Veteran cartoonist Charles Voight only ever tried his hand at one strait-laced superhero. The result was simultaneously thoughtful and absurd.
Well, they say that you only have one chance to make a first impression, you may as well put all your cards on the table.
ATOMIC MAN
Created by Charles Voight
Appears in Headline Comics (Prize) Nos.16-21 (1945-1946)
When Charles Voight launched his career in comic books in 1945, he was already a successful strip artist, comfortably in his middle age. Meanwhile, superheroes -- who still dominated the medium -- were effectively still in their collective adolescence.
With the genre having only debuted in 1938, still-young superhero comics were assembling an identity through bulk quantity. So many superheroes were created and discarded in those scant seven years that much of the genre’s foundation was pretty well established in its early days.
In your average superhero at this point, for instance, there were certain must-haves: a momentous origin, infused with melodramatic significance. Impossible abilities, a noble mission. Then, you can scatter in a secret identity, a goofy sidekick, a girlfriend to sass you and to get threatened by masked weirdos -- and maybe a cool fast car that goes underwater and murders crooks! Also, for some reason, the rules state that many of them should dress in some lamentable suit made of carpet remnants and codpieces. Stay tuned.
An example of more-typical Voight fare in the pages of Prize Comics…
Well into his fifties, Voight had recently closed the curtain on his long-running newspaper strip, Betty, a Gilded Age remnant which had survived the Depression but translated poorly to wartime austerity. For an unfortunately-brief period -- Voight passed away at age 59 in 1947 -- he produced material for Bernard Baily on behalf of the incredibly-fake-sounding publisher R.B.Leffingwell & Co. I challenge you to picture one Mister R.B.Leffingwell and not fundamentally include a ridiculous mustache. Try it. Can’t be done.
The bulk of Voight’s comic catalog was focused on the adventures of archaeologist/boxer “Boom Boom” Brannigan and slang-slinging damsels-and-dragons comedy, Sir Prize (This was a bit of a play on the name of the publisher imprint - Prize - which was very likely chosen to avoid the mouth-filling R.B.Leffingwell & Co. Comics! … PRESENTS!). As far as superheroes went, Voight observed the maturing medium of comics and their precocious paladins of power -- and found them silly.
Voight’s efforts to indulge the need for a superhero-or-two in Prize’s assorted titles were beautifully illustrated and breezily written, but they didn’t approach the subject matter with tongue fully absent from cheek.
Masculine monikers may have lent an air of superheroic gravitas to Voight creations like He-Man and Impossible Man, yet still-superheroic but less lantern-jawed inventions like Jeep & Peep or Captain Milksop sort-of give the game away.
His one straightforward attempt, by contrast, is the bluntly-appellated Atomic Man, debuting in Prize’s Headline Comics vol.1 No.18.
“Indestructible?! That’s a laugh! Another miraculous escape from death -- So I can die six months from now!”
Laboratory assistant Adam Mann just can’t win. Shot fulla holes during his time with the Army Rangers and laid up with a subsequent case of malaria, Adam checks in with his personal physician only to discover that his luck hasn’t changed much. Diagnosed with lymphatic leukemia, he’s given the gloomy forecast of a measly six months to live, assuming that he undertakes extensive treatment. Without that treatment -- six weeks.
Now we have to re-set the “Days Without Somebody Drinking Uranium” sign to zero, again, Adam.
Stunned and distracted, Adam returns to his job at the Atomic Energy Research Lab. This is, by the way, precisely the opposite of the thing I would do if I were given six weeks to live. Returning to my job, sheesh, this guy. Frankly, this is the opposite of what any reasonable human being should do after being handed a virtual death sentence. Even moreso, six weeks isn’t all that long -- a person could sure cause a lot of trouble in that period of time and then escape the subsequent long-term consequences with ease. I understand that the preceding sentence says a lot more about me than it does about Atomic Man.
Luckily, Adam is slightly more responsible (or less opportunistic) than myself. Returning to the office, he’s promptly yelled at by his irascible boss* and, dizzy with shock, retreats into his personal laboratory. Here is a list of what is in Adam Mann’s personal laboratory: (A) An enormously powerful electric dynamo, (B) a shoebox with a loose lid and it’s full of Uranium-235 and, lastly, (C) a refreshing glass of cool water. Just what a recently doomed research scientist needs to clear his head!
*Precisely why he shouldn’ta returned t’the job!
So, yes, the U-235 falls into the glass of water, and he drinks it, and he stumbles backwards into the electric generator.
Adam learns two important facts about his new atomically-acquired situation actuelle: Number one, he is practically indestructible. Number two, the electro-radiation power he’ll soon exhibit resides entirely in the last, inaccessible piece of shrapnel left in his body -- in his right hand. And if he touches anything with that hand or points at something with that hand, then
Returning from an impromptu followup physical, Adam discovers that he’s been cured of cancer AND is a “human atomic bomb.” That’s a two-fer! He covers his dangerous mitt in a lead glove, like a radioactive Michael Jackson, and muses on what to do with this awesome opportunity. “I could use my power to crush every evil influence in the world!!” he says, alarmingly.
“Allow me to introduce myself -- I’m Atomic Man! I’m going to vaporize you -- unless you surrender!”
With a slow start in his debut appearance, Adam has to make up for lost time. To begin with, in Headline Comics No.17, He acquires his first colorful crook -- “King” Maline, an ambition-obsessed crime-lord looking to conquer America for his personal property, and whose scheme involves abduction of a prominent atomic physicist. Atomic Man also unveils his superheroic nom-du-guerre, exhibits many of his newfound abilities (which have expanded to include flight and built-in radar, which I believe makes him an airplane) and, more importantly, his costume.
I may be overstating my position here, but I don’t believe there’s a costume in the history of comic books that looks more like a guy wearing the contents of a still-life painting. Imagine if you were taking a life-drawing class, and someone stole the model’s clothes when no one was looking. Rather than send that poor bastard into the streets starkers, you grab whatever props you can find on the still-life table. A dusty carpet. A copper mug. A couple of oranges, although I don’t know where he’ll put ‘em. “Here,” you say, dumping wax fruit out of a metal bowl, “This’ll keep the rain off.”
From the perspective of sheer rendering, it’s wonderful. Voight’s exceptionally capable with a loose, gestural line. The folds of the fabric and the musculature of Atomic Man’s largely bare bod are wonderful works of illustration. But honestly. He looks like the FTD flower guy. He looks like he should be installed over an ice-skating rink. He looks cold. Especially his knees.
Speaking of visuals, the manner of Atomic Man’s execution of his opponents --which I mean literally -- is unique. With his hand outstretched, Atomic Man makes short work of King Maline and his crew, dispatching them over the stretch of a page-and-a-half. They vanish in clouds, at the tips of lancing bolts of energy, dying with a sputtering “PHUTT!”
You sure? Better give ‘em another round just to be safe.
Headline Comics No.18 introduces a character who, to judge by the lipstick-painted face of Adam in the final panel, is meant to fill the girlfriend role -- Sally Allen, who debuts by way of barely surviving a fall down an elevator shaft. By this point, though, Voight seems largely done with Atomic Man as a character. His final conflict under his creator’s pen involves a garden variety gang of bank robbers, most of whom Adam chooses to tackle sans phutt. In a move more suitable for Voight’s pugilistic professor “Boom Boom” Brannigan, Adam quips “I didn’t waste my time in the Rangers, Rat!!” as he slugs a crook’s jaw into an elastic shape.
Whether Voight had intended to continue the strip is anyone’s guess, as his untimely passing leaves Atomic Man in diverse hands (including Jerry Robinson and a young Gil Kane). Without Voight’s billowy brushwork and fluid writing, Atomic Man quickly becomes indistinguishable from the other lesser superheroes on the stands, and vanishes after three more issues (without so much as a “phutt!”).
--PHUTT!
It’s apparent that Voight wasn’t comfortable in this world of po-faced punch-em-ups and super-powered palookas, despite having established himself in practically every other genre in the medium. With that in mind, it’s interesting to look at Atomic Man not as what it appears to be -- a naked man with a bedpan hat and who murders people with his radioactive shrapnel hand PS he’s dressed like if a magic carpet were also a male stripper -- but as a meditation on the genre.
Maybe it’s just a really sensitive tree.
The deliberate pacing Voight employs in crafting Atomic Man is genuinely unusual for the period. In order to get right to the bang-pow-zoom, most superheroes of the time were introduced, origin-ed, costumed, and fighting their first bad guy within three pages of their debut appearance.. By contrast, Atomic Man isn’t even called Atomic Man by the end of his origin story.
Voight was a superb cartoonist and, more importantly, a great draftsman. His approach to this new genre wasn’t shy of action and activity, but he took each step in the character’s development with ponderous thoughtfulness. Atomic Man, in many ways, feels like a superhero under glass, being observed by its creator even as it’s being created.
An interesting confluence of this is that new superheroes debuting in the contemporary market will probably experience an arc not unlike Atomic Man’s -- getting their gear and dramatis personae parceled out over the first few appearances. Voight trod that ground some two decades before Stan Lee sicced Spider-Man on the world.
Of course, there was a lot of additional superheroic evolution in the twenty years between between Atomic Man and Spider-Man, with orders of additional complexity introduced to superheroes long after Voight’s phutt-ing hero bowed. That’s why the song doesn’t go “Atomic Man / Atomic Man / Does Whatever At Atom Can / Awww Suffragette!”
Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum and archivists Citaltris, Dave Hayward, Freddy Fly, Henry Peters, Lofty Pilot, Moonled, Ontology, Other Eric, Ranger House, and Yoc for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.
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