Captain Atom’s
1980s series was remarkably dull, highlighted only by
Pat Broderick’s art and the spiffy new costume design for Captain Atom.
Previous incarnations of Atom, over at Charlton Comics, had a standard
superhero costume.
The series relied on a lot of tie-ins and guest stars. As I recall he had a part in the Janus Contract and Millenium.
As
it was DC’s fad of the day, Atom was named a “quantum elemental,” in
the same way Red Tornado was an air elemental and Swamp Thing was an
earth elemental.
It was also established that Atom could absorb
massive amounts of energy into his body, but such absorbtion caused him
to “quantum leap” through the timestream. He was originally an Air
Force pilot from the 1950s, absorbed the energy from an explosion (of a
nuclear bomb, I think) and was vaulted into the 1980s. This same
phenomenon is likely to be the thing that drops him into the Wildstorm
universe.
Overall, I don’t remember it being a very good series.
I
have a few copies of “Space Adventures” from Charlton that star Captain
Atom, which I haven’t read yet, but I’m betting they’re even worse.
One
neat tidbit: In “Kingdom Come,” Atom has adopted an Orange and Red
variation of his current costume. These are Atom’s original colors when
he was at Charlton. (He’s “later” harassed by the robot L-Ron about the
color choice and switches back to the silver costume in “Formerly Known
as the Justice League.”)
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