PRELUDE: Space Adventures #33, Story B

Featuring: Captain Atom
Release: January 1960
Cover: March 1960
10 cents
9 pages

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	INTERLUDE	Captain Atom #78
Amazing Spider-Man #33	Reading order	Tales of Suspense #72, Story B

Meet Captain Adam… the Air Force career man who knew more about rocketry, missiles, and the universe than any man alive… a specialist of the missle age, a trained, dedicated soldier who was a physics prodigy at eight, a chemist, a ballistics genius! In short, Captain Adam was an invaluable space-age soldier even before that memorable day at Cape Canaveral, Florida, when an Atlas missile was being readied for blast-off… with an atomic warhead inside… and Captain Adam making the final last second adjustments!

GCD credits the story to Joe Gill and the art to Steve Ditko. They say Ditko’s signature appears, but I can’t prove that. Maybe someone has better eyes than I do. UPDATE: My readers do have better eyes than I!

I’m curious what happens to Steve Ditko after he leaves Marvel. And the answer can be found before he even leaves Marvel. About 6 months before his last Spider-Man and Dr. Strange story appear, his work starts showing up from other publishers. The first work to grace newsstands is a return to his character, Captain Atom, published almost concurrently with Amazing Spider-Man #32, part of the story that reads like Ditko’s last Spider-Man story.

I thought it would be good to check out that story, but for context I thought it would be worth first going back to the creation of the character, which came out over 2 years before the first Spider-Man story.

We’ll retroactively place this in the reading order alongside the comics concurrent to Captain Atom’s return.

Before Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, Steve Ditko teamed with writer Joe Gill to create Captain Atom. Let’s check out his first adventure from 1960.

Captain Adam accidentally rides a nuclear missile into space and is caught in its blast.

Captain Adam is a genius and good soldier and all-around hero. He lacks the tragic flaws that will separate the Marvel heroes from the rest.

Some effort is clearly put into the science here, correctly identifying the layers of the atmosphere and properties of U-235. Diulustel is a fictional metal created for this comic. And the idea that being at the heart of a nuclear blast would give you super powers instead of simply killing you is likely fictional.

Only key men in government are told the truth of what happened to Captain Adam. Along with a Gunnery Sergeant whose name we will later learn is Goslin, who was present for the incident.

The president, presumably Eisenhower, gives the hero his costume and codename: Captain Atom. Nobody will ever suspect that Captain Adam is really Captain Atom.

Notice the costume has a blue color scheme, which doesn’t match the yellow costume on the cover. Coloring was inconsistent like that. It’s the yellow costume that will stick.

His first mission is dealt with quickly. A sabotaged missile was headed toward enemy space and likely to start World War III. Captain Atom makes short work of it.

This will set the tone for his adventures. There won’t really be supervillains or crime-fighting in the issues to come. Helping out with space disasters will be a common adventure. Other issues will deal with Cold War shenanigans. Plus the occasional alien invasion to repel.

His adventures will be short-lived, as Ditko will soon be working full-time for Marvel. Space Adventures #42 will be the final Captain Atom story for several years. But as Ditko’s time at Marvel came to an end, he was ready to do work for Charlton again and Captain Atom made his return.

After Charlton closed in the 80s, DC bought the rights to many of their superheroes. Alan Moore was hired to write a story with them. The story he wrote was seen by editors as quite good, but wasn’t consistent with the editorial direction they wanted for the characters. Liking the story, they asked him to rewrite it with original characters. He did so, but the new characters are thinly veiled copies of the Charlton heroes from the original treatment. The story became known as Watchmen and is quite acclaimed.

Instead of Captain Atom as in the original proposal, Watchmen features a character called Dr. Manhattan.

Other Ditko influences will appear in that comic as well, characters we may meet some day.

The Charlton characters were then freed up to join the DC Universe proper, and Captain Atom found his home there, fighting alongside Superman and Batman, and joining the Justice League.

Rating: ★★★½, 61/100

Interior scans are taken from Comic Book Plus. The cover is from the Grand Comics Database.

Characters:

• Captain Adam
• General Eining
• President
• Sergeant/Gunner

Story notes:

• Captain Adam dropped a screwdriver and got stuck getting it out. The rocket blasted off with him inside.
• Atomic warhead set to explode in space at 300 miles above Earth.
• Atlas missile accelerated to 20K mph, going from the troposphere to stratosphere to ionosphere.
• He can’t have survived, but the Gunnery Sergeant hears his voice. Adam is now as radioactive as pure U-235.
• He disintegrated in space and integrated on Earth, and can do the same at any time.
• Diulustel a lightweight metal designed to shield from radiation; Adam will need clothes made from it. Diulustel converts escaping rays to another frequency on the light spectrum.
• Reporter reports that Captain Adam died in explosion.
• Existence of Captain Adam to become nation’s most closely guarded secret.
• Demo of powers at Canaveral attended by: Chiefs of Staff, Atomic Energy Commission, president’s top military aide.
• Adam can fly at speeds of 20K mph.
• Two saboteurs seeking to cause war divert Jupiter missile with Hydrogen warhead to explode over their own territory. Captain Atom stops it.
• The president hopes Captain Atom will usher in an age of peace.
• Readers asked if they want to see more of Captain Atom.

Previous		Next
	INTERLUDE	Captain Atom #78
Amazing Spider-Man #33	Reading order	Tales of Suspense #72, Story B