Gold Nuggets: The Comet!

The Obscure Adventures of Comics' Greatest Generation!

"What has been will be again, what has been done
will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
-Ecclesiastes 1, verse 9

When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created Cyclops for their 1963 X-Men title, you'd think a character who shoots destructive eye-beams through a protective visor was something truly unique in the "nothing new under the sun" world of comic book superheroes.

Actually, MLJ Magazines (later known as Archie Comics) beat Stan and Jack to the punch more than 23 years earlier with a character named The Comet, who made his debut in Pep Comics #1 (1940). 

Written and drawn by future Plastic Man creator Jack Cole, the Comet was actually scientist John Dickering, whose repeated injections of a mysterious gas gave him lighter-than-air leaping ability (yay!) and eyebeams that could completely disintegrate anything (yikes!). Fortunately, Dickering designed a special visor made of glass to block his deadly optic rays (much like the ruby-quartz visor of Cyclops) and decided to use his powers to benefit humanity.

Like most Golden Agers, The Comet had a brusk, no-nonsense way of dealing with bad guys, as this little scene illustrates:

(click on the panels for a larger view)

However, that pales in comparison to the story's thrilling climax, as a vengeful Comet raises his visor wide open to melt the thugs into nothingness!

WHEW!  Justice....Golden Age Style! Ironically from the guy best known for the wacky and whimsical adventures of Plastic Man!

Comments

[Siskoid]

That is SADISTIC! Love it.

And once again, Stan the Man is shown to have stolen an idea. Not since I discovered Fly-Man have my beliefs been so shaken to their core.

[Mark Engblom]

Ah, but the magic of Stan wasn't so much the ideas that were "amalgamated" into new characters, but the bombastic, utterly unique way in which he brought them to life through his scripting. Instead of a one-dimensional figure of hammering wrath (like the Comet), Stan (in his wisdom) made Cyclops a more conflicted, tragic figure...which was pretty new back in 1963. In today's world of wall-to-wall angst in comic books, it's easy to forget that.

"Fly-Man", huh? I vaguely remember that having some connection to the Spider-Man character. Care to give me a capsule summary (or link) to the Fly-Man/Spidey connection? I'd appreciate that.

[Siskoid]

I'm being a bit facetious. Fly-Man is really the Fly (he actually went by Fly-Man in one version). The Fly, well, you know the Fly. He's from the same stock as The Comet (Archie/Blue Ribbon/Impact).

I just called him Fly-Man here because of the Stan Lee interview about his creation of Spider-Man ("and then I thought, Mosquito-Man? Noooo. Fly-Man? Nooooo. And then I thought, Spider-Man, yeah...") which we commonly refer to in my circle.

And of course, I agree about Stan Lee's ability to reshape those ideas into something new and exciting. The success of his creations (as opposed to that of the memes he took them from) speaks for itself.