Atomic Reactions - Introducing Captain Atom!

Captain Atom was created in 1959 by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko with possible input by editor Pat Masulli. That debut story in Space Adventures #33  is a stunner really, compact and full of high-tech drama as an Air Force officer Captain Adam is locked into an armed rocket headed for Earth's orbit. The warhead explodes killing the officer, but then he returns to life, weirdly charged with radioactive might which allows him to fly and which makes him indestructible. He quickly dons a distinctive metal suit (at first colored blue than later gold) to save his colleagues from radiation poisoning. Re-named Captain Atom by President Eisenhower himself, he immediately serves his nation by fending off a rogue missile which poses a threat to the nation.

After this debut, Captain Atom balances between sci-fi and fantasy, offering stories with a hint of Cold War edge and at the same time flights of fancy about young boys riding space birds in their dreams. He battles alien threats, staving off an invasion or two and himself traveling to Venus to confront some very lovely space ladies. Captain Atom's powers fluctuate somewhat as the series progresses, with his top speed between 22, 000 miles per hour and the speed of light. He has complete control over his atomic structure and can pass through steel walls. His most visually arresting power is how he ignites part of his mass to generate thrust.

Two men in addition to President Eisenhower know Atom's secrets. Sgt. Gunner Goslin and General Eining. These two are important cast members in the earliest stories, but fade out of the stories as they roll along. Captain Atom reports to the President throughout the initial run, first Eisenhower, then a non-descript fill-in fellow and finally Kennedy.

Steve Ditko is the artist on most of the stories, but Rocke Mastroserio does pinch-hit on several. There is a distinct drop-off in quality when others than Gill and Ditko do the work, the series loses its distinctiveness, becoming a rather bland superhero outing. The series offered up a single Captain Atom story per issue, then two and finally three before it was cancelled after nine issues of Space Adventures.

But that was not the end.

Here are the covers for Space Adventures featuring Captain Atom. To read each individual issue in its entirety just check out the links beneath each juicy cover.

Read this issue here. 

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More Captain Atom all this week. 

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Solar Reflections - Man Of The Atom!

Dated October 1962 the debut issue of Doctor Solar hit the stands as the fledgling Gold Key brand was first trying to establish itself after the split from Dell. The talents at Western Publications were eager to try out their own stuff and adding a "superhero" seemed necessary for  a comics company. Under a lush and mysterious Richard Powers cover, this comic seemed to be what it was -- a strange blend of science fiction and superheroics, with less attention on the latter.

In the debut story "Doctor Solar's Secret", we meet Doctor Philip Solar, a nuclear physicist who works at Atomic Valley. There he is trapped inside a sabotaged nuclear pile and the radiation, which kills his colleague does not kill him, instead he finds himself changed and weirdly quickened by the radioactivity. His skin becomes a vivid green and he seems to be dead save that he isn't. The only person who knows his secret is Dr.Clarkson, his boss, who works with Solar to keep him alive by giving him access to radiation he needs. Ignorant of his true nature is Gail Sanders, a newly arrived and quite attractive scientist who is smitten with Solar. The man behind the sabotage is the mysterious Nuro, who will be the villain throughout the series.In the second story "An Atomic Inferno" the agent of Nuro runs afoul of Gail and stops her and destroy Atom Valley before she can reveal his secrets, but not before Solar can save the day. The agent pays for his failures.

Esteemed science fiction artist Richard Powers does the first two covers for the series run before George Wilson takes over. The artwork on the early issues is by Bob Fujitani and it is stellar, offering up the a nicely dramatic but still exceedingly real world for Solar to operate in. Frank Bolle became the regular artist with the sixth issue and his style is certainly in the spirit of Fujitani's but alas to my eye lacks some of the power. The ubiquitous Paul Newman writes the scripts for all the Solar comics, and Matt Murphy is given credit as co-writer.

In subsequent issues we get stories like "Remote-Controlled Traitor" which has Gail Sanders kidnapped by Nuro's agents and she becomes a saboteur before she is confronted and saved by Solar, and  "The Night of the Volcano" has Solar leaving the confines of his laboratory and rushing to save the region from a tremendous volcanic eruption which had been unwittingly triggered by experiments from Atom Valley itself. Eventually he visits undersea cities and confronts aliens other scientists with odd and sometimes villainous goals. Always the mysterious and malevolent Nuro is lurking behind the scenes,even sending a robot to infiltrate Blue Valley in one issue. 

These early stories have a specific science fiction feel to them, as the always staid and conservative Gold Key folks were really reluctant to tap the superhero vein, but rather wanted to market a character who was just a scientist with an unusual condition. They seemed to be designing for television shows rather than superhero comics. Of course they eventually relented and gave Doctor Solar a costume in the fourth issue, but the nature of the stories really didn't change all that much in these early issues. All the stories were written by the phenomenal Paul S. Newman save for the seventh which was written by Otto Binder.

Here are the covers for the first seven issues. 

More "Solar Reflections" to come next week.

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Children Of The Atom!

Captain Atom created by Steve Ditko and Joe Gill for Charlton Comics, is almost certainly the most famous and most enduring of the many superheroes who were born of the atomic age. He was the very byproduct of an atomic blast, a man transformed by the destructive power of an atomic bomb into something which could use atomic power for the betterment of the world. But while he was the most famous, he was hardly the only hero. 

From Atoman by Jerry Robinson from Spark in 1946 to Radioactive Man from Bongo in 1996, here are fifty years of fun-loving characters who adore nothing so much as to play with the very fabric of nature and reality. But then, that's what comics are all about anyway Enjoy a good look at these four-color "Children of the Atom"!

More Atomic Action tomorrow!

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