Al Pratt
1912 - Al Pratt is born on his family's farm.
1927 - 15-year-old Al, constantly bullied for his small stature, starts being called 'Atomic Al'
1929 - 17-year-old Al goes to Calvin College to study chemistry.
1931 - 19-year-old Al tries to protect his date, Mary James, during a mugging, but is knocked out cold. Despondent, he chooses to commit himself to never feeling weak again. He leaves school and retreats to his family farm where he trains nonstop for a full year, developing his own advanced exercise and bodybuilding routines.
1932 - 20-year-old Al returns to Calvin College, where he helps thwart the kidnapping of Mary James, first using the name 'The Atom' as a heroic moniker.
1933 - 21-year-old Al first dons his cowl and strong man costume, openly fighting organized crime as the Mighty Atom.
1936 - 24-year-old Al Pratt graduates with a bachelor's degree & begins working as a chemist.
1938 - 26-year-old Al Pratt marries his college sweetheart Mary James.
1939 - 27-year-old Al starts working in the Manhattan Project in Nevada. as WW2 begins.
1941 - 29-year-old Al is one of the founding members of the Justice Society.
1942 - 30-year-old Al absorbs the latent energy of an experimental nuclear device and gains Atomic Powers.
1944 - 32-year-old Al's biological sample is used by Delores Winters to create 100 superhuman embryos.
1945 - 33-year-old Al, upon witnessing the bombing of Hiroshima, begins focusing more on his attention on his work with nuclear energy.
1950 - 38-year-old Al saves everyone in a collapsing nuclear research facility, sacrificing himself.
There were dozens, probably hundreds, of generic heroes in every comic company that were simply men that wanted to fight crime (or nazis) and did so by wearing some kind of mask and punching people. The ones that stood out had some sort of recognizable concept that made them more interesting than the other characters. Maybe they were boxers and wore catsuits. Maybe they had an hour's worth of enhanced strength. Maybe they dress up like a bat, introduce the concept of tragic backstories to comics, and revolutionized superheroes forever. Then there is Al Pratt, who is short. That's his gimmick; he's a short guy that punched people. Just HOW this character wound up being one of the most remembered heroes of the era will be fun to dig into.
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Al Pratt's Comic HistoryAl Pratt's first appearances were in 1940, in All-American Comics #40, starring in his own stories for only a few issues before he joined the Justice Society the same year. His relationship with the Justice Society has come to really define the character; but I actually really enjoy reading his solo adventures in this era. The trope of a scrawny weakling finding an exercise regime that turns him into a superstrong hero shows up in comics constantly... even more so in the vintage Charles Atlas ads that ran in comics for decades... and while there may have been other characters that did it BEFORE Al Pratt, there are certainly none that ever did it BETTER.
In the decades that follow, Al's costume and powers evolved to make him a more generic superhero, and then of course once the Silver Age came we got a whole new version of the Atom in Ray Palmer, but the classic Atom remains a core part of the history of DC. |
Our Al Pratt StoryGetting Al Pratt right in our timeline is actually a fun thing to do, because step one is to really dig in and understand who this character is. On the surface, his entire gimmick seems to be that he was short. That seems like a hard concept to build on, but this IS a character that's gone on to be a central figure in one of the greatest superhero teams ever made, so something must be working?
The answer here really is to lean into the whole 'skinny weakling decides to turn himself around by devoting himself to exercise' trope. As a story idea it might be a little silly, but it's really hard to argue that it isn't a very prolific, fun, distinctly comic-book one (although I'm sure you can think of an anime with the same backstory if you try). If we just decide up front that Al is THE guy who's done this, and who had decided to devote hew new incredible physique to fighting organized crime, and then Nazi sabateurs... That's really all the work we have to do with him. We do have to explain what happens to all the classic Golden Age heroes, and the best way to wrap up Al's story is to give him his nuclear powers, so that's what we're going to do. It gives him a chance for a cool heroic final victory. |
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