Captain Comment

Captain Comet’s version of Grodd, the “diabolically intelligent” Man-Ape, returns as a criminal defendant in The Guilty Gorilla ( Strange Adventures 39, Dec. 1953). By telepathically controlling a judge and manhandling police officers like rag dolls, the simian is able to escape and recruit a criminal gang to help him. This super-gorilla, Comet’s only recurring archenemy, foreshadows the string of early appearances by Grodd in the Silver Age Flash title. DC’s over-reliance on gorilla covers would become an affectionately mocked cliché in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The trend started in Strange Adventures . “The eighth issue of Strange Adventures achieved some sort of cult status,” noted Greg Hyland. “The cover showed a gorilla in a zoo holding up a slate that read, ‘Please believe me! I am the victim of a terrible scientific experiment!’ This Incredible Story of an Ape with a Human Brain had strong sales, and [DC editor, Julius] Schwartz recalls that (publisher) ‘Irwin...

DC Co­­­mics’ Strange Adventures might be called the predawn of the Silver Age. For example, in several ways, Strange Adventures 32 (May 1953) prefigures the revamped revival of the Flash three years later. And Captain Comet, the title’s lead feature, is clearly a forerunner for the streamlined jet-age superheroes to come. At the end of his previous adventure, librarian Lily Torrence, seeing Captain C­­­­­­omet for the first time on television, had remarked to Adam Blake that they look awfully similar. Blake tries to cover up in that feeble Clark Kent manner — “Oh, it’s, er, just your imagination, Miss Torrence!” But he needn’t have bothered, since by the next issue he has apparently forgotten he has a secret identity. In Strange Adventures 32, Murphy Anderson’s art shows us Captain Comet at the front door of Blake’s house, receiving a telegram sent to him by a scientist in Africa. The Western Union deliveryman is impressed that Comet clairvoyantly knows w...

The convention of the female counterpart who mirrors the male hero is a long-running one in superhero stories, and includes Pat Savage, Catwoman, Mary Marvel, Hawkgirl, Doll Girl, Fly-Girl, Batwoman, Batgirl, Power Girl, Supergirl and others. Captain Comet had two of them — first the alien mutant Radea and then, in Strange Adventures 26 (Nov. 1952), the futuristic Miss Universe. With Captain Comet off in space and a giant meteor threatening Earth, Zackro uses his new “time hook” to fetch a beautiful superwoman from 100,000 A.D., an era in which fashion apparently runs to green swimsuits. Dubbed “Miss Universe” by the newspapers, her exploits make Captain Comet seem old hat. “She acts like a true champion of humanity — and yet somehow I don’t trust her!” the Man of Destiny thinks. “Or am I giving vent to jealousy? I wonder…” It’s the same reaction the overshadowed Scarlet Speedster would have in another Broome story, The Mystery of the Elongated Man , in The Flash ...

This month’s adventure reaches back to “long, long ago,” when Zus, Merkry, Hurkles, and other Olympian rulers left Earth in a “sky vessel,” traveling in suspended animation and awakening one at a time, at half-century intervals, to search for true immortality. “Someday ... somewhere in the universe, the secret of immortality will be discovered!,” says Zus. By extending their lives indefinitely through hibernation, these proto-gods intend to acquire it. Encountering their ship in Strange Adventures 19 (April 1952), Captain Comet finds Merkry, in his winged helmet, testing an alien scientist’s claim of immortality by killing him with a “letho-ray.” Oh well. Back to the drawing board, as they say. In a space chase, Comet radios to demand that the murderous would-be deities surrender to face justice, but they only laugh at him. “He wants to put Zus on trial!,” the leader says. “Stand aside — while I destroy that young meddler with my own special brand of death.” Dodging Zus’...

Strange Adventures 10 finished Captain Comet's two-part origin and launched him on his first adventure. Captain Comet blazed the trail in a feature that looked much more like 1960 than 1940. The sleek elegance of Carmine Infantino’s art was emergent. It would be contemporary, clean-lined and sunlit, as optimistic and reassuring as the stories by John Broome. Infantino made the impossible seem pleasantly plausible, somehow putting the future within easy reach. “The mature Infantino drew everything — a hidden city of scientific gorillas, a harlequin committing crimes with toys, Flash strapped to a giant boomerang — as if he believed absolutely in its existence,” observed Gerard Jones and Will Jacobs in their excellent book The Comic Book Heroes. “But Infantino’s art could so fully evoke the quiet of a small-town afternoon or the cool of a shaded lawn that readers could forgive even plots full of beatniks, schoolteachers and singing idols.” The equally capable ...