Bold Fashion Choices--How Captain Atom Is Like A Stolen Car!

A couple of months ago we discussed the best version of Captain Atom's costume.

But how did that costume come about?

Nathaniel Adam had been burdened with this monstrosity:

A necessary evil, as the accident that gave him his power had him emitting radiation like a mobile Chernobyl, and that suit was the only thing that could contain those energies.

But a new option has presented itself...

"Liquid metal"?!?! Ahhhh--he's a terminator!!!

Yup...it's all about the image, Captain!

And how do apply this liquid metal?!?

Spray paint him like a stolen car!!

They do the primer coat first...

...and then the trim...

And good gravy:

They actually use a stencil to put on his Spirograph design!!

The result?

Dead. Sexy.

And functional, too!

And thus was born Captain Atom's best costume ever, before DC got their hands on him and turned him into a silver-covered boring dude (costume-wise, at least), and then they made him into a universal-level genocidal maniac, and then they turned him into an ersatz Dr. Manhattan because they can't stop their Watchmen fixation, and... Sigh...

From Captain Atom #84 (1967)

There's No Satisfying The People Of Earth-4!!

A rogue group has stolen classified atomic secrets! Captain Atom tried to rustle them up! He lost his powers and got his butt kicked!!

And so everyone's favorite shows are interrupted!

Hahaha...the Mets winning. Now we know this is fiction!!

But, ti turns out that Clark Kent's glasses aren't the lamest disguise ever--it turns out that people don't recognize Nathaniel Adam as Captain Atom because...

...his hair is white!!

OK, then.

The public, it turns out, is not terribly sympathetic:

Vox populi!!

Well, Captain Atom regains his powers, gets a new costume, kicks the bad guys' butts, and recovers the ransom!! He's a hero again!!

Ah, but the polls show a more mixed result:

People--never, ever satisfied!! Especially that Washington upper class!!

From Captain Atom #84 (1967)

Bold Fashion Choices--Accept No Silver-Coated Substitutes!

I know that I am a lone voice in the wilderness on this...

...but Captain Atom's pre-Crisis uniform was the best. Period.

Yes, I'm crazy.

From DC Comics Presents #90 (1986)

The Comic Detective--Labor Day Trailer!!!

The most annoying thing about being an obsessive comics nerd? When, in some other media, you see comic books, and it completely takes you out of what you watching as you quickly try to determine what the hell those comics are. Have I read them? Are they consistent with the time frame of the movie? What is that odd bit of cover?!?!?

Today's example? The trailer for the forthcoming film, Labor Day, starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. The film is set around Labor Day, 1987, and at about 25 seconds into the trailer, at some discount department store we see glimpses of a spinner rack full of comics:

So, to hell with the movie--what about these comics?

This is a case for...The Comic Detective!!!!

Let me emphasize that 98.7% of my "detective" work came from searching about The Grand Comics Database and Mike's Amazing World Of Comics, two of the most invaluable research tools out there. They did all the hard work...I just looked stuff up on their sites!

So, let's start with the first shot of our comics rack. The first thing that we notice is that there are two separate issues of Teen Titans Spotlight next to each other:

That's not too crazy--those of us old enough remember how haphazard and random some of those K-Mart spinner racks could be. They are consecutive issues: #9 & #10, cover date April and May 1987. Mike's Amazing World has as street dates of January and February--a little old, but again, old school spinner rack. We can mostly give those a pass.

Next in the rack:

As the cover notes, this was the final issue of Tales Of The Legion Of Super-Heroes. It's cover date is December 1987, but--and it's a big but--it wasn't on sale until September 27--well AFTER Labor Day. It may be a sloppy spinner rack, but it can't have time travel powers. FAIL!!

Proceeding to the next side of the rack, we have:

Oops. Batman #398 was cover dated August of 1986, and streeted in May '86. Yeah, thing weren't often maintained well on those racks...but a 16-month old comic? FAIL.

Next:

Oh, Outcasts, how we've missed you! #1 was cover-dated October of 1987, street date of July--perfectly reasonable for that to still be on the stands.

The last one in that shot took some digging, but it is:

That was cover date August '87, streeting in May...not out of the reasonable range.

Finally, the final shot with only a tiny portion of the cover visible, turns out to be:

Another Tales Of The Legion...but 6 issues earlier, #348, June '87, street date of March. It's a bit old to be on the rack...especially given the presence of a much newer issue of the same title. Still, crap like that could happen...and at least this issue isn't from the future.

Of course, it's silly to be so hyper-critical. The art director (or some other schmoe) was given the task to fill spinner rack with contemporary comics for a scene that probably lasts 30 seconds in the movie, and that no one sane would pay much attention to. And on that level, they did a perfectly fine job, probably better then we should have expected.

Which proves what an insane loser I am, I guess. I obsess...

BTW, Paramount and Indian Paintbrush--what's up with no Marvels on the rack? It's not WB is involved in this pic, as near as I can tell--so why no love for The House Of Ideas? It would cost too much to throw a Star Brand or an Alpha Flight up there? Sheesh, talk about ruining the movie for me...

You Can't Hug Captain Atom With Nuclear Arms!!

I don't want to suggest that Captain Atom in the 60s was a one-note character, but...well, judge for yourself.

In the first story in the issue, Gustav Borlin, the dictator of a "neutral but unfriendly" unnamed nation, is going to give us a new definiton of the term "neutral":

Well, that's all good. Now on to some real superhero action, eh?

The 2nd story in the issue begins:

Uh...OK...nuclear missiles again?

And where has all this uranium been going? Why, to the African nation without a single black person!

OK, OK, we get it...1961, time of nuclear angst, we get your point. Enough with the nukes--it's time for fighting super-villains!!

And our 3rd story...

Sigh...

Mysterious aliens, it seems, are using meteor swarms to knock our nuclear missiles out of orbit so Earth destroys itself...

(That's roughly Moscow, FYI...)

Wait...Sputniks, too? Everything in orbit? I guess in this universe, people had better not expect GPS, satellite television, Skylab, etc.

Anyway, Captain Atom destroys the (invisible!) aliens with one blast. The end.

Yes, all 3 of the stories were in one issue--Space Adventures #38 (1961), as reprinted in Space Adventures #10 (1978). No author is known, even though the art was all by Ditko, so I don't know if one gent was responsible for all three, or if it was a coincidence that all 3 tales are essentially exactly the same.

It is interesting to see that, at a time when super-hero comics were ignoring the contemporary geopolitical situation except in the most superficial ways, that Charlton was willing to wallow in the existential dread of nuclear extinction.

Still, you've got a superhero who can do virtually anything, and all you use him for is (repeatedly) running into orbit to shoot down nuclear missiles? Boring...