Captain Comment

The sight of children at play startles stalwart Captain Comet in Strange Adventures 42 (March 1954). Why? The cover scene, repeated in the story, shows the Man of Destiny watching a costumed boy and girl playing at a Captain Comet adventure, and reminds me of a similarly charming scene in Fantastic Four 11 (Feb. 1963). Four children imitating the FF go from boisterous to awestruck when they’re treated to a good-natured demonstration of the real team’s super-powers. The Planet of Ancient Children is Comet’s inadvertent destination in Strange Adventures 42. The children playing remind him of the planet Glete, which is run by telepathically powered youngsters who age in reverse. “You must think I acted pretty strange back there with the kids,” Comet tells Prof. Zackro. “But you’ll understand when you’ve heard what I’m about to tell you…” During his first attempt at intergalactic flight in the Cometeer, the superhero’s ship was seized by a mysterious force and directed to Gle...

In Strange Adventures 41 (Feb. 1954), Captain Comet Dr. Whos his way from the Cretaceous to 50,000 A.D. in The Beast from Out of Time . The story begins when library information clerk Adam Blake gets a question he could easily answer, but doesn’t dare: where can Captain Comet be found? Linda Bartlett’s father, the nuclear physicist Jeris Bartlett, has mysteriously disappeared, and she doesn’t think the police will believe her bizarre story — but Captain Comet might. A meeting is quickly arranged, and Linda tells the mutant superhero that for years, her job was to sit beside her father as he slept and write down what he might say. She was a kind of hypnagogic stenographer. “Let me see what I was sleep-talking about last might,” Dr. Bartlett says one morning. “Hmm. Time travel! Isn’t it strange, Linda — that my unconscious mind should be so much more active than my conscious one” Working without food or rest, Dr. Bartlett completed his time machine, turned a dial to test i...