Armagideon Time

Captain Marvel Adventures #90 marked the last appearance of Mr. Atom in the series’ run and, indeed, for the next twenty-eight years. When he did return — following DC’s acquisition and reintroduction of the Marvel Family franchise in the 1970s — it was as a changed killer atomic robot, one that bore only a vague resemblance to the Mr. Atom that had once been.

There was a great deal of inconsistency between the handful of Bronze Age portrayals of the character. His reintroduction in Justice League of America #137 (December 1976) presented him as a taciturn colossus resembling nothing so much as cybernetic Jack O’Lantern sporting a dunce cap…

…while the Mr. Atom featured in World’s Finest Comics #267 (March 1981) was slightly more eloquent but resembled a heroin chic version of Ultron.

The Mr. Atom depicted in Shazam #33 (Jan-Feb 1978) hewed closer to the classic model in looks and attitude, despite spending the majority of the tale with his parabolic noggin mounted on the chassis of a Pinewood Derby also-ran.

Writer-artist Jerry Ordway, in one of the better post-Crisis efforts to integrate the Fawcett properties with the DC Universe proper, attempted a complete reboot of Mr. Atom in The Power of Shazam #23 (January 1997)…

…which replaced the original’s sleek design with a mass of retro-greebling.  He’s what Mr. Atom would have looked like if he debuted in 1947!  Oh, wait…

Though the Ordway revamp remains the “official” version of the character (as of this moment), those jonesing for a more traditional-yet-modern take on Mr. Atom (that is to say, “me”) need look no further than Justice League Unlimited #15 (January 2006), which  features not only a redesign that incorporates the best of both worlds, but also a certain Caped Crusader getting his ass handed to him, atomic-style…

Oh, comics… Our relationship may have soured in recent years, but there are still those rare moments when you set my heart a’flutter.

So concludes Mr. Atom Week. Thanks for your patience, and never forget that as long as we keep a little radioactive hatred for humanity in our hearts, Mr. Atom will never truly die.

Though Mr. Atom was pronounced destroyed after his explosive falling out with his treacherous Comet Men allies, the energy generated (1.21 gigwatts, to be precise) by the destruction of the aliens’ spacecraft caused a cross-dimensional rip which transported the megalomanical android to the world of the FUTURE! So begins “Captain Marvel and the World of Mr. Atom,” featured in Captain Marvel #90 (November 1948) and the final Golden Age appearance of my favorite killer atomic robot.

After taking a moment to throttle one of the locals, Mr. Atom acclimates himself to the brave new world of 2053 A.D. It is an era when skullcaps and hot pants are the height of fashion, the skyline resembles the set of a GM Motorama promo film, and “By plutonium!” has overtaken “Gadzooks!” as the interjection of choice.

More importantly for Mr. Atom’s purposes, the society of 2053 is powered entirely by transmissions from a single nuclear power plant…

…headquartered in an unguarded facility and controlled by a single switch overseen by a easily bullied fleshbag of an engineer. From the perspective of an aspiring cybernetic despot, it’s like winning the Powerball jackpot.

While Mr. Atom gets busy terrorizing our species’ weak-chinned descendents, the ancient wizard Shazam pays a nocturnal visit to boy reporter Billy Batson in order to give him the 4-1-1 on the robot’s schemes of conquest.

With one mighty word, Billy transforms into Captain Marvel and zips off through the space-time continuum for another showdown with his indestructable atomic nemesis. Upon arriving in 2053, Marvel discovers a world in chaos. Mr. Atom has seized control of the reactor building and cut power to the entire globe, wreaking havoc on a society which had long since abandoned such quaint and foolish concepts as distributed grids and back-up generators.

Marvel’s attempt at a direct solution to the problem (i.e. “beat the crap out of Mr. Atom”) goes south when his fiendish foe threatens to detonate the plant’s atomic pile.

Faced with a global nuclear holocaust and softened by decades of cheap and easy access to conveniences like atomic eggbeaters and atomic bidets, the world leaders of 2053 agree to captiulate to Mr. Atom’s demands. Marvel, being a product of a more vital and reckless time, disguises himself as a member of the delegation chosen to convey humanity’s surrender to its new atomic overlord. The ruse enables the World’s Mightiest Mortal to catch Mr. Atom off-guard, knocking him way from the doomsday switch…

…and into the reactor core, obliterating the…*sniff*…villainous robot once and for all.*

*sniff sniff* I’m sorry, folks.  It’s just that I love Mr. Atom so much…  

Hopefully I’ll be able to get it together in time for tomorrow’s conclusion to Mr. Atom Week, in which I take a look at the Broze Age return of the character and the humiliations he has experienced since then.

*Kinda sorta maybe not.

Mr. Atom’s first encounter with the World’s Mightest Mortal resulted in the megalomanical android’s confinement in an underground vault, but his stay in captivity would turn out to be short one. The universe is an infinitely vast space, which meant that it was a simple matter of probability that a race of malevolent aliens would eventually arrive to recruit Mr. Atom as a member of their invasion’s street team.

And so we come to “Captain Marvel Battles Mr. Atom and the Comet Men,” from Captain Marvel Adventures #81 (February 1948).

The extra-terrestrials in question are the titular Comet Men, a nomadic tribe of quasi-racist caricatures propelled by fiery flatulence. As their wandering homeworld (technically an asteroid, but we are dealing with Binder-science, so some allowances must be made) is on the brink of destruction, they have set their sights on Earth as a ripe target for conquest and colonization.

Rather than rely on the usual crowd of doomsday cultists and other assorted New Age-y kooks prone to cometary influence, the Comet Men instead decide to make up for their lack of numbers by excavating Mr. Atom and enlisting his services. Their negotations with the robot — playing toward his unbridled megalomania with the intent of betraying him once the worldbeating heavy lifiting has been done — go poorly at first…

…though the partnership gels after the aliens manage to distract Captain Marvel long enough for Atom to coldcock the interfering Big Red Cheese.

As both Mr. Atom and the Comet Men are products of generation prior to the advent of memetic viruses and hypno-ray satellites, they take a decidedly old school approach to world conquest — namely “smashing shit up until the leaders of the world cry ‘uncle.’” They might have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that meddling Captain Marvel.

While Mr. Atom is more than up to taking another shot at the Big Red Cheese, his alien allies turn out to be less than stalwart fighters. Unable to harm Marvel with their vaunted disintegrator beams, the aliens blast gas back to the safety of their spaceship…just in time to watch their beloved homeworld explode.

From the depth of despair spring uncomfortable truths. The admission by the Comet Men’s leader that Mr. Atom was merely a disposable pawn pushes the nuclear-powered death machine into a killing frenzy that results in the destruction of the spacecraft and all passengers aboard…

….or did it? Find out in tomorrow’s nukariffic installment of Mr. Atom Week!

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!

Sorry, folks, but this week’s installment of Nobody’s Favorites has been pre-empted to make way for a five-part tribute to one of Andrew’s Favorites — the killer atomic robot know as Mister Atom.

While my affection for Mr. Tawny knows no bounds, it pales in comparison for my love of Mr. Atom. Indeed, it was curiosity about the walking death machine’s early appearances (combined with my fascination with the twilight years of the Golden Age of superhero comics) that sparked my ongoing obsession with the run of Captain Marvel Adventures from late 1945 through the title’s demise in 1953.

Mr. Tawny may have gotten more face time on AT, but only because there are dozens of stories featuring the talking tiger, compared to the three Golden Age appearances of Mr. Atom…none of which feature the villainous robot fighting the Klan, dabbling in get-rich-quick schemes, or joining a pleasure cult. (Much to my eternal disappointment.)

(Mr. Atom by Les McClaine, the only sketch I have ever commissioned in my decades of fandom)

Having made his debut less than two years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Mr. Atom is a remarkable popcult artifact from the dawn of the Atomic Age He was an early manifestation of fears that the atomic beast would slip its lead and turn on the world, appearing at a time when the United States still held a monopoly on atomic weapons. That kind of introspection would soon retreat under the panic-mode thinking of the Red Scare and the formalization of Cold War societal postures.

Looking beyond the character’s socio-culturual significance, I also love the design aesthetic of Mr. Atom. Sleek, streamlined, and metallic, he was populuxe before populuxe existed — the intersection of Raymond Loewy’s smooth contours and Harley Earl’s chromium dagmars.

As a demonstration of my affection, I give you Mr. Atom Week — five days of nuclear-powered content in which I’ll examine the character’s three appearances in Captain Marvel Adventures, along with a look at what he has been up to in more recent times.

Beyond the WHIZ studios magic-powered superheroes scream down the boulevard.  The talking tigers groom their tails in rearview mirrors and the boy reporters try to look so hard.

I dunno. It smells like a death trap or a suicide rap to me. I’d advise Billy to get out while he’s young.