Captain Comment

  In 1951, when he debuted in Strange Adventures 9, Captain Comet was DC Comics’ new Jet Age version of the Depression-era Superman.  But 36 years later, by the time writer Roy Thomas retold his origin story in the first Secret Origins Annual, Comet seemed fairly old hat. However, an obstacle can sometimes be flipped over into an asset.  That very distance in time provided a perspective that Thomas used to advantage, positioning the story in overarching histories both real and fictional. So in addition to references to Reds, Rosenbergs and the Korean War, we’re entertained by this mutant Man of Tomorrow’s reflections on the recent fate of the Justice Society of America. Recalling how they were hounded into hiding by a McCarthy-era congressional committee, he grimly considers what that might mean to his own nascent career as a superhero in the gray flannel 1950s. “I was thrilled to see ‘Captain Comet’ appear so soon after All-Star Comics folded,” Thomas said, recalling ...

Given that Captain Comet was a 1950s makeover of the 1930s Superman concept, emphasizing the mental more than the physical, it’s not surprising that the two might meet. But it was a long time coming — 29 years, in fact ( DC Comics Presents 22, June 1980). The Captain Comet feature’s emphasis on knowledge and science — or rather pseudo-science — was inevitable, given the world-shaking detonation of the atom bomb six years before. “Captain Comet was one of those superheroes created in the almost barren 1950s. J’onn J’onzz, Fighting American, and Captain Flash followed Captain Comet by a few years, and then the Flash led the revival,” observed Vincent Mariani. “All of these characters displayed new wrinkles on the superhero concept. “During the ’50s, there were so many genres being published that the superheroes were just part of a much more diverse business. The idea that superhero comics would ultimately completely dominate mainstream comics publishing was not imaginable to baby boomer...

In 1976, Captain Comet took a leaf from another stalwart captain’s book, the one called America. Like that Marvel superhero, Adam Blake reappeared after having been missing for decades, apparently unaged. “He’s been across the galaxy twice aboard his Cometeer, visiting a thousand worlds with his flight belt, seeing sights no man has seen before him, or will ever see again,” wrote my old friend David Anthony Kraft, collaborating with Gerry Conway on the second issue of a fun title called The Secret Society of Super Villains (July-Aug. 1976). Pablo Marcos penciled. Out of touch in deep space for two decades, Comet couldn’t be expected to tell a superhero from a supervillain, so he waded into a skirmish against Green Lantern on the side of what he presumed to be underdogs, Grodd the Super Gorilla and the playing-card themed Hi-Jack. Actually, given his own past experience with evil super-gorillas and the fact that he’s telepathic, Captain Comet might have been a bit more suspicious. Whate...

The conformist Cold War decade of the 1950s had dawned, and the detectives had vanished. They had been the colorful, uncanny ones, the ones who had cheered children from the end of the Depression through the turmoil of World War II into this uneasy peace, this era in which even comic books themselves would become suspect. In All-Star Comics 57 (Feb.-March 1951), the Justice Society of America ended its 11-year run by solving The Mystery of the Vanishing Detectives. The title was writer John Broome’s sly hint to readers of what was to come, but astute fans may already have seen the handwriting in the margins. The Flash had lost his feature in 1949. Green Lantern did too, having already suffered the humiliation of being elbowed aside by a dog — a “wonder dog,” granted, but still. Captain America had taken a back seat to horror, his comic renamed Captain America’s Weird Tales before the hero vanished in 1950. The Human Torch packed it in on a nostalgic note, retelling his origin...