September 1953: Attack of the Arcade Aliens

DC’s tendency to work children’s preoccupations into its stories is on display again in The Grab-Bag Planet (Strange Adventures 36, Sept. 1953), when giant mechanical claws start grabbing up goodies on Earth as part of a treasure hunt played by bored, amoral aliens from the planet Cnossur.

The reference is obviously to those glass-fronted arcade claw machines that offer tempting gimcrack prizes. They became popular in the early 20^th century, inspired by the public’s fascination with the steam shovels that excavated the Panama and Erie canals.

“A hand crank on the front allowed them to make a descent into a pile of hard candy to grab a small prize,” noted Jake Rossen. “The wheel was sensitive: A wild spin could get the crane moving, while a light, radio-dial touch could zero in on a target.”

“When the Great Depression hit, they became a cheap way to risk what little money people had for the chance at a child’s trinket — maybe even a dollar wrapped around a pocket knife… By the 1930s, diggers had grown into pieces of furniture. They populated bus stations, train stations, high-end hotels, cigar shops and drugstores.”

And the sky, at least in comics in 1953.

The story begins, as several of writer John Broome’s do, with a scene of quotidian American life into which an element of weird mystery is introduced.

At a red light in Midwest City, a young driver boasts to his girlfriend that he’ll speed away from all the other cars when the light changes. But it never does — a giant claw from the sky tears the traffic light out of the pavement.

Elsewhere, a group of safecrackers loses the prize they’ve hauled outside when a sky-claw snatches it.

In Murphy Anderson’s art, the flying claw machines are vaguely reminiscent of those icons of interplanetary invasion, H.G. Wells’ Martian war machines. A popular film version of War of the Worlds — produced by George Pal and starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson — would be released Aug. 13, 1953, the month after this issue of Strange Adventures hit the newsstands.

Prof. Zackro, whose telescope has spotted an alien mother ship 400 miles high, hurriedly phones Adam Blake, who switches to his Captain Comet identity, hops into his personally designed rocket ship and flies to Zackro’s mysteriously deserted lab.

Comet has no way of knowing that Zackro had already been snatched by one of the alien claws, but boldly zooms above the Earth into the alien ship’s space lock.

“Do not draw your pistol, Captain Comet!” says a seemingly human alien. “I am Xtanxu, the ship commander. I bid you welcome!”

Xtanxu explains that he and his fellow aliens are from Cnossur, a world several million years more advanced than Earth. As in Gold Key’s title Magnus Robot Fighter a decade later, the Cnossurians have become bored because everything is done for them by humanoid robots. To amuse themselves, they play games, the most popular of which is a galactic treasure hunt.

Xtanxu assures Comet that the rules require that no living thing be touched.

When the aliens offer to pay gold for everything they’ve taken, the Man of Destiny replies, “That seems fair enough.” But the superhero is suspicious of one alien’s furtive behavior, and his futuristic senses detect carbon dioxide coming from a locker — a gas exhaled by humans, but not Cnossurians.

Tearing open the locker to find Zackro, Comet is ambushed by ray gun, but his mutant body shrugs off the energy blast.

As Comet knocks out his attacker, Xtanxu says that none of the other aliens knew he had broken the rules and seized a living person. Xtanxu promises the offender will be punished.

“If you insist on playing games, stay away from Earth!” Captain Comet warns him. “We’ll never serve as somebody’s grab-bag planet!”

Back on terra firma, a little later, Blake’s colleague Lily Torrence seems to have grown increasingly bitter. Reading a newspaper account of the events, she sneeringly compares Adam Blake to Captain Comet, sounding like Lois Lane on a bad day.

“Sorry, Miss Torrence!” Blake replies with feigned sheepishness. “I guess we can’t all be heroes.”

Her remark is especially odd, considering she’d never even met Captain Comet.

Until the next issue.

DC Comics on sale in July 1953