Captain Atom
58 years ago - Nathanial Christopher Adam is born.
39 years ago - 19-year-old Nathan joins the air force, on his way to becoming a decorated combat pilot.
34 years ago - 24-year-old Nathan is wrongly convicted of killing a superior officer. He chooses to participate in a weapon experiment to earn a presidential pardon.
32 years ago - 26-year-old Nathan is bombarded with experimental radiation, causing his body to dramatically alter. He appears to atomize, but is instead lost in the timestream.
7 years ago - 26-year-old Nathan re-appears in the timestream. General Wade Eiling withholds his pardon and uses him as part of the First Strike Program, making him a goverment controled meta-solider under threat of court-martial. While investigating a Kobra raid on a South American weapons development lab, Adam's metal coating is damaged and retreats into his body to repair itself, leaving him powerless. Bette Sans Souci rejects Kobra and saves him as they escape the jungle together
6 years ago - 27-year-old Nathan insists on being the one to bring Bette Sans Souci in as she takes a series of bombing jobs to release her built up energy as she loses control, because he can absorb her power and take her in alive.
5 years ago - 28-year-old Nathan proves his innocence & returns to active duty. He accepts an invitation to the Justice League after their membership is decimated in the battle with Doomsday.
3 years ago - 30-year-old Nathan absorbs too much radiation during the White Martian attack on the Justice League and is again cast into the timestream.
2 years ago - 30-year-old Nathan re-appears from the timestream, resuming his roles with the Justice League & the air force. He reconnects with Bette Sans Souci.
1 year ago - 31-year-old Nathan Adam leaves the Justice League with Jefferson Pierce to begin a Justice League Task Force for the American government.
Before anyone says anything.... no, this isn't time travel. Captain Atom absorbs quantum energy, and when he absorbs too much his body is shunted through that energy, reappearing further down the timestream. All he's doing is traveling forward in time, the same as the rest of us... he just misses a chunk of it.
Now that that's out of the way, Captain Atom is an interesting piece of DC storytelling. First, because he's a very good example of the way lots of DC's pantheon of characters are actually from completely different companies and then adapted into their larger world. Second, because he arrives right as they are in the middle of a company-wide redesign in the shape of the first Crisis, so he's very emblematic of what DC was doing at the time. Third, because he endures largely because he fits so well into his own particular story niche.
Now that that's out of the way, Captain Atom is an interesting piece of DC storytelling. First, because he's a very good example of the way lots of DC's pantheon of characters are actually from completely different companies and then adapted into their larger world. Second, because he arrives right as they are in the middle of a company-wide redesign in the shape of the first Crisis, so he's very emblematic of what DC was doing at the time. Third, because he endures largely because he fits so well into his own particular story niche.
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Captain Atom's Comic HistoryCaptain Atom is one of the Charlton Comics characters. He first appeared in a comic called Space Adventurers in 1960 before getting his own series, basically a generic atomic-powered superhero. The series included the first appearance of another classic Charlson character, Ted Kord's Blue Beetle. DC acquired the Charlston characters in 1983, and began bringing them all into the fold of their mainstream DC continuity over the next few years. While Blue Beetle appeared in the Crisis, Atom first showed up in his own self-titled series in 1987 by Carey Bates. His origins were rebuilt in a decidedly modern (for the 80's) tale;
In the mid-sixties Air Force Captain Nathanial Adam, wrongfully accused of treason, volunteered for an experimental weapons test to earn his pardon. He was encased in an egg of mysterious alien metal and was exposed to a detonating atomic bomb. The alien metal bonded with his body, and he tapped into the mysterious Quantum Field, absorbing all the energy and being flung forward in time to modern times (the mid eighties), where he finds that his wife remarried his obviously evil former commander who also raised his kids as his own. With nothing else to live for, Nathan becomes the government's pet superhero, slowly strugglig against the control of his commander and trying to reclaim his own life. |
Our Captain Atom StoryThe basic story as established in that 1987 series by Cary Bates is pretty much the sum total of everything interesting about Captain Atom. From here, the vast, vast majority of his appearances are in spin-off Justice League teams (Europe, International, Extreme), where his main role was as their military guy. It's a functional role that he fills really well, but it does leave a little bit of his functionality on the table, because his struggle to reclaim his autonomy from his archnemesis / commanding officer is a really good one, and we want to make sure that has space. General Eiling's penchant for screwing over government-based superheroes shows up in several other characters' stories, and we sort of mushed them all together into a larger plotline that can be resolved all at once, making his triumph over the General a much bigger deal.
It's only after that story is resolved that we'll get into his tenure with the Justice League. He wasn't actually ON the team that was defeated by the White Martians, but he works in that role really well, because his built in weakness (absorb too much energy and vanish into the future) automatically takes him off the board until we can use him again to build a new League. |
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Captain Atom's DesignThe old Charlston costume was pretty generic, so the changes made when he moved over to DC were all good ideas. It even works pretty well in continuity; the silver body is a function of his powers, so the details were added (via a laser-etching technique) to make it more of a costume... and if that's the case then it really makes sense that those details would be pretty minimal. All in all, it was a logical, functional look. If there's any shortcoming, it's that it might be too simple, which might explain his longtime status as a supporting character.
If there's anything that could be updated, It's actually probably not his superhero design, but what happens to him when he's not punching bad guys. Originally, he would still look like a normal guy (albeit with white hair) when he was just walking around, but could manifest the alien metal out of his body when it was time to go be a superhero. The last time he did that, I believe, was in the pages of Extreme Justice. Without that, he doesn't really get to be a person with his own story. So maybe if there's anything in his design that we can change it's just the fact that sometimes he doesn't need it. |
Captain Atom's FutureCaptain Atom is a very functional tool to have in the toolbox of DC's storytelling, because he very quickly establishes that yes, NOW the military is involved. He serves that role very, very well, but there's more to the character than that. While we're not including the idea of his lost family since that got a little weird, there's a really great contest of wills between Adam and Eiling, and it's really a great story. From there, of course, he becomes a dedicated member of the Justice League, even as he continues to serve in the Air Force.
From here Captain Atom is actually the idea character to use for our next big project for the League. After the huge battle against the entire superhero community and the universe-devouring Maggeddon, there needs to be a shift in the attitude of world governments toward Superheroes. This leads to the heightened profile of teams like the Global Guardians, but it also means that the US Government would reach out to the Justice League, looking to have their own private division as a part of the military. While former Secretary of Education Black Lightning of acting Senator Firehawk are of course prime candidates, there's really no one who is better suited to build that team than Captain Nathanial Adams. |
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