Atom #22 (December 1965-January 1966) is wonderful. Writer Gardner Fox and artist Gil Kane have used Comic Book Logic to give us a story of miniature knights riding on bats. The world would be a poorer place without such stories.
The story begins with those knights (armed with electrified lances) breaking through a train window and zapping a courier carrying a fortune in jewels. And Gil Kane gives us a really effective panel showing the poor guy getting zapped. Ouch. You can feel his pain.
When he wakes up, the jewels he was carrying are gone and the window smashed by the knights is no longer broken. The poor guy can't get anyone to believe his story and he's arrested for stealing the jewels himself.
Ray Palmer's girlfriend Jean Loring is assigned as the courier's lawyer and, through her, Ray learns of it. Figuring no one would make up such a story, he decides to investigate. As a resident of a Comic Book Universe where stuff like this happens all the time, this is quite reasonable.
Ray builds a device that tracks the sound of bat sonar and, as the Atom, manages to catch the knights in the act of robbing a bank. But he's outnumbered and, in the ensuing fight, knocked out. The knights get away with the money. The holes they made in the bank and the save have been repaired by the time Atom wakes up.
Atom trys again, this time using a device that confusing bat sonar, leading them to a bell tower. He's rigged up a magnet to trap the knights through their metal armor, but they smash the magnet's power source. Another hand-to-hand fight ensues, but Atom fares much better this time. He hijacks a bat to even up the odds and ends up with a prisoner.
In the meantime, we learn about the knights' backstory. There's lot of fun details to the story, but essentially there is a civilization of little people living in a cavern. A thug named Eddie Gordon stumbled across them and discovered that the echoing sound of a gunshot mesmerized them. By occasionally firing off shots to keep them under his sway, he's been able to launch a weird crime wave.
Atom learns about this from the captured knight, who has shaken off the mesmerism. The knight leads Atom into the cavern. Atom disarms Eddie, then helps him escape the now thoroughly ticked off little people.
It's a fun story from start to finish. Gil Kane's art especially shines during the bizarre Atom vs. bat-riding knights fight scenes, but the whole story is full of great imagery.
Next week, we return again to the adventures of Travelin' Toughy.
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