Atlas-Seaboard Month-By-Month - August 1975

August is a somewhat sad month. There are only two color comics from Atlas-Seaboard wearing an August date, and one is Vicki #4, the ongoing reprint of the old Tippy Teen Tower material. There is a single B&W magazine too. I'm going to discuss the second color comic, The Destructor.


THE DESTRUCTOR #4 is a weird, weird comic book. This series began with Atlas-Seaboard's most accomplished creative team (Goodwin, Ditko, Wood), but by the time this vintage urban crime/action/superhero series gets to its fourth issue only Sturdy Steve Ditko remains from the original trio. He's joined by Gerry Conway on scripts and Al Milgrom on inks. We find The Destructor hiding from Combine thugs in a cave somewhere in the Southwest. He disptaches them, but one is destroyed by a mysterious beam. Jay Hunter, our hero, looks up to see some very unusual Ditko creations, The Outcasts. They are The Eye, Kronus, and Sister Siren and they happen to be mutant freaks with telepathic abilities and more, and they are specifically looking for Jay Hunter, because like them he's an Outcast. Or so they say. Just like that, our story turns and the plot threads of the last three issues are largely forgotten as the Destructor is taken to the Secret Citadel. It's a haven built in the 1950's by disaffected folks looking to escape the dangerous world outside. They unwisely worked with an unscrupulous businessman who insists they use nuclear power in their underground city, which leaks radiation, infects their sixty or so children and creates the Outcasts. After killing the businessman and his associates, the parents live out their lives and now thirty years later in 1975, the irradiated progeny are in charge. They want Jay Hunter (strangely called "Jay Raven" in one panel) to join them to protect the city from outsiders. There's a bit of dramatic irony when in a typically strange Ditko panel the Outcasts appear quite devilish when an unaware Jay Hunter agrees to join them. Suddenly there's also a new underground nuclear test that irradiates the city again and our hero the Destructor, blending with the chemicals already in his blood and viola he can suddenly unleash power blasts from his fists. With this new talent, The Destructor agrees to battle for the Outcasts and the story ends. What happens next we'll never know, because this is the last issue of the series.

The Destructor was in many ways, Atlas-Seaboard's most accomplished series, but sadly by its finale it has become a bizarre shadow of itself. The hero has been contorted beyond recognition, and the story's twists and turns are well outside the limits established in the rather intriguing beginnings. I'm not sure The Destructor was my favorite Atlas book, but its fall was easily the most disappointing.

A bit more to come.

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