May 1954: Amid the Alien Corn
A Cold War “enemy within” vibe continues in Strange Adventures 44 (May 1954), when evil, intelligent alien plants disguise themselves as terrestrial trees. “Without detection, the aliens landed on Earth — threatening the very existence of humanity!” proclaims the splash-page narration. The trees that loom menacingly and grasp at Captain Comet and his companion Joyce Rollins look a good deal like the hostile anthropomorphic trees in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz — a film that CBS would begin airing annually two years later, on Nov. 3, 1956. The Plant That Plotted Murder provides another echo of John Wyndham and his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids . The tale anticipates The Plant That Hated Humans ( Strange Adventures 150, March 1963). That Atomic Knights story — also by John Broome and Murphy Anderson — features telepathic, malevolent plants. Cold war fears involving alien plant life would be famously spotlighted in late 1954 with the serial publication of Jack Finney’s ...