Writer: Will Pfeifer
Artist: Giuseppe Camuncoli
Publisher: DC Comics/Wildstorm
Sometimes a certain verse of a song will get lodged in your head (we all know the feeling), and create new and strange associations that we can’t shake off. Some of these catchphrases rise to level of cultural idiom (“friends with benefits” comes to mind), while others remain personal quirks. Such an association has formed in my mind that, when I hear the word “Armageddon,” I don’t think of the battlefield for the final war between heaven and hell, but rather a lyric from Morrissey’s “Everyday is Like Sunday.” That line, of course, is the deceptively cheerful “Come, Armageddon, come!”
With this song running through my head, I no doubt read the first issue of Captain Atom: Armageddon with quite a unique perspective.
“Trudging slowly over wet sand”
The issue opens with sacrifice that will be completely inexplicable to readers unfamiliar with the Wildstorm universe. Not much I can say about it, because I am such a reader. After a page of that, though, we’re taken back to the moments just before the Cap’n’s heroic sacrifice in Superman/Batman #6. Hurtling toward a Kryptonite meteor in the unfortunate Superman/Batman robot (the most embarrassing casket one could hope for), Nathaniel Adam thinks back to the first time he was blown up. His origin story follows in good suit, with hints that there are mysteries about the alien metal as yet unexplored.
”This is the coastal town / That they forgot to close down”
Captain Atom feels a bit sorry for himself for being a second-rate hero. Another S/B recap shows a strangely apelike Atom emerging from the void, while the “POV” version of the character crashes through a building in the Wildstorm Universe, now transformed into his vomit stain-inspired Kingdom Come/L.A.W. costume. As Captain Atom struggles to his feet, a dying old man activates his Wonder Twin powers on a nearby medic, with ramifications to be revealed presently.
”Come, come, nuclear bomb”
Majestic and C.A. beat on each other for a while, and that’s that.
How to evaluate this comic… well, I enjoyed it. That’s a first impression. Moreover, I really wanted to enjoy it, just really needed to find out what was going to happen, which I think speaks worlds for the efficacy of the “fish out of water” scenario; who would have thought anybody would be clamoring for a Captain Atom series? Still, the issue has some remarkable flaws: most notably, it requires a rather thorough knowledge of two comic book universes to understand what the hell is going on. Perhaps that’s not fair; from this issue you can work out that Captain Atom is the less popular friend of Superman and Batman, and that he’s been transported to a world where superheroes are feared by the general public. The first page is a complete puzzle, though, and that’s not a good place to start. The second major flaw, content-wise, is that half the issue is flashback and the other half is fight scene.
Giuseppe Camuncoli’s art seems to work best in tableu, rendering moments of legendary heroism or shocking revelation with memorable imagery. When illustrating characters in motion, however, there is something lacking. Namely, motion. In some cases, this results from a disjointedness between panels, other times it’s an awkward perspective or focus within the panel. This gives the fight scene some rather strange looking moments. It all starts when Majestic descends from the sky, and Captain Atoms decides to fly away from him, backwards, while lying flat on his back. After taking a few punches and getting knocked off a building, Atom sits Lotus-style against a crumpled truck. Yoga really pisses off the career military man, though, so C.A. fires off a nuclear blast at his opponent, who dives crotch-first into it. Good job, Ace.
”How dearly I wish I was not here”
The strength of this series is the concept of a familiar hero in a world that will be familiar to (some) readers but is not known to the hero himself. It’s a good idea, and it’s been done well with Majestic coming to DC and, more recently, Superman and Batman visiting the Elseworlds of Batman Beyond and Mark Millar’s Red Son. If, however, the entire miniseries is going to be Captain Atom fighting a series of Wildstorm’s elite over mistaken identity, the novelty of the book will wear off well before the final, ninth issue hits shelves. Frankly, I don’t expect that’s what this series will be about; Pfeifer is a good enough writer to know better. It’s only a shame we couldn’t see more in the way of mysterious developments and less of two muscleheads pounding it out in the premiere.
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