ALTHOUGH STEVE DITKO'S BEST-KNOWN SUPERHERO IS SPIDER-MAN, he had drawn another super character several years earlier ... at Charlton Comics.
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| Captain Adam became Captain Atom at the beginning of 1960. But it wasn't Charlton Comics' first foray into the superhero field. |
Captain Atom was created by artist Steve Ditko and scripter Joe Gill, probably towards the end of 1959, and first appeared in the Charlton anthology comic Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960).
WHO THE HECK ARE CHARLTON COMICS?
In many ways Charlton Comics were similar to Marvel Comics. Both were privately held companies, both were considered among the bottom feeders of the publishing industry paying the lowest rates to their contributors, both had owners with slightly shady pasts (though the same could be said for DC Comics), both handled their own distribution ... they even shared the same ad space agency. Then, going one further than Marvel, Charlton even had their own printing presses.
Charlton had been founded by John Santangelo, an Italian immigrant bricklayer by trade, and lawyer Ed Levy. Santangelo had started publishing song lyric sheets in 1931 at 10c a go, undercutting other publishers of such material who were changing 35c, but he hadn't bothered to seek permission of the copyright holders. The law caught up with him in 1934 and he was sentenced to 12 months in jail. While in prison, he met Levy and the pair decided to partner up and continue publishing lyric sheets on the outside, this time legitimately, starting in 1935 They called the new company T.W.O. Charles as they both had sons of that name. Santangelo moved a printing business he already owned from Waterbury, Connecticut to Derby, his wife's hometown and this formed the basis of what would become Charlton Publishing.
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| Charlton's earliest publications were music fan mags that included the lyrics to popular songs, printed legally after Santangelo made a deal with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). Hit Parader lasted well into the 1980s. |
By 1941, the company was publishing two song lyric sheets, Big Song Magazine and Radio Song Hits, under the imprint of Charlton Press. The following year, it launched an actual music fan magazine, Hit Parader, which still included the lyrics of popular songs, and changed its name to Charlton Publications. The magazine was soon selling 600,000 a month and the company added a companion mag, Song Hits, when they bought rival publisher Song Lyrics Inc.
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| One of Charlton's massive four-colour printing presses in the 129 acre Derby, Connecticut plant. The company would eventually have seven of these on-site. |
Because these big four-colour printing presses were only stopped twice a year for cleaning, Charlton had to find ways of keeping the machines running and in 1944 it branched out into comic publishing. Yellowjacket Comics (Sep 1944), a superhero title, launched under the shell company imprint of "Frank Comunale Publications", presumably to prevent any creditors coming after the main company if the comic failed. The following year saw the debut of Zoo Funnies (Nov 1945) and in 1946, Charlton added Catholic Comics (Oct 1946) to the lineup.
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| No hidden gold here. Most of the creators of these comics are either unrecorded or long-forgotten, though there is a Sid Greene (later a key inker in DC's Silver Age) story in the first issue of Catholic Comics. |
As the comics line grew, Charlton turned to comics packager Al Fago (brother of Marvel editor Vince) to supply material. By 1951, Fago had become in-house editor of the Charlton line and set about building a bullpen, both freelance and in-house, including such notables as Dick Giordano, Vince Alascia, Jon D'Agostino, Sam Glanzman, Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, Dick Ayers, Sal Trapani and, of course, Steve Ditko.
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| Inside the Charlton bullpen, some time in the mid-1960s I'd guess ... looks like there's some proofreading and art bodging going on here. |
With the increased capacity, Charlton began to add titles in every gentre. Initially, crime romance and space were the main focus, but soon other types of comics followed, including the slightly odd range of hod rod comics.
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| In 1951, Charlton added two crime titles, Crime and Justice and Lawbreakers, probably because the the success of Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay. But horror also made the cut, as well as ... hot rods. |
In 1953, with Fawcett Comics beaten down by DC's ongoing lawsuits against Captain Marvel, Charlton bought out the Fawcett inventory and added a roster of titles, including:
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| Space was quite popular as a genre during the early 1950s, and so was the western ... so why not give Space Westerns a go? |
In 1955, with the introduction of the Comics Code, some other smaller publishers threw in the towel and Charlton acquired material and titles from St John, Superior Comics and Simon and Kirby's Mainline Comics. They also published a superhero title, The Blue Beetle, largely reprinting material from the original Fox Comics title of the 1940s.
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| During 1955, Charlton published the final inventory issues of Simon & Kirby's failed Mainline Comics. None of the titles outlasted the supply of S&K material that came with them. |
Around the same time, Al Fago left Charlton and the editorship passed to his assistant Pat Masulli who would guide Charlton for the next decade. Coincidently, also in 1955, the company was devastated by the flooding of their Derby, Connecticut site. The 18-foot flood waters destroyed much of the Fawcett artwork they'd just acquired, along with printing plates and presses, and over a quarter of a million dollars worth of paper stocks. To make matters worse, Charlton had to bear the losses themselves, as it was impossible to get flood insurance at the time in Connecticut.
Other fan favourite comics from the period include the giant 68 page horror titles Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds and Out of This World, along with Tales of the Mysterious Traveller, Konga and Gorgo ... all of which heavily feature Ditko art.
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| From the mid-1950s until the end of the decade, Steve Ditko became Charlton's mainstay artist, contributing dozens of covers and snappy short stories, not a million miles away from what he was doing with Stan Lee over at Marvel pretty much around the same time. |
One interesting aside about Charlton was that they provided publishing services for Harvey Kurtzman's third foray into satire magazines, Humbug. After splitting wth EC around the time Mad became a magazine, Kurtzman and Elder struck a deal with Playboy publisher High Hefner to put out a big budget, all-colour newstand humour magazine Trump. It only lasted two glorious issues. Then in 1957, Kurtzman took another stab at the genre with Humbug, a comic book-size magazine that frequently got lost on the newsstands. The money had been put up by Kurtzman and Elder, with substantial contributions from contributors Arnold Roth, Al Jaffee and Harry Chester. Productions, printing and distribution was handled anonymously by Charlton Publications. Humbug lasted 11 issues.
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| Unlike its predecessors Mad and Trump, Humbug was a little more political in its stance, and included prose pieces in among the comic strips. |
Then, towards the end of the 1950s Steve Ditko and Joe Gill worked up a new superhero character, Captain Atom, that debuted in Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960). The character seemed popular, because the series would run in the title for the next year and a half until Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), when Steve Ditko began to cut back on his work for Charlton in favour of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics.
In 1965, editor Masulli stepped aside in favour of long-time Charlton artist Dick Giordano. Giordano was looking to revive the superhero line and persuaded Ditko to moonlight on the character even as his relationship with Stan Lee and Marvel comics was in decline. As well as drawing Captain Atom once again, Ditko would contribute art to The Blue Beetle, Nightshade and The Question. Other Charlton superheroes of the period included Sarge Steel, Judomaster, Thunderbolt, and Peacemaker.
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| Although I never even came across any copies of Thunderbolt or Peacemaker at the time, I enjoyed Judomaster, and still have a soft spot for the character today. |
By the end of 1967, though, the Charlton superhero line had fizzled out and Giordano left for DC comics, taking many of the artists he'd nurtured with him, including Ditko and Jim Aparo, and writer Denny O'Neil. After Giordano's departure, Charlton shifted its focus to licensed properties like Hannah-Barbera, King Features and Jay Ward cartoons, while continuing its war, horror and romance titles.
Co-founder Ed Levy retired in 1965 and sold his half of the business to John Santangelo. Santangelo died in 1979, and his sons ran the company for a few more years, then sold the superhero characters to DC Comics.
AND ... BACK TO CAPTAIN ATOM
Charlton comics were among the first to follow DC back into the superhero business, helping to kick off the Silver Age. Though only just pipped at the post by Archie Comics, who launched Simon & Kirby's Double Life of Private Strong in June 1959 followed very closely by The Fly in July 1959, Charlton were a close third, publishing their superhero effort Captain Atom in Space Adventures 33 (Mar 1960).
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| Though The Shield was the revival of a Golden Age Archie character, DC objected the similarities with Superman and forced Archie to cancel the book. The Fly did a little better, lasting 39 issues, though S&K departed after issue 4. |
It's an odd serendipity that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were the first artists to draw non-DC superheroes after the successful launch of the revived Flash in Showcase 4 (Sep 1956), long before Stan Lee assigned them Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man at Marvel Comics.
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| It doesn't look like Charlton had high hopes for their new superhero, as they didn't even spring for new cover art, instead lifting a panel from Ditko's interior art and repurposing that. |
The first Captain Atom strip ran a luxurious nine pages, giving artist Steve Ditko plenty of space to flesh out the story. His depictions of grief when the Air Force personnel think one of their own has perished are especially effective, and I don't think you'll find such a fine expression of emotion in any other comic book of the period.
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| Though Captain Atom is wearing his familiar gold and red uniform on the debut issue's cover, the interior art depicts him in a blue uniform. Ditko's use of the nuclear symbols to depict Atom's power is pretty cool and very much in keeping with the Cold War themes that would emerge later in the run. |
The remainder of the story details Captain Adams' transformation into the superbeing Captain Atom, his instant acceptance by the US president as a secret weapon (though the secrecy aspects would be slowly eroded over the early part of the character's series), and an exhibition of his seemingly limitless powers.
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| The atomic symbolism crops up again, as Captain Adam reconstitutes his physical form back on Earth. That feat of teleportation wouldn't be repeated, as his preferred mode of transport going forward would be flying at Mach 3 speeds, leaving a trail of nuclear fairy dust. |
The president and Sgt Gunner Gosun are recurring background characters, but neither is given much to do beyond their contributions to moving the plot forward. Interestingly, Captain Atom's first actual adventure would occupy just the final page of the story. This would be a shortcoming of all the Space Adventures episodes ... limited space resulting in too-short tales with unsatisfying conclusions.
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| Captain still didn't rate new cover artwork, or indeed the lion's share of the cover. But note the use of red, white a blue on the Captain Atom logo, some years before another Captain would use the same idea. |
Most of the Captain Atom run in Space Adventures would concentrate on, well, space adventures, with the Captain concentrating on battling alien invaders. The Captain's second outing in Space Adventures 34 (Jun 1960) had him rescuing a Russian astronaut when his communist masters rush him into space with no clear way to bring him back. Only the intervention of Captain Atom saves the Russian's life and causes him to realise the inhumanity of the Soviet regime.
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| In this short tale, Captain Atom shows empathy with and mercy towards an "enemy", caring more for the Soviet cosmonaut's life than the pilot's own people. Teaching kids such basic human decency doesn't seem like a priority any more. |
This is especially fascinating because, just less than a year later, in April 1961, the Soviets were the first to launch a man into space. Yuri Gargarin orbited the Earth once in the spacecraft Vostok 1 and caused some denting of American pride.
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| Just the one six-page Captain Atom story in Space Adventures 35. Despite appearances, "Spies from Another World" isn't a Captain Atom tale, but a short fantasy story that wouldn't be out of place in a Marvel comic of the same period. |
The Captain Atom tale in Space Adventures 35 (Aug 1960) was an altogether more whimsical affair. Billy, the son of Sgt Gosun, has been sleeping for unusually long periods, then describing vivid dreams when he awakens.
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| "The Little Wanderer" is a slight and ultimately unsatisfying story about a child whose dreams about intelligent monster birds in space turn out to be real. |
Suspecting there's something more than a child's vivid imagination, Captain Adam investigates as Captain Atom and discovers that Billy is traversing the universe with a benign space bird creature called Loga. There really isn't any conflict to resolve. Captain Atom just states that Loga will return Billy to his parents now and that's the end of the story.
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| I think this is the first time Steve Ditko shows both identities of a superhero in the one image, something he'd do repeatedly a few years later during his run on Spider-Man at Marvel. |
Space Adventures 36 (Oct 1960) had two Captain Atom stories, both five pages, both once more a little thin on the ground. "The Wreck of X-44" had Captain Adam, now identified as a test pilot, blown out of the sky when a saboteur's bomb detonates the experimental X-44 space rocket miles above the Earth. The saboteur is identified, Captain Atom gives chase and captures the spy. That's it.
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| Other than lacking mystery or suspense, the first story in Space Adventures 36 is very good. The Ditko artwork helps a lot. |
The second story has no more substance than the first. When the Soviets launch missiles at an orbiting American weapons platform, Captain Atom destroys the Russian warheads.
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| There's a lot of wanton destruction of Russian hardware and the American weapons platform survives, but it's never mentioned again and neither the characters nor the narrative captions stop to consider whether an orbiting death star might be a tad provocative. |
No effort is spent debating the ethics of the US weaponising space, or whether the Russians might have had a point, which is a bit out of character for Captain Atom, given his efforts to save the life of a Soviet cosmonaut in Space Adventures 34.
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| The cover art for Space Adventures 37 is a composite of two interior Ditko panels (see below page scans). The first story in this issue, "The Space Prowlers", doesn't rate a cover mention. |
Space Adventures 37 (Dec 1960) also sported two Captain Atom stories, each of five pages. "The Space Prowlers" starts off with Captain Adam discovering a spy filching documents from an Air Force base, but soon escalates into panoramas of destruction as his super alter ego wipes out an entire alien battle fleet by detonating his own body in a nuclear explosion.
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| "The Space Prowlers" packs a lot of spectacular action into its brief five pages. When Captain Atom discovers an alien invasion fleet hovering above Earth, he directs his nuclear powers at it, destroying every last vessel ... which does seem a little extreme. |
"A Victory for Venus" is an altogether more eccentric affair, with Captain Atom discovering space mermaids in the vicinity of Venus, destroying any Earth rockets that come close. When Venutians destroy a Terran space camera, Captain Atom meets some comely space sirens who warn him off, then despatch him back to Earth with the odd statement that they will meet again as friends.
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| It seems as though this story was setting up some larger future conflict between Venus and Earth, but the series was cancelled before we ever got to see the space mermaids again. |
I don't believe the dangling plotline was ever resolved - though there is another lady from Venus in Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), who appears to be unrelated to this bunch.
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| Details of the stories in this issue will have to remain a mystery until I can add a copy of Space Adventures 38 to my burgeoning collection. |
I can't tell you very much about Space Adventures 38 (Feb 1961), as I don't have a copy and the stories weren't reprinted in the later Strange Suspense Stories run. However, the issue featured three five-page tales ... "1 Second of War", "Backfire" and "The Force Beyond", all by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko. I'll add further detail here when I eventually track down a copy of the comic.
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| This cover has a bit of a rushed feel to it, even by Charlton standards. "See Captain Atom", it blares but prefers to keep the details quiet. Or maybe the rest of the cover line fell off on the way to the print room. There's certainly a gap for it. |
Space Adventures 39 (Apr 1961) had two five-page stories by Steve Ditko and a seven-pager by Rocco "Rocke" Mastroserio, "Peace Envoy".
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| It's not a splashy story, just Captain Atom on a short rescue mission. The dialogue at the end of page 5 suggests that Captain Atom's existence is still supposed to be a secret. |
The first Ditko story, "Test Pilot's Nightmare", has Captain Adam trying to warn a stubborn scientist about a failing oxygen valve on a stratospheric plane. His warnings are ignored and it's up to Captain Atom to save the endangered test pilot.
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| "An Ageless Weapon" is even more low-key, and more of a Captain Adam story than Captain Atom. Though he shows the spies his powers, they never see him in costume, so the secrecy is preserved. |
The second Ditko story gives us Captain Adam as a courier of secret documents being captured by East German spies. Adam quickly turns the tables on the spies, captures them and delivers them to NATO headquarters. This short piece is unusual because we don't get to see any Captain Atom action. In fact, Captain Adam's super alter-ego doesn't even appear until the final panel.
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| Though the cover lines are every bit as sparse as last issue's, at least it doesn't look like the text has fallen off. GCD speculates that the headshot may be Rocke Mastroserio's work, but I don't think it looks anything like his style. |
The next issue of Space Adventures, 40 (Jun 1961), gave us a seven-page Captain Atom story, featuring more anti-communist rhetoric and a shorter more whimsical tale in which the Captain cures a young lad's cancer.
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| I've left out the more mundane exposition pages and focussed here on the action-packed scenes of Captain Atom melting hundreds of Russian missiles. You're welcome. |
In the first tale, "The Crisis", Captain Adam first impersonates an elderly diplomat, Mr Haynes, who is scheduled to make an important speech at a conference in Europe. Enemy agents kidnap the fake Mr Haynes and try to coerce him into altering his speech. But the disguised Captain Adam doesn't fear their guns and tells the assembled representatives of the Soviet shenanigans. Of course they shoot him - to little effect - and are quickly arrested. And Mr Haynes is free to give his speech. But an undercover US operative within the Soviet delegation informs Captain Atom of an imminent plot to launch a nuclear strike on the US while the conference is under way. Captain Atom streaks off to destroy the Soviet arsenal in spectacular style and all-out war is averted once again. It's a lot of plot packed into seven pages.
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| This is the first we hear of Captain Atom using the rays of this particular star to cure his own radiation poisoning ... and the first time we've heard that he even had any ill-effects from his own exposure to nuclear energy. |
The second story tells of a normally-reliable Air Force technician who keeps making silly blunders. Captain Adam feels there is more to the story than just carelessness and finds out that the technician's son is seriously ill. As Captain Atom he takes the child on a journey to a mysterious star, whose rays can counteract the gamma poisoning that has made the lad ill.
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| It's the final appearance of Captain Atom in his original Space Adventures run. Quite why Charlton discontinued the character is unknown. Possible Ditko's increasing workload at Marvel Comics might have been the cause. |
Space Adventures 41 (Aug 1961) doesn't have any Captain Atom stories, but he returns in Space Adventures 42 (Oct 1961), in two stories from Rocke Mastroserio and the final adventure of the period from Steve Ditko, "The Silver Lady from Venus".
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| "The Silver Lady from Venus" is an odd little tale to conclude Ditko's first run on Captain Atom. No reason is given for not returning the Venutian Siren to her home planet, and just dumping her behind the Iron Curtain doesn't seem like an effective solution. |
The title character has been broadcasting a television show that seems to have top research scientists mesmerised, enticing them to cause missile launches to fail in a most disastrous manner. Captain Atom investigates and discovers that the Silver Lady is indeed from Venus, but has no relationship to the Venutian sirens we encountered back in Space Adventures 37.
And with that, Captain Atom was gone. Charlton may have been considering carrying on with Rocke Mastroserio as a replacement for Ditko, as they'd published several instalments drawn by him in Space Adventures 39 and 42. But Ditko had been contributing a number of stories to Stan Lee's post Atlas Marvel line, beginning in 1958 and with the addition of two extra fantasy titles - Tales of Suspense and Tales to Astonish, Ditko's Marvel work was expanding at the same time as his Charlton work was shrinking.
By the time Ditko finished his run on Captain Atom in mid-1961, his only two remaining Charlton titles were Konga and Gorgo, both of which he drew until the end of 1963, which was around the same time that Amazing Spider-Man went monthly.
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| Maybe it was only DC that insisted on exclusivity during the 1960s, as Ditko continued to draw these Charlton titles while he was working for Marvel and even while drawing Spider-Man and Dr Strange. |
The Space Adventures run was interesting mostly for the mixture of slick and quirky that Steve Ditko brought to the art. Though not as polished as his later Spider-Man work, there's still a great deal to admire in Ditko's drawing. Unfortunately, the stories are let down by Joe Gill's slapdash scripts, which fail to make the most of Ditko's tight plotting. Gill had done much better work in previous years at Atlas, notably on Kid Colt Outlaw, but here it often seemed to me that he was inserting text into panels even when he had nothing to say ... and from the result, you'd think Gill had Van Gogh's ear for dialogue, especially if you compare it to what Stan Lee was doing over at Marvel during the same period.
Later, as Steve Ditko became dissatisfied at Marvel, he would return to Charlton and the character he helped create at the beginning of the decade. But that's a story for another time.
Next: More of Captain Atom and his pals
