The Comet (Archie)

The Comet
Panel from Pep Comics #6. Art by Jack Cole.
Publication information
Publisher	MLJ (Archie Comics)
First appearance	Pep Comics #1 (January 1940)
Created by	Jack Cole
In-story information
Alter ego	John Dickering
Team affiliations	Mighty Crusaders
Abilities	"Dissolvo-vision" Flight (originally merely superhuman leaps)

The Comet is a fictional character that first appeared in Pep Comics #1 in January, 1940. Possibly the first superhero killed in the line of duty, he died in issue #17 (July, 1941), which also introduced his brother, a brutal hero called the Hangman.

In Pep #1, in a story drawn by Jack Cole, young scientist John Dickering has discovered a gas fifty times lighter than hydrogen. By injecting small doses of it into his bloodstream, he is able to make great leaps through the air. After a number of injections, twin beams come from Dickering's eyes and when he crosses the beams, whatever he is looking at disintegrates. He makes a glass shield (visor) as that is the only thing his beams will not disintegrate, a weakness often used against him from the first story onwards. In the second story, tied up and unable to raise his visor to save himself, he smashes it against a rock, breaking the glass. Realising that such a discovery could wreck humanity, Dickering destroys the formula for the gas and uses his powers to benefit humanity.

Despite the first page blurb, in the first story, Dickering flies rather than floats/jumps. In the first story alone, he callously disintegrates 3 gangsters and drops one to certain death. He kills more in Pep #2. At the start of issue 3, we find the police know he is Dickering but want him on the force rather than trying to stop his vigilantism. In that story, he comes under the hypnotic control of Doc Zadar and causes widespread destruction while Zadar robs places. The Comet helps a young reporter named Thelma Gordon and in her newspaper she reports all the good things that The Comet does to get him back in the public's good graces. In Pep #7, the gas wears off so Dickering loses his powers and he discovers he can modify his gas intake, rendering him human when he wants, so he can appear in public without fear of destroying people with his disintegration vision.

Despite his death in 1941, Archie used the character again (possibly to renew copyright and ownership of the character) over twenty years later as part of their Mighty Comics superhero line in the 1960s and their Red Circle Comics superhero titles in the 1980s. He was revived with a new costume and extraterrestrial origins as a love interest for Fly Girl in Adventures of the Fly #30 (October, 1964). Thereafter, he became a member of the Mighty Crusaders beginning in Fly Man #31. His origin was repeated and expanded in The Mighty Crusaders #2 (1966), as well as in the later Red Circle Comics-published truncated mini-series The Comet (October–December, 1983).