Atom #7

In response to fan demand, DC liked to do team-ups with their heroes. Being DC, they tended to institutionalize the practice by making them annual events. Flash regular team-ups with Green Lantern, so it was a natural for Julius Schwartz to match his third GA reincarnation with his fourth.

The story, written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson, starts with a bit of a puzzle. Some crooks had escaped from a tall building which was too far from nearby rooftops for them to have jumped. There was no sound of a helicopter, so how could they have escaped? They take the puzzle to local physics grad student, Ray Palmer who comes up with an answer:

In Gardner Fox's Wikipedia entry, there is this note:

A polymath, Fox sprinkled his strips with numerous real-world historical, scientific, and mythological references, once saying, "Knowledge is kind of a hobby with me." For instance, in the span of a year's worth of Atom stories, Fox tackled the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the space race, 18th-century England, miniature card painting, Norse mythology, and numismatics.

So it is no surprise that I was able to locate an article from Time Magazine in 1927 on the European fad of balloon jumping:

Walk along the ground with a breeze at your back, approach a fence, bend your knees, spring lightly into the air when you feel the tug of the balloon. You will sail over the fence so easily and land so gently that you will be surprised. Barns and trees can be surmounted with more vigorous leaps, usually requiring a light second push-up with the tip of the toe on the barn's roof or on the tree's outlying branches.

Balloon jumping is already a popular sport among the English gentry, and is attracting the attention of playful Long Islanders.

Later, while Jean and Ray are out bird-watching, they experience a strong earthquake. They also notice a bird that is out of the normal for the Atlantic Flyway.

Meanwhile, Hawkman has also noticed some birds out of their migratory routes. When he asks them why:

Using some special contact lenses he has designed, Hawkman is able to see the radiation is coming from the East Coast and:

We learn that explorers had found the Cosmitron on a world ruined by war. It gave off radiation, but aside from that the scientists from Thanagar could not determine the machine's purpose. Hawkman contacts Shayera, who is on Thanagar and tells her to check to see if the Cosmitron has been stolen. Then he heads east to find the source of the radiation.

The Atom is at the police station when a call comes in about the balloon robbers. He accompanies them to the scene:

Okay, now that's just a bit silly on Gil Kane's part; there's no way a couple of tiny balloons like those shown could lift even a fraction of a man's weight. Here's a look at what is actually required.

So the cop shoots Atom up into the air with the speargun, which is actually a pretty cool idea. He starts popping the balloons, but by the third crook they're over the getaway boat and so the man makes a quick getaway. Meanwhile, the Atom is so far out to sea that he wonders if he will be able to swim back to shore. Fortunately, he's plucked out of the air by... Hawkman!

The Winged Wonder and the Mighty Mite make short work of the balloon crooks, then Hawkman hurries off in search of the Cosmitron. He locates it lying on the ground in a woods, but as he approaches, tiny men in a space ship attack him:

The aliens manage to kayo Hawkman and get away with the device. Hawkman meets up with the Atom at police headquarters and tells his story. Meanwhile, the aliens are hovering above the Earth. We learn what the Cosmitron does:

They transmit a warning to the United Nations. They were the original rulers of our planet and they intend to resume control. If the UN does not capitulate, they will cause terrible disasters to strike our planet. Perhaps this is an optimistic view of the response of the delegates:

The aliens take a knife to the globe, causing a huge furrow to appear in the ground. We get a page or two of explication on the history of the aliens. They had used the Cosmitron to get control of many planets, but eventually the power (provided by earthquakes) ran out and the Thalens were overthrown. Many years later their descendants had recovered the Cosmitron and intended to resume their conquest of the galaxy.

Since Hawkman's spaceship is gone (with Shayera back on Thanagar), he cannot get to the alien ship, but the Atom can, in a model of Hawkman's craft. Once inside, he steals the Cosmitron:

And after a fairly easy battle, the aliens are defeated, the Cosmitron destroyed, and even the furrow repaired.

Comments: I loved the little bits of backup information that Fox provided, and the artwork is terrific. The Cosmitron is an interesting piece of technology. Atom and Hawkman had several other team-ups in the future and eventually shared the Atom's magazine towards the end of the Silver Age.

The Atom #8

I have mentioned the Dr Light series in passing as one of the two really extended tales that DC had during the 1960s; the other one was Zatanna's search for her father.

Dr Light had originally fought the entire Justice League of America and nearly won in JLA #12. Following that, he decided to set his sights a little lower and take on the individual members one at a time. As it happens, his first target was the Atom, who had not even been a member of the JLA at the time of Dr Light's initial assault on that team.

Dr Light starts by escaping from jail. See, they left a light bulb in his cell, and using that he's able to draw a door on the cell wall, and open to to escape into another dimension. Fortunately, Ray Palmer happens to be at the prison with his girlfriend Jean, who's just gotten a prisoner named William Wilson released (this is explained in the second story in this issue). Ray examines the light bulb and is able to duplicate the Lord of Luminescence's trick and enter the other dimension as the Atom. But:

There follows a brief battle, but Dr Light seems to have planned well, and thus it's not long before the Atom finds himself in the predicament shown on the cover. Dr Light explains:

He has ensured that the Atom will not be able to shrink his way out of the bulb by dripping solder on his controls. But the Atom melts the solder with the filament in the bulb:

He soon subdues Dr Light, ending the story for now.

Comments: Even though the story is only 15 pages long, it seems padded. I did like how the Atom got out of the death trap, but the powers of Dr Light seemed a tad too much like magic and not enough like science.

In the second story, a guard is accused of attempting to steal a miniature painting (the Queen of Swords by Bonifacio Bembo) from the Ivy Town Art Gallery, when the painting is discovered in his lunch bucket. He is found guilty, the first client of Jean Loring's to go to prison. But later at the grand opening, when the miniature is on display with two more of Bembo's painting, a gas seeps out from the case holding the Queen of Diamonds, rendering all the patrons unconscious. Fortunately, the Atom is himself hiding in a case holding the King of Clubs, so he's not affected by the gas. However, when he attacks the thief who appears he gets a shocking surprise:

However, the Atom has succeeded in deducing the villain's identity:

The story ends with a long, and unnecessary explanation:


Comments: Solid basic story although as noted the explanation is unnecessary and convoluted.

Incidentally, did you notice the pillbox hat Jean Loring sports in this issue? That was a style popularized by Jacqueline Kennedy; this issue came out about five months before JFK's assassination. Gil Kane was obviously paying attention to women's fashion.

Single Issue Review: Showcase #34

This issue featured the debut of the Silver Age Atom. Although the Golden Age Atom had no real super powers and was merely a strong but short man, Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox had greater aspirations for the Silver Age version.

We start out by meeting Ray Palmer, grad student and researcher in nuclear physics at Ivy University. He is engaged in experiments to make things smaller, but every time he tries he finds that the miniatures eventually explode, making the process impractical.

In a flashback we learn that Ray had discovered a meteor of white dwarf star material, which he had polished into a crystal that could shrink objects. But can he fix the process so the objects don't explode?

We meet his girlfriend, Jean Loring, a defense attorney who's determined to make a success of herself before settling down. While on a hike in a local cavern, he, Jean and a bunch of kids are trapped by a cave-in. Ray uses the crystal to shrink himself, then expands a small hole using his normal strength, which has not gone away with his size. He returns to normal size without exploding, which he later deduces is due to some special property in his own body.

In the second story, a bank teller is surprised when a tiny man (the guy in green shown on the cover) appears and steals the money from her desk.



So now we see the rationale from a story-telling standpoint behind having Ray's girlfriend be a defense attorney; it guarantees that Ray will hear about a fair number of innocent people wrongly accused of crime. And of course the Atom has plenty of incentive to clear those folks, since that will help make Jean a success and result in her accepting Ray's proposal of marriage. It's a very smart bit of characterization.

We learn that Ray has fashioned a suit for himself which is invisible at full size but is his familiar red and blue outfit when he shrinks. He discovers the green mite trying to rob his laboratory of Europium. When the Atom defeats him, the little man explains telepathically that he's from another planet and requires the Europium to teleport back to his home. A criminal has gained control of him and is forcing him to commit the robberies.

The controller, named Carl Ballard, calls the tiny man (Kulan Dar) back to him, but the Atom has gained a mental image of the crook and is able to use the police mug book to identify him. We see the Atom use one of his very cool and unique powers of using a telephone to transport himself to Ballard's residence:



The Atom mops up Ballard and helps the tiny man get his Europium. In return, Kulan Dar agrees to testify for the defense, and helps Jean win her very first case.

Comments: An excellent start for the series, scripted by Gardner Fox with pencils by Gil Kane and inks by Murphy Anderson. The appearance of another midget is a bit too convenient, but otherwise the two stories are fine with the Atom being developed on the fly nicely.

Zatanna and Zatara

There were two major stories in the DC Silver Age that crossed over into several titles. Nowadays these "events" are commonplace, but back then it was something very new.

Zatara had been a mainstay of DC comics in the Golden Age, actually appearing alongside Superman in Action Comics #1. He even made two cover appearances in Action #12 and #14. He appeared regularly in Action and World's Finest right up until 1949. His shtick was that he was a magician who could cause amazing things to happen by commanding them. But the key was that he had to speak his orders backwards:



In 1949, Zatara was eased out of his roles in Action Comics and World's Finest. In the former, it does not appear that he was removed to make way for a new character, but rather he was dropped and some of the existing features (notably Vigilante and Tommy Tomorrow) picked up some extra pages.

So things stood for almost fifteen years. Then, in Hawkman #4 (Oct-Nov 1964) we got an update. While investigating an oddball appearance of two items at the museum they run, Carter and Shayera discover a pair of women speaking very strangely:





In their spaceship, they do some detective work and:



Zatanna explains that she's looking for her missing father, Zatara. We learn that before he disappeared he was trying to capture an evil Oriental lama, and also that he battled against a "sinister being called the Druid."

Using the Absorbascon, a Thanagarian device that can learn any knowledge on Earth, Hawkman discovers that nobody on the planet knows the whereabouts of Zatara. Zatanna thanks them for their help, and continues on with her quest.

Her next encounter with a superhero went unannounced at the time. I have previously discussed Detective #336, which featured "Batman's Bewitched Nightmare". In the story Batman faces a witch who is helping some crooks with their larceny. At the end it is revealed that the Outsider was using them for his own purposes. But it turns out that the witch in the story was Zatanna, minus the fishnet stockings and good looks:



She returned in Atom #19 (June-July 1965). She believes that her father has vanished into a microscopic world inside his book of magic. Zatanna and the Atom shrink down to subatomic size and encounter the Druid mentioned in Hawkman #4. He captured Zatara by absorbing all his magical energy. Then he banished him to another realm.

At first, it appears likely that Zatanna will suffer the same fate:



But the Atom gets the brilliant idea of Zatanna tricking the Druid by using fake "magic" (i.e., a simple card trick). The Druid absorbs the fake magic and it sends him into a catatonic state. Unfortunately this means that Zatanna still can't find out where her father is.



The series continued in Green Lantern #42 (January 1966). Zatanna has discovered the secret entrance to Ys, a mirror world of Earth that is "steady-state", where nothing ever changes. A warlock on that world has tired of the lack of excitement, and decides to bring Green Lantern there so that he can steal the power ring and conquer our world. They defeat him, but he refuses to reveal where Zatara is unless GL hands over the ring. GL agrees and we learn that Zatara had been in Ys, but he had escaped by taking a crystal ball that the warlock intended to use to travel to Earth. Fortunately before GL hands over the ring, Zatanna places a hex on it, causing the warlock to freeze in place. Her quest continues.

Zatanna next appeared in Detective #355 (September 1966), this time popping into an Elongated Man adventure. She is looking for a missing tripod which was stolen from a store. She forces the thieves to come to her, not realizing that they were engaged at the time in a battle with the Elongated Man. The pair of them team up against the crooks and the storeowner (who turns out to be a criminal as well). At long last, Zatanna is ready for the final battle:



The saga ended in Justice League of America #51 (February 1967). Zatanna summons Batman, Green Lantern, Atom and Hawkman to their JLA headquarters, along with the non-member Elongated Man.

We learn that she wants to thank them for helping her rescue her father. This creates a complex plotline as the story shifts back and forth from the present to the past. And of course it sorta gives away the ending, which makes it an odd plot design.

We learn at last that Zatanna was actually the Witch in Detective #336, thus tying her into the Outsider series in Batman. She got into trouble here:



It's a classic "Don't do it!" moment if ever there was one, but driven by her desire to find her father, Zatanna does. The spirit delivers Zatanna to "the land of Kharma", where she is beset by magically created creatures. She summons duplicates of the five heroes of the story to help her defeat them. But still the hordes come, and Batman figures it out:



Wow, pretty risky maneuver there, but we know he's right, and even if he isn't he's just a duplicate of Batman. With the spirit banished from Zatanna, we discover that the magic user fighting her was her own father. You see, Allura had cursed Zatara for imprisoning her in that sword, with a spell that would have destroyed both father and daughter should they meet. Hence Zatara's disappearance and attempts to prevent Zatanna from reaching him. But with Allura defeated, the curse no longer exists and we get the happy ending:



Obviously way ahead of its time, the series suffered from crossing over into many titles (as do all such stories) despite the continuity of editor (Julius Schwartz) and writer (Gardner Fox). The odds of a significant portion of the comic-reading cohort of the time having a complete collection approach zero, and of course at the time the idea of compiling the story into a trade paperback never occurred to anybody.

And the gimmick of saying your words backwards is annoying to readers, who have to stop and translate. The evil Oriental lama never appears in the story (after the mention in Hawkman), and although there were hints that the story will crossover into the Flash (at the end of the Atom tale), that never happened.

Still, a very entertaining saga.

Coming up next: Yet more fishnet stockings!

You Can Learn A Lot From Comics

Sometimes even I'm surprised at what turns out to be well-grounded. I was reading Atom #10 (Dec 1963-Jan 1964). The second story in that issue is called The Mysterious Swan-Maiden, in which Jean Loring is required to act as defense counsel for a swan.



Now looking at it, I thought that citation looked ridiculous, but when I typed it into Google (and Google corrected a minor error by asking if I wanted "fitzh abr barre pl 290"), I was taken to this page from a book on Privacy and the Constitution, where indeed the topic of animals being guilty of crimes is discussed:

The reader will see in this passage, as has been remarked already of the Roman law, that a distinction is taken between things which are capable of guilt and those which are not--between living and dead things; but he will also see that no difficulty was felt in treating animals as guilty.

Gardner Fox (who wrote the story) obviously knew his legal precedents! I should add that this discussion comes in a section on liability (i.e., torts), and that animals can not really be brought to criminal trial; that's a little bit of literary license.