Captain Atom #1-7
Originally released in 1986
Written by Cary Bates
Art by Pat Broderick
I'm concerned that I'm focusing on 80's DC a little too much, but post-Crisis DC (and, in the case of Teen Titans and Swamp Thing, the story arcs set just before Crisis on Infinite Earths) felt like they were firing on all cylinders, with post-Crisis material acting as a fresh start that allowed characters to be reintroduced with a more modern feel. (John Byrne's Superman revamp was kind of the exception; I've read it before, and it stripped away a lot of the Superman mythos while de-emphasizing Superman's Kryptonian roots and making him extremely devoted to Reagan-era America)
As it's Remembrance Day, I wanted to focus on a character with ties to the military - if it was Marvel, I'd go with Nick Fury (though I'll focus on him tomorrow), but I'm less knowledgeable about DC by comparison. I went with Captain Atom, partially because I knew that he's a military captain (in this case, in the Air Force) and partially because I wanted to find out more about him after reading Justice League International and Justice League Europe.
Charged with treason, Nathaniel Adam is given the opportunity to clear his record by participating in a military experiment. The experiment is led by Wade Eiling, who establishes the sort of person that he is by ripping up a note that's intended for Nathaniel's wife and children if he doesn't survive the procedure. Nathaniel disappears without a trace, along with the alien metal that was used in the experiment.
Eighteen years later, Nathaniel reappears, now unrecognizable. Wade Eiling, now a general, uses his authority to keep anyone else from hearing what's said between the two of them, and when he tells Nathaniel that his wife is dead, Nathaniel lashes out; Eiling has him knocked unconscious and claims that this metal man is an alien who's imitating the human form.
The doctor involved in the experiments, Doctor Megala, winds up being more compassionate than I thought, taking Nathaniel away to a mountain retreat, helping him hone his powers and regain his human form, and trying to break the news to him gently about how he's jumped ahead nearly twenty years. He's not sure how to break the news to Nathaniel about what happened to his family... which is where Eiling comes in.
Nathaniel either blocked out what Eiling told him earlier, or he thought Eiling was lying, so Eiling takes Nathaniel to his wife's grave. As it turns out, she remarried Eiling, being his faithful wife for eleven years before dying four years ago, and Eiling wastes no time in twisting the knife and acting as though he was a much better husband to her.
On top of this, Eiling claims that he can't honour promises made by a former administration, so he forces Adam to become the government's pet superhero, giving him a new identity and a codename of Captain Atom, or else his treasonous record will remain. (It's unclear what he did to be accused of treason, but I'm fully expecting that Eiling was directly responsible for it or even framed him for it) By the end of this first issue alone, I was looking forward to seeing Eiling get his comeuppance - he's an effectively written villain, hiding behind bureaucracy and the chain of command to carry out his sadistic impulses.
As the US government launches a media blitz about America's newest hero, Captain Atom, the man himself is going undercover to deal with the biggest threat of all: French Canadians!
Plastique is a terrorist who seems to be inspired by the real life terrorist group Front de Liberation du Quebec, and she plans to assassinate the US President and the Canadian Prime Minister while her devoted followers blow up the Statue of Liberty and the Canadian Parliament Building. Captain Atom puts a stop to this, though it's clear from his internal monologue that he's not too pleased about "thinking like a superhero".
Issue 3 has Captain Atom sitting down to a televised interview, claiming that he wants to be open to the public, tell them about his life, and convince them that he's a superhero that they can trust. Of course, the backstory that he gives is a total lie.
With the help of his best friend from 18 years ago, he manages to find his daughter, only to discover that she doesn't recognize him and considers him a stranger. Rather, she sees herself as Eiling's daughter. Captain Atom does not take this well.
Despite her reaction at the airport, his daughter Margaret does miss her birth father, even if she doesn't remember what he looks like. Captain Atom is believed to be dead for nearly a week, but after regaining consciousness, he realizes that his children are what he is fighting for and tells his daughter the truth.
As Captain Atom reunites with his daughter Peggy, his fabricated backstory comes back to bite him. He listed off a bunch of made-up villains whose actions were so secret that the public had never heard of them, and a pair of reporters decides to track one of those villains down in order to hear their side of the story.
A former assistant of the Rainbow Raider (the Rainbow Raider is a supervillain whose real name is Roy G. Bivolo) decides to make a quick buck by claiming to be Dr. Spectro, an alleged former enemy of Captain Atom, only to be inspired to actually take on that identity. Meanwhile, Firestorm interfered with a fighter jet demonstration, thinking a missile attack that's part of the show is real, forcing Captain Atom into action to stop him.
Even in these first seven issues, a lot of the details about Captain Atom surprised me. He's not being a hero out of a sense of duty or patriotism - he'd rather not be a hero at all, and he's blackmailed into it. The dynamic between him and Eiling is compelling - I was expecting it to be more like General "Thunderbolt" Ross and the Hulk, but most of Ross's anger (at first) was born out of ignorance, whereas Eiling knows exactly who Captain Atom is and makes his life a living hell.
Doctor Spectro returns to rob banks, though that's just a big flashy way to get attention. He's still after a quick buck, but in this case, he's getting it by blackmailing the US government - an ill-timed phone call involving the journalist who was interviewing him tipped him off to how Captain Atom's rogues gallery is a work of fiction by the US government.
Eiling tries to convince Captain Atom that it was a publicity stunt that got out of hand, but Captain Atom doesn't buy it and tracks down Doctor Spectro himself. This leads to an odd situation where both men are more or less improvising past encounters that they had while thinking about how ridiculous they feel.
Despite his concerns about his new lifestyle and the truth being exposed, Captain Atom is still a good person beneath his seemingly indestructible skin. When Eiling tries to secretly have the supposed Doctor Spectro (a man named Tom Emery) meet with an "unfortunate accident" in prison and use the Rainbow Raider as a scapegoat, Tom gets in touch with Captain Atom, who makes the captain realize that he'd feel responsible if Tom died in prison. This gets the captain to declare that Tom is off-limits as far as prison violence is concerned, unknowingly throwing a monkey wrench into Eiling's plans.
Issue seven has Nathaniel on an undercover mission with Steve Trevor, which complicates things as Steve isn't informed about the nature of Captain Atom. The two of them run into Plastique along with a mysterious samurai called the Warlord, who are fighting over experimental technology that could change the outcome of the Cold War - Captain Atom's skin is punctured and Steve is forced to leave with the device along with another soldier, leaving the captain stuck in Cambodia.
Back in the US, Peggy reunites with her brother Randy, who's been filled in by General Eiling about how Nathaniel Adam is alive. Eiling isn't exactly an unbiased source, and Randy has grown to detest his father over the years, in contrast with Peggy, who quickly warmed up to him.
This series was different from what I expected in a lot of ways, from how it handled his secret identity to the role of Dr. Megala to the dynamic between Captain Atom and Eiling, or even Captain Atom and his government. It was less patriotic than I expected, and felt more like a conspiracy thriller at times. Between series like this, Firestorm, and George Perez's Wonder Woman, I can see why DC went along with rebooting things with Crisis on Infinite Earths; they all feel like fresh starts and great reinventions of these characters.
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