Broken Frontier

The Atom is one of those heroes I’ve never really cared about.  I recognize he’s a classic character who’s played a significant role in recent major events like Identity Crisis.  His power to shrink to phenomenal degrees while maintaining his weight and mass never really did much for me.  In a universe where heroes can fly around the Earth, thereby reversing its orbit and undo time itself, the ability to become really, really small seems like a yawner.  In my mind, super-small heroes work only in a few situations:

1) A diabolical villain creates a “shrink ray” and turns it on his foes, who must figure out how to stop the bad guy while avoiding the perils of their new stature—like giant spiders and the monstrous housecat, Tink, who views them as colorfully-clad snacks.
2) A superhero falls victim to a nanotechnology virus, perhaps at the hand of the same diabolical villain, and one of his comrades-in-arms must shrink to microscopic size, enter the heroes bloodstream, and defeat the “central brain” of the nano-colony … but of course he must fight his way through his friend’s white blood cells, which see him as a disease.
3) The Micronauts.  As you know if you’ve followed this column at all, the Micronauts can do no wrong.

So, there you have it, I’m not a fan of the Atom … or am I?

A few days ago, I stumbled into a conversation regarding DC’s relaunch of The Atom.  This isn’t a book that’s making me anxious, if ya know what I mean.  I’ve heard some good things about it, but I just didn’t think it would be my cup of tea.  During the conversation, though, someone asked if anyone remembered the Sword of the Atom mini-series … and a flood of great memories washed through my mind.  When I got home, I dug through my comic boxes and managed to uncover the first, third, and fourth issues pretty quickly.  It took another couple of hours to find the second issue, because the organization of my collection is non-existent, but it was worth the effort.  I sat down, read all four issues, and realized that at one time I thought the Atom was pretty cool after all.  

Here’s a few reasons DC’s Sword of the Atom kicks more booty than an ill-tempered donkey:

1) He rides a giant frog into battle!
2) He woos a scantily-clad princess.
3) He fights gigantic snakes, rats, ants, and crocodiles.
4) Gil Kane’s fantastic artwork.
5) The cover of each issue of the series tells a story (okay, arguably, it’s the same story—the Atom, armed with a sword, battles some gigantic creature—but that’s a tale that never gets old).
6) If you’re lucky, you can pick the entire series up for a buck or less at a comic show.

Sword of the Atom isn’t really a superhero book.  It’s more of a sword and sorcery story, akin to the adventures of Conan or—more closely—to John Carter of Mars.  The Atom essentially uses his powers twice in the story, once in the beginning and once at the end.  The rest of the time, he’s swinging swords, wrestling tyrants, riding frogs, and engaging in all sorts of daring do!

Ray Palmer, the scientist who uses charged particles of a white dwarf star to become the Atom, is having a rough couple of weeks.  On a dark and stormy night, he catches his wife, Jean Loring, in the arms of another man.  While readers who followed Identity Crisis know he would have been better off without her, back in 1983, Ray was devastated.  And even though I would have kicked the harlot to the curbside without hesitation, her argument with a heartbroken Ray is one of the most stomach-knotting exchanges between comic book husband and wife around:

“ … When I closed the Gifford case,” Jean snaps, “and we had a nice bit of cash to spend … I wanted to buy a cabin in the woods somewhere …  What did you do with the money?”

“I bought a portable scintillation detector …”

(And I have to interrupt here for just a bit.  I’m only hoping Ray Palmer was so distraught over his wife’s infidelity that either his genius-level intellect was on the fritz or he was trying to give her the needle about how he spent her cash.  Diamonds, Ray!  Diamonds—
not scintillation detectors—are a girl’s best friend!  Sorry, back to the drama …)

“But I thought you’d understand,” Ray says.  “I needed that detector to solve an important case as the Atom!”

“The Atom!  Now there’s a topic for conversation!  When you aren’t hiding in the lab, you’re out playing super-cop, risking your life …!”

“The world needs the Atom!  I thought you accepted that when we got married!”

“Oh, Ray … grow up!  I stopped reading comic books years ago!  What makes you think I want to live with one?”

Ouch!

Ray decides he needs to spend a little time away from Jean, so he heads to South America to work on a research project (to find another chunk of rock similar to the one that gave him his shrinking powers in the first place).  A couple of drug dealers, several lightning strikes, and one plane crash later, he finds himself washed up on the shore of an unfamiliar beach.  It only takes him a few minutes to realize that he’s somehow become permanently stuck at 6-inches tall.  Within minutes he’s attacked by a gigantic snake, only to be rescued (and then taken prisoner) by a group of savage, frog-riding warriors.  The Atom finds himself chained and taken to the kingdom of Morlaidh … where soon he’s embroiled in more sword-wielding, monster-bashing, princess-rescuing, tyrant-overthrowing action than you can shake a Frank Frazetta album cover at.

The series was a lot of fun—a good Saturday afternoon read, if you will—and even though the Atom reluctantly returns to his day-to-day life, I always hoped he’d go back to the savage world of Morlaidh.

The new Atom series has already kicked off, I believe, and the title character is (if I understand correctly) someone other than Dr. Palmer.  I’m sure it’s a good book … if you like shrinking superheroes.  There’s not enough green in the old wallet to purchase everything that comes out, and DC gets plenty of my money already, so for now I had to take a pass.  If, however, anyone out there is reading the book … and you happen to see a blue and red clad barbarian riding a frog and swinging a sword, please shoot me an e-mail and let me know!

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Cullen Bunn's fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. His comic series The Damned will be published by Oni Press in late 2006.  You can find out more about his work by visiting www.cullenbunn.com.