Strange Adventures #9
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeStrange Adventures #9 is the debut issue of Captain Comet, one of the very few costumed superheroes published anywhere during the 'Atomic Age' gap between DC's Golden Age and the Silver Age proper — a period when fewer than a dozen short-lived hero characters were introduced across the entire industry. The character of Adam Blake is widely cited as the first mainstream comic-book hero explicitly framed as a mutant: a human being born a hundred thousand years ahead of his evolutionary time, with telepathy, telekinesis, and superhuman intellect triggered by cosmic radiation at birth — a concept that predated Marvel's X-Men franchise by over a decade. Sitting at the intersection of superhero storytelling and post-war science-fiction anxiety, the issue helped establish that a superhero narrative could be structured around hard-SF ideas of human evolution and extraterrestrial threat rather than mythic strength or magic. Captain Comet's run through Strange Adventures #49 (1954) also made him, arguably, the last recurring superhero of DC's pre-Silver Age output, giving this debut issue a unique bracket position in the publisher's publishing history.
In "Push-Button Paradise," college professor Don Walker finds himself at the center of a quiet crisis when an alien scheme begins to unravel the very foundation of human survival—by convincing people to stop growing food. As the planet’s population slowly turns away from farming, Don must uncover the truth behind the alien manipulation before civilization collapses.
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The issue was edited by Julius Schwartz — whose masthead credit was listed as Whitney Ellsworth, though Schwartz was the actual working editor, as confirmed by DC's own editorial records — a longtime science-fiction literary agent who had represented authors such as Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft before joining DC. Schwartz conceived Captain Comet partly as a comics adaptation of the pulp-fiction hero Captain Future, whose publisher had included Schwartz's former partner Mort Weisinger; writer John Broome scripted the 10-page origin under the pen name 'Edgar Ray Merritt,' and Carmine Infantino penciled the story, with inking attributed to Bernard Sachs (though at least one indexer has proposed Frank Giacoia as a possible inker). The issue went on sale April 30, 1951, and the Captain Comet debut story was immediately continued as a two-parter in Strange Adventures #10 — an unusual editorial choice for an anthology format that signaled editorial confidence in the new character from the outset.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance and complete origin of Captain Comet (Adam Blake), cover-dated June 1951, on sale April 30, 1951, in the 10-page lead story 'The Origin of Captain Comet.'
- Captain Comet is framed as a mutant — 'born a hundred thousand years before his time' — making him one of the earliest, if not the first, mainstream comic-book superhero explicitly defined as a product of human genetic mutation.
- Creative team: editor Julius Schwartz (credited on indicia as Whitney Ellsworth), writer John Broome (scripting under the alias 'Edgar Ray Merritt'), penciler Carmine Infantino, and inker Bernard Sachs — with credits confirmed from Schwartz's editorial records provided to DC's Grand Comics Database indexers.
- The cover of the issue was drawn by Carmine Infantino; interior art across the anthology's other stories was contributed by Murphy Anderson (who drew 'The Exile of Space'), Gil Kane, and Alex Toth.
- Captain Comet's debut was structured as a two-parter: the origin story here was directly continued in Strange Adventures #10 (July 1951) with 'The Air Bandits From Space.'
- The character was inspired by the pulp-fiction hero Captain Future, a deliberate creative choice by Schwartz, who had deep roots in the science-fiction pulp world as a former literary agent.
- Captain Tootsie, Rollo, Fatso, and Marybelle — listed in the catalog — appear not as editorial features but as characters in a one-page Tootsie Roll promotional comic-strip advertisement; Captain Tootsie was a recurring candy advertisement character created in 1943 by C.C. Beck, Pete Costanza, and Bill Schreider, and his sidekicks (including Rollo and, in some installments, Marybelle) appeared alongside him in these in-comic ads throughout DC titles of the early 1950s.
- Several Captain Comet stories from the 1950s Strange Adventures run were later reprinted in the trade anthology Mysteries in Space: The Best of DC Science Fiction Comics, edited by Michael Uslan and published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster in 1980.
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Reprints
Reprinted in House of Mystery #53 (1956), My Greatest Adventure #12 (1956), Challengers of the Unknown #18 (1961), House of Mystery #121 (1962), Pulp Fiction Library: Mystery in Space #[nn] (1999)
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