There are a number of parallels between Fred Hoyle's 1957 The Black Cloud and the later Adventure Comics 352 & 353, from 1967.
Hoyle was a British astrophysicist who worked on the creation of elements within stars. He coined the term "the big bang", while rejecting it in favour of a steady state theory. He also proposed panspermia as an origin of life on Earth. He had a number of interesting positions stating on one of them, "it is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right".
While this is the classic introduction of the Fatal Five, the plot of Adventure 352 & 353, involves both heroes and villains combining to defeat the threat of a "large, cloud like object at the edge of the Outer Cosmos."
The Black Cloud includes the governments of Earth combining to defeat the threat of a large cloud that has rapidly approached our Sun, blocking its light from Earth.
That's actually more of a resultant action in the book. The plot of the Black Cloud is far more involved in the grouping together of scientists to help prepare Earth for the approaching cloud. Hoyle's work, allowed him to describe some basic maths to the reader along the way, and there's a lot more suspense in building up the approach.
The why of the Cloud's approach is nicely set up with some clues. When the Cloud doesn't act the way they predicted, the scientists make some further discoveries leading to the government attack, that forms much of the Adventure Comics plot.
In Adventure 352, a United Planets early warning station first detects the Sun Eater. In the Black Cloud, an astronomer, working with plates taken from an observatory, makes the discovery.
The information is passed to a small group of astronomers to verify and identify the cloud. That group forms the core of the central characters who will help prepare the Earth and are in place form a secure location, for later events.
This is much as it is in Adventure, where the information is passed to the small group of Legionnaires, who act upon it.
One panel in Adventure 352 that always struck me as odd was the observer stating that "the whole galaxy would be wiped out!" There's anywhere from 100 to 400 billion stars in the galaxy, and the Sun Eater is attacking one at a time. For this to work, it would need to be a very hungry, quick travelling Sun Eater with an insatiable appetite. Superboy tells the others that the Sun Eater has been seen "swallowing suns, star systems, and sometimes entire galaxies". But that's not really the Sun Eater we get, which is tackling suns one at a time, over the course of at least three days.
But this makes more sense having read The Black Cloud. A fair portion of the book is about the approach of the Cloud, and the impact it makes in approaching and orbiting the sun. Along the way, from the perspective of those on Earth, it begins to blot out the other stars in the sky, eventually including our own. For the observer, the effect in the sky is the Cloud devouring the galaxy. The size and purpose of the Black Cloud matches what we see in Adventure, and not the larger threat Superboy tells us it is.
With most of the Legion away in dimension QK-51, they have to recruit villains to help them. This is paralleled in the Black Cloud by the gathering together of a core group of scientists. Although one comes for a parallel US based research unit, the characters are mostly like-minded. The antagonism/ resistance comes from the governments and procedures they have to go through in order to take action. Working at the Cambridge Institute of Astronomy gave Hoyle an inside look at the politics of scientific establishments and their relationships with government bodies.
The growing threat of the cloud as Earth's inhabitants are forced to take action is a main plotline in the novel. The impact and death toll are also covered, although in lesser detail as the main characters are located in a secure location, having prepared for the worst. Or rather, what they anticipated would be the worst. In Adventure, the heroes have already identified it. Superboy has shown its impact on another star. They heroes (and villains) know they have to stop it. While covering the same ground, this provides the more action-orientated take on the novel, that the Legion comic aims for.
Another parallel is illustrated as the Legion look for assistance to stop the Sun Eater, only to face rejection. In The Black Cloud, numerous governments have their own response. Some organisations do work together, but there is not a united front from all nations. In order to secure their headquarters, and prepare for life within the cloud, the main characters essentially hoodwink their own government, as it has its own priorities. The resources, and personnel, are hard won.
Tharok, in the absence of Brainiac 5 (that would have been a conflict alongside the rest of the Five being at each other's throats), takes command of the group. His advanced computer mind gives them a plan of action. There's a similarly strong scientific minded character in The Black Cloud, Kinglsey, who becomes the leader of that group. Like many central characters, he's incredibly well versed in the both the writer's knowledge and research for the book. Kingsley is the key figure in organising the group's approach and its plans of action.
Tharok's plan is to split the Sun Eater into smaller parts, using the Persuader's axe. That done, the remaining heroes and villains (Tharok conveniently staying back to "supervise") would individually confront part of the cloud.
The Black Cloud is essentially a single organism. But the book makes a point in telling us that this is due to the nature of how parts of it communicate with each other. It's actually composed of smaller parts, which have become a whole. The Cloud has also previously shot out energy globules, one of which impacted on the moon, also reminiscent of the sub parts seen in Adventure.
The speed of the Black Cloud becomes a life-or-death issue for the scientists. It slows around the sun, blocking light from it to the Earth, even as the cloud reaches out to cause further havoc in the solar system and Earth's atmosphere. The reader is reminded of the ongoing realisation that the Cloud was coming straight for the sun in the first place. If the Cloud does not move on, then life on Earth is essentially over.
As their attempts to use radio to contact others on Earth is met with designed resistance, the scientists realise that the Black Cloud contains intelligence. In Adventure, the cloud also acts intelligently. It makes a preference to follow Sun Boy's alternate energy source; it knows to blast Superboy with energy from red suns it has encountered; it retreats from Validus and grows cloud tendrils around Mano.
The direct physical confrontation of the Five and the Legion against the Sun Eater is a very small part of The Black Cloud. But the direct, action based part of the book is the part that the Legion story is formed around. Having established contact with the Cloud, the scientists learn the basis of it's intelligence and structure (those mini clouds that the Persuader created). They learn why it reacted to the radio transmissions, as it interferes with its own internal communication, and the Earth is essentially in the cloud. Cosmic Boy's magnetic impact on the electrical powered plasm of the Sun Eater follows a similar path. The Cloud's reaction to energy at those levels directed at it, prompts a response, much like the Sun Eater's responsive blast, when Ferro Lad discovers the secret to defeat it.
The scientists also learn from the Cloud that it's network would be further vulnerable to a large, similar energy source detonated within it. Ferro Lad discovers this by entering it, while the cloud is shares information openly with the scientists, and the governments behind them in the book. This information is what prompts the United States and Soviet Union to launch missiles at The Black Cloud designed to penetrate its electrical shields and destroy it, at it's centre.
The scientists inform the Cloud, the attack fails, and the missiles are sent back close to their points of origin.
The use of an explosion within the cloud is exactly how the Legion and the Fatal Five defeat the Sun Eater: a bomb detonated at its centre.
In The Black Cloud the scientists helped the Cloud make sure the attack would not succeed. They feared the outcome of its success as much as it's failure, with an Earth trapped and doomed within the remnants of the Cloud. But, by positioning themselves against their governments, and becoming less and less willing to share access to the Cloud, the scientists become the villains in the eyes of the military and the politicians.
At one point, also leading to the missile attack, Kingsley uses his access to the Cloud as a threat, informing them that he could obliterate a continent if they tried to remove the scientists from their installation. His threat, his leadership and coldly scientific approach make him the Tharok of the book, even as he is its hero. Kingsley even remarks on him having to become more dictator like.
It is revealed that the Cloud is one of a number. While it would have stayed to replenish its energy stores around our sun, it is set to depart. There are other clouds, and greater mysteries. A cloud has vanished two light years away, on the cusp of contact with an intelligence greater than even theirs. Having been contacted by mankind, it endeavours to minimise the disruption of its departure.
Kinglsey's connections to Tharok continue further. Following the failed attack, and with the cloud set to depart, Kingsley develops a way of receiving vast amounts of information from it.
Kingsley helps to build a device to The Cloud's specifications. The use of alien knowledge to build devices would be developed in Hoyle's 1962 A For Andromeda and in Carl Sagan's later Contact, not forgetting 1955's This Island Earth.
Once built, the device imbues the wearer with alien knowledge. It tries to coexist with the considerable earth-bound information Kingsley already has, and would change his outlook, possibly at the cost of his humanity. This isn't far removed from the origin of Tharok, his organic half becoming one with a computerised, alien half. Not to mention the later plot thread, where he is at odds with his human and android half.
We don't get to find out the full impact of this knowledge on Kingsley. In another parallel with the Adventure 352/353 story, the transference kills him. Having set up the organisation, planning and theories that enable mankind to communicate with the Cloud, Kinglsey sacrifices himself for more knowledge.
With the governments of Earth opposed to Kingsley and his team's actions, his death unites them together with them willing to believe he had taken over command by himself. It allows for closure for them, from the Cloud and for the survivors of the locations targeted by the returning missiles. We never get a story from a survivor of the Fatal Five, who discovers that the Legion helped form them.
There's a short framing device in the novel, where a character is left the code that Kingsley used to contact The Black Cloud. Adventure 353 leaves us with a similar tantalising prospect of the fate of The Fatal Five as they disappear, fighting each other.
On Hoyle, I remember hearing about the controversy around a 1974 Nobel Prize, where Jocelyn Bell, the discoverer of pulsars, wasn't given the prize for it, while her supervisor, who had been resistant at times to the work, was. Hoyle had stated he felt Bell should have been included. Hoyle was snubbed for a later prize, on which he had published pioneering work. Just the sort of petty internal politics that Hoyle pointed out in his science fiction.
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