Dan is the best!
It’s the “Comps as layers have layer eyeballs” I was referring to. What I didnt realize was programmatically I can call a comp as a layer and access the properties that way.
Something like this works.
var theComp = app.project.item(i)
for(var k=1; k<=theComp.numLayers; k++) {
var theLayer = theComp.layer(k)
if(theLayer.name==”myCompAsALayer”) {
theLayer.enabled=false;
}
}