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.
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 appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1940 and was adapted as the basis of the 20th Century Fox film.
Destination Doom! features robots who are “the former slaves of an ancient human race” and who’ve decided to turn the tables. That’s the premise from which Gold Key’s Magnus Robot Fighter would spring in the Silver Age (not to mention the Terminator movies).
appeared in 1963.
A somewhat cowardly government forbids Captain Comet from resisting the aliens, proclaiming that one average man will be sacrificed to save the Earth. The hero determines that the “average” guy must be Adam Blake, and uses his telekinetic powers to force that result on a lottery of volunteers.
“These tactics may not be entirely ethical — but I can’t risk being chosen!” Captain Comet muses, with Lone Ranger-like attention to normative nuance.
In this adventure, Comet’s abilities are expanded to include the power of generating a personal force field.
The story is one of the early iterations of what would quickly become a cliché in superhero science fiction stories — the alien invaders who mistake a Superman for an ordinary human being, and abort their invasion plans in fright.
The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Phantom, the Jaguar, and many others would run into precisely the same situation, but the good captain got there ahead of them all.
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