Captain Comment

When rudely rebuffed by a library patron who is leafing through books, Adam Blake thinks, “I don’t ordinarily do this, but I’m going to use my telepathic powers to read his mind.” Blake discovers that the man is instantly memorizing every page he sees. So begins The Brain-Pirates of Planet X in Strange Adventures 23 (Aug. 1952). Tracing this mental marvel to a lonely spot in Midwest National Park, Captain Comet and Prof. Zackro find the man gathering with dozens of duplicates at a spacecraft. Secretly disabling the ship with telekinesis, Comet buys enough time to discover that, between them, these identical men have memorized all the knowledge on Earth. While the Man of Destiny tracks down the doppelgängers’ base in space, Zackro phones the Pentagon, saying, “Captain Comet wants those men held here, General — by armed force if necessary!” “If Captain Comet wants it, that’s enough for us, Professor!” the general replies. Must be nice to be Captain Co...

In Strange Adventures 14 (Nov. 1951), in an apparent nod to the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, a gigantic spaceship hovering over Washington, D.C. (no longer called Capitol City), announces through skywriting that it intends to collect a specimen of humanity. This issue was on newsstands during the famous film's run . The groundbreaking Robert Wise film, which starred Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, also featured a large alien spacecraft appearing over Washington, D.C., and a menacing robot. The movie premiered Sept. 28, 1951, and this issue of Strange Adventures was available on the newsstands immediately afterward, in October, during the run of the picture. So the story similarities may have been a coincidence, or — more likely — writer John Broome and editor Julius Schwartz may have prepared theirs to coincide with the film’s release. For inspiration, they could have referred to Harry Bates’ short story Farewell to the Master, which had appear...