He was a superhero smaller even than the children who read his adventures, but nevertheless trickier and stronger than the irritating adults who told them what to do.
The formula had worked before, during the 14-year run of Doll Man in Feature Comics and his own title. So editor Julius Schwartz, writer Gardner Fox and artist Gil Kane redeployed it in the redesign and re-launch of their 1940s super-scrapper the Atom.
No longer an undersized college student with super strength, in Showcase 34 (Sept.-Oct. 1961), the new Atom was Ray Palmer, another of Schwartz’s and Fox’s space-age scientist-heroes dedicated to reason and education.
The first story in the issue told us, in leisurely detail, how an Ivy College physics professor acquired the power to shrink from dwarf star matter and used it to rescue trapped spelunkers.
The second story put him in costume and pitted him against one of those mirror-image foes so favored by superheroes — in this case a diminutive extraterrestrial teleporter named Kulan Dar who, when mentally enslaved by a criminal, resembles a genie from a bottle.
Palmer’s girlfriend Jean Loring doesn’t want to marry him until she’s established herself as a successful attorney, so the help the Atom frequently provides her on her legal cases isn’t entirely altruistic — he’s working to hasten the day when they can wed.
The first and most successful of Schwartz’s Golden Age superhero revivals, the Flash, worked up any number of crime-fighting tricks with his super speed, so the Atom played similar crowd-pleasing variations on the theme of shrinking.
While retaining his full-size strength, he could ride the winds by reducing his weight. The effective invisibility provided by his small stature proved useful to the CIA. The Atom could shrink into subatomic worlds, and even paradoxically appear as a giant there. His neatest trick was the ability to ride along on a telephone call, meaning that he could virtually teleport himself instantly to almost any spot on Earth.
Matthew Grossman wrote, "I may actually (slightly) prefer Silver Age Atom to the Silver Age Flash - he’s more vulnerable for starters. I like the dichotomy of him using his power actually making him physically weaker."
ReplyDeleteVincent Mariani wrote, “Gil Kane did a magnificent job on covers for the Atom series, by utilizing designs that would incorporate props accentuating the relative size of the hero. The concepts probably originated with Julius Schwartz or John Broome, but Kane brought them to life on these covers. The very first book featured the Atom struggling with a Venus Flytrap as a manic villain looms over the action.
ReplyDelete“Always enjoyed The Atom's Time Pool adventures, written by the inventive Gardner Fox, and in the vein of Batman's Prof. Nichols/hypnotic time-travel tales.
"Inker Sid Greene, not Gil Kane's best interpreter, gives it his best shot. And it works to some extent, considering the historical era depicted.
“You might say that, in this case, Greene was a ‘Poe man's inker for Kane.’”
Matthew Grossman wrote, "My favorite Atom story, 'Revolt of Atom’s Uniform,' (Atom #14) has the Atom fight the White Dwarf Star matter which gives him his powers - it turns out to be malevolent, sentient, and intent on conquering the universe, or something like that.
ReplyDelete"It’s my absolute favorite exploration of the doubles motif in Silver Age comics, with its vaguely Freudian cover motif and very Silver Age message that Palmer’s rational intellect is what constrains his desire-driven id from catastrophic eruption.
"Then again, it may just be a colossal metaphor for the struggles men go through putting their tie on their morning when getting to work."
ReplyDeleteGeorge Daniels wrote: Dan Hagen While I am completely aware of Doll Man, I think a lot of Silver Age readers, like myself would have difficulty buying into a superhero named Doll Man. There would've been a lot of Barbie-related jokes, once she hit the toy market.