July 1954: This Objective Earth

Colonial imperialism is satirized in Interplanetary War Base! (Strange Adventures 46, July 1954).

With artist Gil Kane taking over for Murphy Anderson, the story begins with one of writer John Broome’s quotidian mysteries.

Rancher Jeb Hawkins awakens to find that his clock-radio and his wristwatch have stopped at six minutes after three. So has his wife’s — and it’s still dark when it should be daylight.

Meanwhile, while using the excuse of rearranging the Midwest City Public Library’s newspapers, information clerk Adam Blake actually reads them all within seconds and coordinates the information in his futuristic brain.

Blake correlates an article about a western “black bubble” spotted by a pilot with another about a cattle buyer who was unable to find the Hawkins’ ranch despite having visited there before — and decides that Captain Comet had better look into this.

Speeding west in the Cometeer, the Man of Destiny discovers a black dome that nullifies all electronic and mechanical forces — but not the superhero’s telepathic brain. He learns that fish-faced aliens within it are planning to use Earth as a military pawn in their interstellar war.

“Of course, many of the inhabitants of Earth will no doubt be destroyed when the enemy returns our atomic fire,” the alien commander Tynkac explains. “But our investigations have shown that the creatures inhabiting Earth are savages — primitive beings with scarcely any civilization at all!”

Captain Comet sets out to prove otherwise by confronting the alien force. When they attempt to stop him with a freeze ray, the superhero raises his body temperature more than 100 degrees.

“In the future, all humans will have this knack of controlling their own temperature,” he thinks. “Right now only I have it — fortunately for me and for Earth!”

“Captain Comet was a mutant, a representative of a super-species of Earthmen that would appear in the future,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost. “This gave him unique powers, such as invulnerability. He is often referred to as ‘the Man of Destiny,’ because all humans will be like him in thousands of years — he is the destiny of our species. Broome’s heroes were often unique persons, different from society around them, and with unique powers.”

The superhero taunts the aliens. “Would you like to see what else a ‘savage’ like me can do, Tynkac?” he says, as he lifts the huge freeze-ray gun by mental force.

“I can see now that we made a terrible mistake coming here,” Tynkac says, “Please forgive our error, Captain Comet! It is obvious from a demonstration of your powers than Earth civilization is one of the highest in any galaxy! Somehow the reports of our scouts misled us!”

The superhero watches their black spheroid space ship disappear into the western sky, thinking, “If those aliens want to wage interplanetary war, let them find their own battleground!”

Captain Comet’s gambit of pretending that all Earth people share his super powers would become a cliché in Silver Age superhero comics. Thor, Iron Man, the Jaguar, the Phantom and many others would use the same trick to fend off various alien invasions.

And the idea of using a science fiction metaphor to criticize the ruthlessness of technologically advanced colonial imperialism was a venerable one, dating all the way back to H.G. Wells’ 1897 novel The War of the Worlds.