mind. “But we shall land on Reyna — our world — before the worst happens.”

The Reynans use the humans they’ve kidnapped as seeing-eye dogs, threatening them with specially designed three-barreled ray guns so they can’t miss even when firing blindly.

Comet plays along until he’s placed in a “kennel” with the other humans. Then he snaps his chains, frees his fellow Earthmen and shrugs off the effects of the aliens’ blind attack.

Superman had a similar problem in 1953.

“No use, Storn!” the superhero tells the alien leader. “My futuristic body is immune to the radiation from your pistols! You’ll never get past me — you’ll only harm yourselves! Tell your men to stop firing!”

Storn gives up, saying, “Stop firing … We are helpless … finished.”

But Comet responds with the advanced trait of compassion.

“It was evil — and wrong of you to try to enslave humans from another world … but you and your race are not finished,” he tells them.

With the determined optimism that would mark DC’s science fiction stories for years to come, Comet says, “You will learn to adjust to your blindness. No handicap is too great for intelligent beings like yourselves to struggle against — and finally overcome!”

Comics historian Michael E. Grost summed it up as a “…simple, dignified tale, with messages about overcoming adversity. The story is linked to the series of tales Broome wrote about giant animals making pets out of humans. Here humans are similarly put into the role of seeing-eye dogs for aliens.”

It’s interesting to note that that same year, Superman was also captured by aliens and treated as a pet, kept on a leash with a kryptonite collar by the “yeast people.” William Woolfolk’s story A Doghouse for Superman appeared in Superman 94 (Sept.-Oct. 1953). That issue was on the newsstands in July, two months before Strange Adventures 38.

So you might say that 1953 was the year superheroes really went to the dogs.