TOMMY TOMORROW

Real Name: Kamandi Blank

Class: Human

Occupation: Planeteer

Group Affiliation: Planeteers

Known Relatives: Buddy Blank (grandfather, deceased)

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Mobile throughout the galaxy, 21st Century

First Appearance: Real Fact Comics #6 (January, 1947)

Powers: Tommy Tomorrow was armed with a raygun and traveled in the spacecraft Ace of Space.

History(Action Comics I #255) - Tommy was a young orphan raised in a space orphanage located in a domed city on an asteroid. From a young age he showed scientific ingenuity and was a prodigy at inventing things.  Supergirl, a hero from the past, was training using her powers, and broke through the time-barrier, ending up in the 21st Century. She witnessed a U.S. space probe from her own time crash through the asteroid city’s glass dome, and used her heat-vision to repair the damage. She flew to Tommy’s orphanage to save the kids from the falling probe, but Tommy used his latest invention, an anti-gravity gun, to deflect it. Supergirl had the misfortune to wander near a kryptonite meteor, and as it sapped her powers she collapsed into a nearby bush. Tommy took his friend Jik out to show him more of his latest inventions, and he used a changer ray to turn the kryptonite into ice, unwittingly saving Supergirl’s life. Supergirl was grateful and wanted to repay Tommy so she flew overhead, observing the boys. They ran into a large beast of prey, but Tommy handled it with a hypno-gun, and when they wandered into quicksand Tommy extricated them with his sky hook, and Supergirl realized she didn’t need to save Tommy, who was great at getting himself into and out of danger. The headmaster of the orphanage told Tommy a famous scientist and his wife wanted to adopt the boy with the best scientific mind, and he’d recommended Tommy. The orphan was overjoyed, and Supergirl finally got to pay him back by saving the scientist and his wife, whose ship had gotten trapped in a cluster of mirror meteors. Tommy was overjoyed to meet his adoptive parents, and took their last name as Tommy Tomorrow. Supergirl returned to her own time to write about meeting Tommy tomorrow in her diary.

(Action Comics I #226) - Space bandit Dark Starr and his crew hijacked the ship of adwriter Al Todd, and had him change the wording of an asteroid billboard to direct people looking for spacecraft service to the Green Asteroid, the base of the bandits. Starr froze Todd solid with a gun so he couldn't rat him out to the Planeteers, and returned to the Green Asteroid, waiting to rob anyone coming looking to service their craft. Tommy Tomorrow and Captain Brent Wood found Todd's frozen body, and brought him to the hospital, but had no idea why he was attacked. Tommy carried out Todd's other signwriting missions, using a vacuum to make an ad in Saturn's rings and forming asteroids into a lettered ad among other assignments. He realized Al's add used red spray meant for other ads on the billboard for the Green Asteroid, and deduced Dark Starr's scheme. He found the space bandit camp and rounded them up.

(Action Comics I #227) - Tommy and his commandant went over the latest batch of Planeteer recruits, and were greeted by Jerry Hale, the first woman to apply. The commandant said he wouldn't stand for it, but she pointed out that there was nothing in the Planeteers charter that said women couldn't join, and the commandant admitted he never thought any would apply. Tommy took her on the Planeteer test flight to gauge her skills, and she effortlessly made her way past space icicles, a space mirage, a space hurricane and an electric rainbow, among other obstacles. They landed on the asteroid Little Earth at the end of the course, and Tommy said she'd passed with flying colors. She admitted that she wasn't really interested in being a Planeteer. Her father ran a space ferry from Earth to Little Earth, and she learned to fly from him. She only went on the recruitment drive to reach Little Earth to retrieve a valuable cargo her father once had to dump when his engine failed. Tommy helped her retrieve the treasure, undoing the only blemish on her father's records. Her performance changed the commandant's mind about women, and he decided to start a Girls' Corps of Planeteers, while Tommy found he couldn't get Jerry out of his head.

(Action Comics I #228) - Tommy and Brent went to an asteroid to break up the racket of the Dream Palace, where people paid to have movies beamed into their heads. The racketeers escaped, and Tommy smashed their equipment, chiding the customers for wasting their time on fantasies. Brent arrested the customers, and Tommy tracked the Dream Studio hq down on the Wayward Asteroid. The crooks caught Tommy and forced him to act in one of their dream movies, where Tommy would be undone by bandit "Moon" Murdock. The final scene would have "Moon," played by a robot, beat Tommy senseless, but he fled to another set, a dream of big-game hunting, and used the set's ray gun to disable the robot and bring the racketeers in.

(Action Comics I #229) - Brent and Tommy went on a space mission, and Tommy came down with a case of space fever, making him see rainbow halos on everything. A doctor treated him, and instructed him to drink milk every hour for three days to return to good health. The Planeteer chief sent Tommy and Brent on the yearly mission of planting Planeteer flags at outposts of the worlds they defended as required by intergalactic law, and Tommy hooked up a tanker of milk to their craft. A small asteroid punctured the tank, and the milk soon drained out. In desperation Tommy and Brent went to a Planeteer protected world that was home to a bull-like alien, and after subduing it they milked it. When that milk ran out they punctured the milkweed cactus on Blue World, and on another planet they found a crashed spaceship with canned milk inside. They continued their mission, but no other planets had milk substitutes, so Tommy flew back to where the asteroid punctured their ship, remembering that the spilled milk would be frozen in space, and he recovered enough to cure his space fever.

(Action Comics I #230) - Brent and Tommy were given a temporary assignment of running the Space Lost & Found Dept., with Brent acting as dispatcher and Tommy recovering lost items. The Space Motel lost it's meteor signpost, which Tommy found had been drawn to the horseshoe asteroid by magnetic force, and he solved the problem by blasting the asteroid with atomic torpedoes. An anonymous caller reported a glimmer at the bottom of the blue asteroid's lake, and Tommy recovered giant glasses, wondering if the asteroid was once home to a race of giants. Other calls directed him to a giant button, wristwatch and ring. At Planeteers Headquarters the Planeteers assembled a replica of a giant that may have once lived on the blue asteroid. The giant accoutrements were planted by space bandits, who foresaw that the Planeteers would use them to make a replica, and when placed in proximity to each other they formed a beam of super-light that penetrated Planeteers Headquarters and allowed the bandits to spy on them. The Planeteers were planning a space run to transport valuable materials, and the bandits tried to ambush them. Tommy expected the bandits and arrested them. Their undoing was scaling the ring and wristwatch differently, and Tommy told his commandant he knew it was a ruse because no being had ever existed with one hand larger than the other.

(Action Comics I #231) - Space-TV announced the nominees for the Academy Awards of Space, a celebration of space-feats by Planeteers. Tommy Tomorrow was nominated for a mercy mission delivering spacecillin to an offplanet colony best by plague, saving Earth from a stray comet by blowing it up with an H-bomb, as well as most space-criminals captured. Notorious crimeboss Planet Pete told his gang he;'d ruin Tommy's big night by causing him to foul up, which would result in the Academy awarding him a boner certificate and getting demoted. Pete removed signs indicating a condemned ship being wrecked, and when Tommy saw the ship on fire he put it out. The wreckers were initially angry, but Tommy pointed out a valuable jewel on the ship he'd spotted from space, and they thanked him. Pete's next trap was a smokescreen around a movie set, obscuring the view so Tommy only saw a Dinomonster threatening an actress, and paralyzed it with his raygun. The crew chided him, but Tommy pointed out that the tame Dinomonster was headed towards a radioactive lake that would have given the actress radiation burns. Pete was in a huff about being foiled, and covered a robot in soot so Tommy would mistake it for human and prevent it from mining a lightning crater. Tommy made it up to the prospector by using the robot as a shield from the lightning and recovering the mines' jewels himself. Tommy realized someone was playing him, and after identifying Planet Pete and his gang, he tracked them down and arrested him. Tommy received his rewards, and handed Pete his very own boner certificate for trying to outwit him.

Comments: Created by Jack Schiff, George Kashdan, Bernie Breslauer, Virgil Finlay, and Howard Sherman.

Tommy Tomorrow received a profile in Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #24.

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