Captain Atom (DC, 1987-1991) # 51-57 [COMICS]

Here we go, the final issues of Captain Atom!  This series has never been reprinted, so search out those dollar bins (or, my favourite thing in the world, 25 cent bins) to assemble your own set.  Because you can't have mine!

A well-composed, intriguing cover starts off Issue # 51.  We once again have a different creative team, and it tells a tale where Captain Atom has only a minor part.  Instead, the story revolves around "Pops", a new character with strange powers that he tries to suppress until he's witness to a murder and the kidnapping of his son by gang violence.  It's a good story.  The letters page has a nice goodbye from Weisman and Bates.  I know a series can't always end just because the original creative team has finished, but sometimes I think it's a classy thing for low-to-mid ranking titles to do.

Issue # 52 brings in a different writer, Dan Raspler, for a frankly kinda goofy tale about an alien left over on Earth from the big Invasion! crossover.  The alien, a Dominator, has been "helping" a think-thank but actually using it for a nefarious drug-dealing scheme.  It's original, I 've gotta give it that, but original doesn't always mean good.

The cover art has been pretty good the last few issues, including Issue # 53, even with different writers.  It's hard to beat "Attack of the Zombie Dolphins!" as a cover line, guest-starring Aquaman.  It's a fun, standalone story with a really fun scene involving a battle against a ginormous zombie whale.  Not exactly high-brow literature, but comics don't have to be everything all the time.

Issue # 54 is the series' swan-song (a phrase the origin of which dates back to Plato's Socratic dialogues, says the learned listener of a podcast on philosophy).  It's the first in a four-issue arc called "The Quantum Quest" written by John Ostrander.  The cover art gets ugly again, however.  You might recall the concept in DC comics from this period that different super heroes were actually "elementals"?  Swamp Thing was the plant elemental, Red Tornado the air elemental, Firestorm the fire elemental, etc., with Captain Atom being the "quantum elemental."  This issue dives into that idea as the Phantom Stranger guest stars to lead Captain Atom to meet Rasputin (!), but a battle against an evil villain named "Shadow Storm" gets C.A. blasted into the quantum zone.  He can create and recreate the quantum zone to his wishes, and so makes one where Nathaniel Adam was never convicted of treason and lives happily with his wife and kids.  It's surprisingly good.

Power  is addictive, as C.A. finds in Issue # 55.  With the ability to snap his fingers and retroactively change any unhappy moment in his new life, he more and more reduces his loved ones into mindless automatons.  And every time he changes reality, feeds a dark doppelganger.  Two issues in a row with my note "surprisingly good" scrawled on the backing board.  Hmm!

Captain Atom suffers from severe abdominal abnormalities according to the cover art to Issue # 56.  But worse, he has to fight his evil doppelganger in his quantum world while in the "real" world, Shadow Storm wreaks havoc.  I haven't mentioned that the "real" Rasputin is, for some reason, also in C.A.'s quantum-verse.  Atom tells Rasputin of his family's history, and it's surprisingly dark, involving a father abandoning his family, a mother who's a drunk, and a car-wreck in which his sister was killed.  Ironic that the first real glimpse of Adam's background comes near the very end of his run.  But it's done well here.

It all comes to an end in Issue # 57, which is (unfortunately) a "War of the Gods" crossover issue.  It's a largely incoherent mess that starts with several 1-page pin-ups.  Captain Atom returns to the "real" world and defeats Shadow Storm, the most cliched villain around.  Something else vague and incoherent happens, and C.A. flies off to his (infamously stupid) non-fate in Armageddon 2001 # 2.  It's a really poor, disappointing ending, and makes me think the series should have just ended at # 50 after all.