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I wanted to warn you. I had to. If you'd known me, you knew that. There will be controversy and outrage, and a lot of money to be made, but if you're searching outer space for a rogue ball of glowing ice crystals with a trademark tail, you're looking in the wrong direction. The Comet is me. I am a comic book character, or at least, I used to be. To read me is to know me, to understand me. To reread is to love me. Unlike other heroes who were part of corporate teams and publishing leagues, I was alone in my own private universe, and yours, but if you weren't alive and reading more than half a century ago, you have no idea who I am. But you will. I first appeared following World War II. To cash in on the ‘superhero' craze? I've long stopped pondering who created me and why, but one thing I'm sure of: my creator believed in me. It wasn't just about the money. I was never in color, never mainstream. The Comet was strictly black and white underground, locked deep in the bowels of a disreputable literature from which I thought there was no escape. Little did I know. I was originated as Frank Lynch, a young biologist obsessed with the beginning of life on earth, and my never-ending love for Mary, my beautiful assistant. Our relationship was as pure as our Aristotle–inspired science. Then came that day… “When I get back from my little trip,” I pleaded. “What do you say to ‘the heck with Plato'?” “Oh, dear Plato,” she said with a daring twinkle in her eye. “We'll kiss him good-bye and put him to bed.” My spirit soared. My spine stiffened. I was ready to travel back to the dawn of creation. The machine I invented looked more Picasso-ish than HG Wells-like. . Borrowing money I did not have on credit I did not deserve, I persevered to perfect the technology. As I entered and sat at the controls, I realized that I would arrive in the past awash in debt. Such was the future of Man? I fastened every zipper on my protective suit, but before I put on my helmet. “Don't worry,” I told my lovely Mary as I embraced her, holding her tight as if it would be for the final time. “Everything has been perfectly programmed.” “But if you don't come back,” she said, near tears. “It'll be as if you never existed. I'll be left without even a memory of you.” The Theory of Time/Space Continuum: Going back in time deletes all evidence of one's existence. Returning to the present replenishes one's complete history. But if you get stuck back there, then it's as if you had never been born. It's time's way of keeping things even. No way an invading entity from the past can take the original time traveler's place. As I'd be traversing eons, long before humanity ever existed, I had nothing to worry about. Our timeless love would triumph over all. A different man would not be coming back. Or so I thought. I pulled down my visor and set the program for a ten million year trek that would take mere minutes to complete. With the pulling of the main lever, a flash of energy engulfed me and my machine and I was going, going, going gone---all around me light burned brightly. I imagined myself inside a meteorite flaming in the atmosphere. Slowly the intense glare began to dim, but I felt no sensation of speed. I had gone nowhere to no-when. A calm overcame me; cautiously I stepped out, my footprints the first on earth, in the solar system, perhaps in all the universe. The sight of the new world on the verge of life was far beyond what I could have imagined. Volcanic steam rose from an endless tract of fresh fissures. Water vapor, the stuff of evolution, danced in the air. As did success. A myriad of instruments recorded the data. I had captured the very beginning of biology. The future was mine! Suddenly I staggered, overwhelmed by an unknown power penetrating my suit, my body, my very soul…from where? I looked up…a gigantic comet blazed across the boiling sky! My protective clothing decayed in tatters. I leapt back into the machine and pulled the reverse lever. No noise. No vibration. Again the energy lit up all around me. I thought only of Mary and of knowing her for the first time, counting the seconds until I'd be back with her. But I did not return to my laboratory. Instead I found myself on the floor of a factory. My miraculous machine vanished before my disbelieving eyes. I ran out of the building to discover that it was the exact place my laboratory should have been, but wasn't. The unthinkable had occurred. Radiation from the comet had somehow changed my molecular make-up. I had become a different man. All evidence of who I had been was forever deleted in the time-space continuum! But if I was no longer Frank Lynch, who was I? I had to find my Mary, a Mary who had never known me. I found shoes and clothes in a dumpster and set out towards the center of the city. Night fell. So did my hopes. I was just about to give up when I heard… “EEK! Help me!” I ran to the sound and found a helpless, old lady being accosted by four thugs. “Leave her alone!” I ordered them. The four turned on me. Instantly my heart began to race. Was this new man I had become a gutless coward? Then I felt it, a power exploding inside my body. My every muscle seemed to grow and expand. I was evolving…into what? From out of my body came an extension of my spine, something growing out of my lower back…a tail! The thing was totally in my control, as flexible and prehensile as a tentacle or as hard and stiff as a lance. The armed quartet did not stand a chance. A whip of my tail floored two of them and I knocked the second pair silly with a blow from each of my hard-muscled fists. As I stood over their hapless forms writhing in pain, I calmed down. My tail receded back into my body and my muscles devolved to normal. A superhero had been born. I got a job as a lowly janitor and made my own costume to wear under my clothes. When trouble arose, my heartbeat would unleash… THE COMET! (AKA “The Guy with the Tail”) Finally I found Mary working at a corporate laboratory. Surely she would remember something about me. Hopefully her life was still Platonic. If I could somehow awaken a memory of me lost in time. But as I approached her, my heart began beating at a feverish pace. And then… Before she spotted me I ran from her in total humiliation, my tail between my legs. Readers couldn't help but fantasize. Imagine what would happen if I kissed Mary? My racing heart---and if I held her only in my arms? Kiss Plato good-bye! I only wanted to be myself—Frank Lynch, the dedicated, idealistic biologist and I couldn't be. Literally a nobody, I could only be The Comet! And so I was. My story became a cult favorite. I was believed in. Sales increased as I confronted and conquered super-villains, mad scientists, murderous mobsters and evil space aliens. Would I soon go to full color? From underground to mainstream? My creator had an eternal ambition. Paper was impermanent. Burn every comic in the world for a single frame of film! Talks began for a black and white serial to run weekly in theaters. Yes, The Comet is coming! No. I was burnt to a crisp by a book. “The Seduction of the Innocent,” published more than half a century ago, attacked comic book publishers and launched a Senate sub-committee to save American children from the unspeakable damnation of juvenile delinquency. The newly established Comics Code Authority sought out a scapegoat. Not one of the bestselling caped heroes—they went after me. “A non-too-subtle sex deviant,” the Authority called me. “Perversion of the art,” the Concerned Parents Committee chimed in. I still had my fans who titled me “The Heroic Libido.” Within a month I was officially condemned. My last issue never hit the stands. Every copy was burned and the print plates destroyed. The Comet was gone not to dustbin of sub-cultural literature, but to the most desolate, desperate, emptiest place in all the universe-- Comic Book Superhero Limbo. I was not alone. The Flash, Green Lantern, The Human Torch, The Sub-Mariner and a gaggle of lesser known second tier characters, victims of the increased cost of paper and the rise of television, languished in misery, waiting, waiting, waiting… Captain Marvel himself was there, courtesy of Superman's lawyers who charged Marvel's creator with copyright infringement. Waiting, waiting, waiting…to be believed in! One by one, the ‘Golden Age' superheroes got the call and back they were in print, glorious full color. Captain Marvel caught the ultimate break and reappeared…on television! The Comet was alone. The years passed. The New Millennium came. The Internet arrived. Graphic novels became the industry's big moneymakers. Blood and gore, sex and profanity, undreamt of, undared of by the original comic book creators, were the selling points of the genre's future. Is that what the world had come to believe in? Or was it just about the money? Didn't anybody miss Frank Lynch, that underground black and white “every man” who believed that life was an adventure in discovery. He was an obsessed “finder-outer”! And Oh, did he want to discover….Mary! Frank Lynch had an identity and a humanity. The Comet had neither. The man he had sprung from had been erased from creation and how human could any man be if the moment his heart starts racing, a tail shoots out of his pants? The Comet lived an adventure of discovery that ended abruptly before he could find out. More than anything else in the universe, except Mary, The Comet wanted to find who and why he was and never did. Mainstream comic book heroes dream in four-color; the trait is imprinted with panels and word balloons. Underground superheroes fantasize in black and white and our wishes are indelible. I wished for a new, young, idealistic creator who would rescue me from limbo and finish my story with all the world reading. At long last, The Comet would discover his true self. There are things that only happen in comic books; there are also things that only happen to comic books. One Saturday morning at a neighborhood flea market, a middle-aged, overweight, well-dressed gentleman was leafing through a bin of old magazines and comic books when he came upon one of my few remaining issues not yet completely decomposed in landfills from coast to coast. He read me, he reread me, and then he bought me. Turns out he was Legally, my copyright had expired. My rights were free. Greased by investment from the most unlikely of sources, the creative wheels of the industry began inexorably churning. The money believed in me. Gone were my black and white underground days, my reimagining would be in full, glorious color, my new image crafted by the finest artists in the business. And not just on the page. T-Shirts, Computer Games, Adult Toys, a live-action straight-to-DVD! Not just a single episode…a full-blown series! I'll be played by a top studio stud and CGI F/X would bring my obscenely muscled body and phallic tail to vibrating life! The Comet was coming, but not as a Saturday morning cartoon. “The Guy with the Tail” is back as the very first comic book superhero…porn star! “Kiss Plato good-bye!” Had the pornography market been my fate all along? Did my creator secretly imbed his fantasies in me with the very first black and white ink drawing? “You want a piece of tail, baby?” says the actor playing me. “I've got one longer and harder than you ever dreamed of.” Not me. That's the money talking! I'm sorry. I never wanted any of this to happen. Yes, I admit wanting to be again, but I never thought… Performing carnal acts with people of all ages, colors, sizes and shapes…Were the dogs and cats on strike? Better to have been recycled and wound up as a cushion for somebody's lawn chair. The money believed in me. That I could make YOU believe in The Comet! It's not that I regret being exploited. I always had been. That's the business. I'm going to be played, watched, ogled, feared, desired, loved and hated all over the world by an audience who doesn't even know me because… Nobody's reading me. I had finally found myself. I was designed to follow the will of my creator. I always had been. I ache, above all, in the throes of my latest erotic adventure, to know… about those who buy me…every pair of gawking eyes and racing hearts reveling at the sight and the power of The Comet… What do you believe in?
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