Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Atomic Man, Promise Collection

The Promise Collection 1946: Superheroes of the Atom

"That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam" which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare," said President Harry S. Truman during his speech announcing the first usage of the atomic bomb in war on August 6, 1945."With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production and even more powerful forms are in development. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war."  The fan who assembled the Promise Collection would soon absorb some of the background and particulars of this event through direct references in comic books like Atoman Comics #1 and Four Favorites #22.

It was a moment that would change world history in a fundamental way, and within months these changes would begin to seep into the fabric of our culture, including comic books. Before early 1946, the most prominent usage of the word "atom" in comic books was probably from the character of that name who appeared in All-American Comics and who was also a member of the Justice Society in All-Star Comics — which the fan who assembled the Promise Collection had recently begun reading by this time.  In the years and decades after 1946, the Children of the Atom would transform comics and the way people think about them in a fundamental way.  But 1946 itself was the year that the cultural impact of the atomic age and the Men of the Atom would begin to emerge in comic books.

Welcome to Part 11 of the Promise Collection series, which is meant to serve as liner notes of sorts for the comic books in the collection. The Promise Collection is a set of nearly 5,000 comic books, 95% of which are blisteringly high grade, that were published from 1939 to 1952 and purchased by one young comic book fan.  The name of the Promise Collection was inspired by the reason that it was saved and kept in such amazing condition since that time. An avid comic book fan named Junie and his older brother Robert went to war in Korea.  Robert Promised Junie that he would take care of his brother's beloved comic book collection should anything happen to him. Junie was killed during the Korean War, and Robert kept his promise.  There are more details about that background in a previous post regarding this incredible collection of comic books.  And over the course of a few dozen articles in this new series of posts, we will also be revealing the complete listing of the collection.  You can always catch up with posts about this collection at this link, which will become a hub of sorts regarding these comic books over time.

January Through June 1946 in the Promise Collection

Even though newsprint shortages would linger for years after the war, the conclusion of the war brought with it the end of the War Production Board's oversight of pulp production and paper usage by the start of 1946, and the comic book industry would find a firmer footing as the year got underway.  The Promise Collection contains a number of new series debuts from this time frame including All Great Comics #1, Black Cat Comics #1, Boy Explorers Comics #1, Kid Eternity #1, Lance O-Casey #1, Seven Seas Comics #1, and Stuntman #1 among others.  Page counts also started rising again.  For example, Fawcett increased its standard page count from 32 to 48 pages over this time, and in the case of its flagship Captain Marvel Adventures, even began publishing bi-weekly.  Victor Fox even managed to pull off a giant-sized issue again with the 196 page Everybody's Comics.  Just as we saw throughout 1945, comics featuring L.B. Cole covers are among the most historically desirable items from early 1946, as evidenced by the sale of Suspense Comics #11 CGC 9.8 for $132,000.00.  But perhaps the most interesting developments from the perspective of historical interest in the context of the moment was the burst of atom bomb-inspired series such as Atoman Comics, Atomic Thunderbolt, Atomic Comics, and the debut of Atomic Man in Headline Comics #17.

Rise of the Atom

The All-American Comics series reappears in the Promise Collection for the first time since 1944 with All-American Comics #70 featuring Green Lantern, Atom, and Dr. Mid-Nite among others. The Mighty Atom is as good of a place as any to start telling the tale of how the word "atom" and the things it represented began to change comic books and the world in the months and years to come. The genesis of The Mighty Atom's name has more to do with the later, atomic-age sense of the word than one might think. It's fairly well known that the Silver Age version of the character was in part inspired by his namesake Raymond Palmer — science fiction pulp and magazine editor/publisher, who probably by no coincidence had once written a fanzine column called "Spilling the Atom with RAP". But it is not unlikely that the Golden Age version of the character was also inspired by real life.  The Golden Age version of The Mighty Atom character was developed by creators Bernard Flinton and William O'Connor, possibly with Leonard Sansone in 1940.  But throughout the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and beyond, the name "The Mighty Atom" was in use by an extremely popular strongman performer on the American and European vaudeville circuit named Joseph L. Greenstein.  Like his comic book namesake after him, Greenstein was small of stature and weak, until a wrestler (a boxer, in the comic book version) took him under his wing and helped him train to peak physical condition as a strongman and fighter.  Greenstein's exploits as The Mighty Atom made frequent newspaper headlines, and his popularity was such that it earned him an endorsement deal. It seems likely that the comic book character's creators were influenced by Greenstein's exploits and fame.

But Joseph L. Greenstein is not the start of The Mighty Atom story.  The phrase first entered popular culture in 1896, with the book The Mighty Atom by author Marie Corelli.  Corelli was a prolific and extremely popular author in America and Europe in the 1890s.  The book in part examines science vs religious creationism vs New Age spiritualism: "You call it a First Cause, he said — And are you really quite sure the First Cause is an Atom? Oh, then you only 'guess' at the Atom, as other people 'guess' at God, he said. No one is sure about anything! Well, I think it is very silly to settle upon an Atom as the cause of anything. It seems to me much more natural and likely that it should be a Person. A Person with brain and thought and feeling and memory. You see, an Atom under the microscope has no head, or any place where it could grow a brain, — it is just a thing like two cords knotted together, and in the works of nature there is nothing of that description which thinks out a universe for itself, — if there were, it would rule us all–"

Soon, Corelli's publisher was announcing a 14th edition of The Mighty Atom after less than a year in print.  With the success of the book, the term had entered the public consciousness.  A British comedian named Alec Seal was using The Mighty Atom as a stage name by 1900.  And shortly after, other miscellaneous figures ranging from entertainers to random public figures — and even dogs — began to claim the name too. At the same time, grappling with the might of the atom vs religion had increasingly become a subject of debate as scientific advancement accelerated towards the end of the 19th Century, even tiptoeing towards Quantum Realm-like concepts as early as 1885 with philosophical questions like "Is each atom a world?"

This leads us in a straight line to a history that we've encountered previously in this series of posts about the Promise Collection. A century before Avengers: Endgame brought the Quantum Realm into the fabric of one of the highest-grossing films of all time, pulp science fiction author Ray Cummings would start developing the concept of what we now call the Quantum Realm in the Girl in the Golden Atom story from the pulp All-Story Magazine, March 15, 1919. Cummings himself adapted his 1929 follow-up to Girl in the Golden Atom, called Princess of the Atom for Marvel/Timely in a two-part story of the same name in Captain America Comics #25 and 26.

Men and Women of the Atom

But the events of August 1945 would forever change public perceptions, hopes and fears of the atom, and have an almost immediate impact on our culture.  A number of comic books from the Promise Collection of this time frame contain atomic bomb or atomic energy references, including Marvel Mystery #72, Sensation Comics #54, Captain America Comics #54, and Wings Comics #70 among others. The Atomic Comics series is somewhat infamous for the cover similarity between Atomic Comics #1 and 1937's Detective Comics #8, but such was the power of the new interest in all things atomic that the title alone is the only such reference from the comic.  The cover of Atomic Comics #2 is a swipe of a splash page from Pep Comics #41, with the addition of the now-famous words "Manhattan Project" to the side of a lab complex in the background as the sole atomic reference from that issue. But other references to atomic power from early 1946 are much more fully realized.  Atomic Man from Headline Comics #17 could vaporize his opponents with a blast of atomic energy from his fingertips, leaving behind a man-sized approximation of a mushroom cloud.  Notably, Atomic Man also had the power of radar, which was an emerging technology of the war second in importance only to the creation of the atomic bomb, and developed at the MIT Radiation Laboratory by many of the same scientists who would go on to work for the Manhattan Project.

Atoman Comics #1 may be the most historically interesting of these atomic power-inspired comic books.  It features a guest appearance by Albert Einstein, and grapples with the subject that was of vital interest to the world at this moment:  what were the implications of unleashing the almost unfathomable energy of the atom upon the world?  This issue shows the development of an "Atomic Institute" and the storyline that leads to the creation of the super-powered Atoman himself features the theme that atomic power should be kept out of private hands and regulated for the public good.  This would not be the last time this theme would appear in comics, and such stories were sparked by efforts to find ways to handle the unchecked proliferation of nuclear weapons in the post-WWII world.  In Spring 1946, the U.S. proposed plans for an international "Atomic Development Authority" (the Atomic Institute of Atoman Comics #1) to be "the sole producer of the world's fissionable materials and to lease them to nations for science and industry."  The plan as explained in media reports called for this central authority to "hold complete control of all the uranium and thorium in the world", eliminate all existing nuclear weapons, and prevent more from being produced.  In other words, the world's uranium supply was to be tightly controlled and converted into a safer form useful for powering peaceful applications. The primary author of the final version of the plan proposed to the United Nations that year, Bernard Baruch, quoted Abraham Lincoln when he called his plan "the last, best hope of Earth."

Given that the United States was the world's only nuclear power at the time, it should come as little surprise that the plan failed a UN vote on December 31, 1946 — with the Soviet Union effectively vetoing the proposal.  Of course, they then became the world's second nuclear power on August 29, 1949.  One of the scariest videos on Youtube is a concise illustration of what happened next. But for a brief period throughout 1946, the world lived in hope that a nuclear arms race could be avoided by controlling the planet's uranium supply and converting it for use in more peaceful purposes, and so did some heroes like Atoman.

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