It all began in the pages of Captain Marvel Adventures #78 (November 1947) in a tale titled “Captain Marvel Meets Mr. Atom.”

Roughly twenty years before Hank Pym got it into his head to dabble in the field of killer atomic robotology, Dr. Charles Langley decided to try his hand at creating a megalomaniacal cybernetic successor to the weak and pathetic human race. The creation of killer robots is an evergreen growth industry in the whimsically improbable world of comics. It’s right up there alongside weather control machines, hypno-ray satellites, and researching ways to destroy killer robots. And who, at some point in their lives, hasn’t considered combining the environmentally-friendly power of a nuclear reactor with the ruthless inhuman efficiency of an artificial intelligence?

Let’s face it, when you’re presenting your work at the 72nd Annual Metropolis Convention of Vaguely Unspecified Science, announcing that you’ve created an ambulatory nuclear furnace with genocidal tendencies has a certain dramatic flair that you just don’t get with some minor breakthrough in stem cell research.

Per the accepted conventions for this sort of business, the quite Devo-ish Langley…

….succeeds in his efforts while inadvertently blowing up his suburban laboratory. (Note to aspiring killer robot makers, be sure that your homeowner’s insurance covers accidental nuclear explosions. You’ll thank yourselves later.) While Langley relaxes beneath a pile of smoldering rubble, his creation decides to check out what’s happening in town.

Now while Mr. Atom, as Langley’s robot has dubbed himself, has gotten off to a promising start on the path of killer robot-dom (what with his creator’s Promethean hubris and all), at this point in his career he isn’t “evil” so much as suffering from a cybernetic form of Asperger’s syndrome. Lacking the capacity to understand basic human interaction, he misinterprets the townspeople’s social cues (in form of having a safe dropped on top of him and getting blindsided by a CoastLiner) as being affirmations of his own perceived superiority.

His inflated sense of self-worth leads him to the United Nations building, where he makes a case for what he sees as his righteous stewardship of the world to the assembled delegates. It goes about as well as you’d think, and ends in a manner tragically familiar to anyone knowledgeable in the pathology of school shootings.

It’s the John Bolton years, minus the bad hairdo, all over again.

While the Danes scramble to come up with an interim replacement delegate, Captain Marvel (a.k.a. “The Big Red Cheese”) arrives on the scene, having been alerted by the injured Langley about the “really cool” abomination the scientist has “accidentally” let loose on the world. Marvel and Mr. Atom duke it out, but the robot’s atomic power proves to be an equal match for the strength of Hercules and stamina of Atlas.  Finally, on the grounds outside of the UN, the two titans dig down deep and give it their all in a brilliantly executed sequence that manages to accomplish more in four panels than Dan Jurgens did in the entire “Death of Superman” arc.

Being down is not the same as being out when one is an indestructible robot. From the comfort of his cell, Mr. Atom delivers a final rant…presumably accompanied by a mix CD of his favorite Deftones, Marilyn Manson, and Rammstein tracks…

Is this truly the end of Mr. Atom? Tune in tomorrow, when our plucky killer robot returns with the help of the most unlikely of friends!

Related posts:

  1. Mr. Atom Week: Day 4 – Stop the Future
  2. Mr. Atom Week: Day 1 – Atomic Beat Boy
  3. Mr. Atom Week: Day 3 – Catch a Falling Star