Atomic Reactions - In The Bullseye!

The Captain Atom saga stopped abruptly with the publication of the eighty-ninth issue of the comic, but there had been more work done as so often happened in those halcyon days of comics. The story of Captain Atom, Nightshade, and The Ghost was not finished. But it had been plotted and drawn by the team of Dave Kaler and Steve Ditko. It rested dormant until George Wildman gave some fans the golden opportunity to take the penciled story and apply the finishing touches. The group was the CPL Gang (Contemporary Pictorial Literature) who had proven their worth by publishing the one-shot Charlton Portfolio magazine. Charlton wanted a fan mag like Marvel's FOOM and DC's Amazing World of DC Comics, and so they let the CPL Gang do the honors. So, it came to pass that in the mid 70's the final Captain Atom story "Showdown in Sunuria" was at long last published in two issues of The Charlton Bullseye. The inking was done by John Byrne and the final scripting was done by Jon Michaels and Roger Stern. The outstanding black and white cover was drawn by Al Milgrom. 

So, without further ado, here is the belated "Showdown in Sunuria".  Enjoy! 

Here is the Joe Staton cover of Charlton Bullseye #2 which featured the second half of the story. I finally added this to my collection only this year, completing a search of decades. 

The story was reprinted in the second volume of DC's The Action Heroes. 

Here's a poster image by a young John Byrne and Jo Duffy. 

Here's an outstanding poster image of the good Captain by Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom. That Captain Atom was an inspiration for Starlin's Captain Marvel is all too evident in this magnificent image. 

As the fires of Charlton Comics dwindled, the fate of their properties, in particular the high profile heroes such as Captain Atom and Blue Beetle became uncertain. Prodded by fanboy interest the company published a last-ditch effort in the early 80's called Charlton Bullseye. This second volume of the title featured work by fans using existing Charlton heroes as well as brand new characters. This was primarily a showcase for new up and coming talents, but along the way we got two new action hero stories.

And that was it. DC took over the character and after the Crisis On Infinite Earths (more on that next month) the Charlton characters (who lived on Earth-4 in the DC multiverse, albeit briefly) were fused into the DCU. Blue Beetle got his own series which lasted a few years then he joined the Justice League.

Captain Atom proved to be the most successful of the batch, with a run of his own title which approached sixty issues. He too joined the Justice League and was even a leader of sorts for different versions of the team. The folks at DC seemed oddly ashamed of Cap's origins and wrote off the Charlton stories as mere fantasies concocted by the military to hide the true nature of Captain Atom who was a much more grim character in the slightly darker DC Universe.

Captain Atom remains a reasonably potent part of the DC Universe, getting his own title from time to time. I don't follow these new adventures, so the details are a mystery to yours truly, but the images in which his classic look still supplies the inspiration sure can be compelling.

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Atlas-Seaboard Comics - September 1975!

Three books from Atlas-Seaboard in September, and surprisingly, one of them is a debut.

WULF the BARBARIAN #4 was drawn by Jim Craig, and the story continues to plod along. Wulf runs across a trio of thieves who themselves have just come across a rather potent jewel. After significant bloodletting and lots of confusion, Wulf absconds with a horse and the gem itself. We cut to a scene of a monster and a woman fighting, with the monster winning by killing the woman. The monster changes into a man, a former toy maker who as it turns out Wulf knows. Almost immediately Wulf chances upon the scene and in another ironic twist this toymaker/monster is the former of the recently stolen gem. The thieves return, a battle rages, and all die save for Wulf, a lovely thief who runs away. The story ends with Wulf killing the former toymaker and going on to further adventures. We'll never see them as this is the final issue. This issue marks a distinct downfall for this well-crafted fantasy series. This final script was by Mike Friedrich, a talented writer, but it's mostly a mess.

TIGER-MAN #3 gives us some very muscular and inviting Steve Ditko artwork with Al Milgrom inks. The script by Gerry Conway is rambling succession of coincidences, almost all involving mysterious suicides and attempted suicides. Dr. Hill / Tiger-Man investigates and discovers a mad psychiatrist named Dr. Hypnos who compels people to kill themselves. He pulls this trick on Tiger-Man, but ironically our hero is saved by some crooks who attempt to mug him and so save him from immolating himself. He takes a second stab at Hypnos, grabs his monocle, the source of his power, and compels Hypnos to throw himself off a roof. Tiger-Man's adventures have come to an end with this final issue.

And now for the debut...

DEMON HUNTER #1 is a Rich Buckler and David Anthony Kraft offering and introduces Gideon Cross, a disaffected Vietnam vet who seeking meaning in his life after his wife has deserted him finds a cult of demon-worshipers. It's all a tad confusing, but he becomes an agent for them with an ability to cloak his appearance and he goes around collecting blood samples for some unknown purpose. He seems rather unconcerned about this unusual occupation. He's also working as a bodyguard to an apparent crime lord, and these two missions seem to be conjoined somehow. Despite some very interesting Buckler storytelling and typically powerful action sequences, this debut is very compressed and more than a little confusing. We'll never get it clarified at Atlas though as this is the first and last Atlas issue. The story will continue in a fashion at Marvel in the guise of Devil-Slayer.

There is one more month for Atlas-Seaboard. October approaches!

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Atlas-Seaboard Comics - August 1975!

There are only two-color comics from Atlas-Seaboard wearing an August date.

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 dispatches 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.

And we must not forget VICKI #4, the final issue of the run for one of Atlas-Seaboard's more successful comics. As a fanboy in 1975, my nascent sense of completism caused me to buy the first issue of Vicki from Atlas-Seaboard. I liked their other offerings and so I took a tumble on this Archie-like book.


I was jarred a bit by the interiors which seemed a bit cruder than I expected. They had a generic quality. It would be several years before I learned that these were reprints of a defunct Tower Comics comic titled Tippy the Teen. As I recall they did make some small efforts to update the stories with changes in clothing style, but there was no masking the overall lackluster nature of the work. They have become a tad scarce it seems, simply because clearly, I wasn't the only one ignoring them on the stands.

More Atlas-Seaboard to come next month. 

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Atlas-Seaboard Comics - April 1975

Atlas-Seaboard's big month for sure! The company's last big stand really before the fragmentation sets in. Actually, that fragmentation is already evident in the books from this month.

WULF THE BARBARIAN #2 is a grand tale of adventure and in it, Wulf meets some compatriots. After a tussle with an evil and mad king, a monstrous elemental creature from beyond, and his own conscience, Wulf finds himself with a buddy, Rymstrdle, a theif and swordsman who puts me in mind of the Grey Mouser from Fritz Leiber's excellent stories. This is decent fantasy story, but the clear vision of the first issue is has disappeared somewhat. The book is no longer written by Larry Hama, and the artwork is one of those hodgepodge Continuity Associates group-jobs that were not uncommon during the Bronze Age. It's good but uneven material.

THE BRUTE #2 continues right where it left off with more Sekowsky-Marcos artwork. The Brute runs across a mad scientist and what are referred to as Reptile Men, though they all seem clearly amphibian to me. The scientist apparently transforms people into these monsters, and he has plans for the Brute as something of a lackey to kidnap other scientists who have offended him. The lady doctor from the previous issue makes another appearance, and there's a hint that the Brute might be able to speak. The story ends with the Brute presumed dead...and with Atlas-Seaboard's publishing history who knows.

 

THE DESTRUCTOR #2 continues under the multiple hands of Goodwin, Ditko, and Wood, but there seems to have been more haste in the artwork. The story gets Jay Hunter, The Destructor out West where he is manipulated into a battle with Deathgrip, a hitman for the Combine, a criminal organization that wants control of the rackets. Jay runs across a possible love interest and gets himself insinuated in a mod organization so he can destroy it from within. Good intrigue.

THE PLANET OF VAMPIRES #2 offers up our astronaut heroes as leaders who gather together the various street gangs for a dramatic battle against the "Domies", the high-tech vampires. The battle rages and our two heroes Chis and Craig survive only to find that their wives have been kidnapped and taken to the Dome. The Vampires, deprived of their high-tech solutions begin to revert to the more traditional fanged variety most of us are familiar with. The cover by Adams is okay, but its image has almost nothing to do with the story. The interiors are drawn by Broderick and McLaughlin again.

 

MORLOCK 2001 #2 continues the tale of the plant-man, and we get a Fleisher-Milgrom-Abel tale that demonstrates the true horror of his condition. The government wants to harness him, but he eludes them and eventually ends up killing a young girl. One detail is that Morlock battles some thugs who are very similar to those famous thugs from A Clockwork Orange. The sci-fi sources are various and sundry as this tale unfolds.

 

WEIRD SUSPENSE #2 gives us another TARANTULA story, and the witch that first put the curse on Count Lycosa returns and a battle of the spider-people erupts. More, great Boyette artwork, and a pretty good Fleisher script make this one of the most reliable reads in the Atlas-Seaboard canon so far.

POLICE ACTION #2 offers more LOMAX and LUKE MALONE stories. The former shows the police detective taking on kidnappers at the airport, while the latter gives us the "origin" story which concerns...surprise...kidnappers in a bank. There is a strange similarity to these stories, but again the better one is Malone by Ploog, though once again Sekowsky's and McWilliam's Lomax is sturdy work.

TALES OF EVIL #2 offers a gem of a three-pager by Grandenetti about a train of death; it's a real highlight. Another story about a Werewolf by some guy named Marvin Channing and the much-missed Tom Sutton rounds out the issue. The headliner though in this issue is the BOG BEAST, with Jack Sparling artwork. This series actually began in the B&W magazine Weird Tales of the Macabre #2, and like another comic this month finds its way into the color books. This is a clear indication that things are changing at Atlas. The Bog Beast is another attempt to tap that Man-Thing idea, but this is a really inferior effort.

 

SAVAGE COMBAT TALES #2 gives us another SGT.STRIKER'S DEATH SQUAD story where the squad is formally given its name by a notorious general the Squad saves then transports to his date with destiny. There is clearly some Patton influence in this story of the war in North Africa. The story by Goodwin and McWilliams is sturdy and worthwhile, but not great. The second story in this issue features WARHAWK, a mysterious pilot in the Burma air war who saves a young pilot from whose perspective this excellent Alex Toth story is told. (Note: Warhawk was apparently one of two stories Toth did in this era, and both are discussed in the current Alter Ego issue.)

 

Two new books debut this month. They are very different from each other, but sadly show the fragmentation of the Atlas line at this point.

 

THE COUGAR #1 is an oddball mix of elements. This comic featuring the adventures of a movie stuntman with story by Steve Mitchell and artwork by Dan Adkins and Frank Springer doesn't deny its source, The Night Stalker TV movie. In fact the creator of that movie is credited as an inspiration for the comic book. The story offers us a movie about a vampire that discovers a real vampire and similar to the famous TV flick, there's a blend of disbelief and mayhem. The Cougar is a weird comic, trapped between genres and oddly uncomfortable in neither. It wants to be a superhero book in places and a horror book in others. Clearly this book was supposed to have been drawn by Dan Adkins, but he must have been unable to finish it and the reliable Frank Springer stepped in to finish it up. The Frank Thorne cover is energetic but seems to have been produced quickly.

TIGER-MAN is another character that debuted in the B&W books before finding colorful glory. The story of Dr. Hill begins in THRILLING ADVENTURE STORIES #1 and he's a researcher in Africa inspired by the instinct for survival that seems to thrive in animals and people of the region.

 

A few scientific experiments and an injection later he is imbued with those instincts and lots of other powers. He's attacked by a a tiger and later gets its hide to use as a totem. He does so months later in the big city when he takes on muggers and rapists. His sister is attacked and killed and Tiger-Man takes to the streets to seek vengeance. He finds it, and then promises to keep at it. The artwork is decent Ernie Colon, but doesn't have the energy of his Grim Ghost work. The cover for this issue by Colon is one of the strangest in the whole Atlas line, and seems to me to be a very quickly produced item. 

There are of course some B&W magazines this month (more on those later this year) as well as more Vicki's but by and large, the company has reached its zenith. After this month, Atlas-Seaboard will continue to lose its focus as books are abruptly cancelled and directions are changed. But not all of them, not yet. 

More Atlas-Seaboard to come in May.

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