Captain Atom
Entry updated 25 August 2025. Tagged: Character, Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1950-1951). Nation-Wide Publishing. 7 issues. Artists and scriptwriters unidentified. 52 pages (though half usual size), with three long strips and a short text story in each issue, all featuring Captain Atom.
The cover of #1 assures the reader that the stories are "all based on scientific facts and theories!" Inside we learn our hero's background: he is 21, an "athlete, adventurer, scholar and outstanding American" who believes "a thorough knowledge of the sciences can furnish man with Inventions capable of solving most any problem". Captain Atom is sponsored by Professor King, Scientist and businessman, and in return pilots his "custom built luxury turbojet airliner", which looks more like a Spaceship than an aeroplane. A parachute with attached helicopter blades enables it to land in otherwise unsuitable terrain.
Captain Atom foils evil doers using his scientific know-how: for example, #1's opening story "Danger in the Pyrenees" has a communist militia (see Politics) defeated when the Captain gives them solenoids for their tanks made from locally sourced gallium (see Elements): the machines' heat melts the solenoids and the tanks break down. Orchid thieves and bank robbers are similarly defeated in the issue's other strips. "Lost Island" (#3) has "the legendary prothoflame bug" infesting the professor's experimental farm (see Agriculture), their touch setting the crops alight; they are traced to a secret island whose inhabitants, though young in appearance, claim to be over a hundred years old, having invented a Rejuvenation Drug ("the fountain of youth") as well as a means to breed the prothoflame bug. Their leader's plan is to conquer the world. The life-extending drug is made from "inositol, plus one other magic herb". #4's "The Jinxed Bazaar" has a villain using a ground generator to fire silver-iodide crystals into the atmosphere to make it rain locally on demand (see Weather Control). "The Sargasso Serpent" (#5) attacks shipping and resembles an oceanic fire-breathing dragon, but when it attacks the professor's jet-powered yacht it is revealed to be a kind of Robot "magnetized into action by the metal of our ship". "The Undersea Fort" in #7 has Captain Atom's "atom powered submarine" discovering a base built Under the Sea by an unspecified nation preparing to take over the world (see Imperialism): despite their defensive "omega Rays", they are stopped.
Occasionally the Captain uses of a "walkie-talkie tv unit", comprising hand-sized video cameras and screens. Other inventions include a "magnascope" (magnifying goggles), a gun (see Weapons) that can fire even in the coldest temperatures, and another that fires infra-red rays and "special gases" that stun the victim. Each story ends with a brief explanation of the scientific basis of its contents (see Education in SF), with some Scientific Errors and omissions; readers hoping that giant flame-throwing robots would shortly be rolling off the production lines would have been disappointed. Foreigners tend to be treacherous or defeatist. The professor's wife and daughter are usually passive victims but occasionally cause problems (see Women in SF): in a dinghy, passing an ice flow, daughter Carol cries: "Look at the darling polar bear cub." There are protests from the males but her mother insists, "That cub is harmless. Let Carol pet it." Its parents duly appear.
Captain Atom is one of the more lacklustre sf adventure comics of its era, didactic and reading as if aimed at a younger audience. The Captain himself – whose costume might classify him as a Superhero – should not be confused with the Charlton Comics character of the same name (see Captain Atom [2]; Space Adventures), later acquired by DC Comics; nor the Australian superhero whose first comic was published in 1948, pre-dating the Nation-Wide and Charlton versions. [SP]
links
previous versions of this entry