Sword of the Atom

Sword of the Atom by Jan Strnad
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After his marriage falls apart, Ray Palmer heads to South America on the trail of a fragment of a white dwarf and gets pulled into a war between tiny aliens...

When this came out, there were no comic shops in the area so I'd only read the second and third issue, as was the style at the time, before I scored a copy of this for around cover price. Fucking gougers had this thing all over the place the last few years.

Anyway, this collects Sword of the Atom 1-4 plus Sword of the Atom Specials 1-3. Years of shrinking have taken a toll on Ray Palmer's body as well as his marriage. Things go south and Ray is soon in South America, stuck at six inches tall and in an Edgar Rice Burroughs story.

Gil Kane does the art on all but the final special and Jan Strnad handles the script. Legend has it Gil Kane showed up at DC to pick this with no writer and Strnad got the gig. Anyway, this is really fun stuff. I never cared that much about the Atom before but recasting him as a barbarian fighting tiny aliens really hit the sweet spot for me. Plus, Gil FUCKING Kane does the art.

This has a lot going for it for me. For one thing, it doesn't dump all of the blame on Jean Loring cheating for their marriage falling apart. Ray had been putting The Atom ahead of her for their entire marriage. It also doesn't make Paul Hoben, Loring's new man, the bad guy either. In fact, Paul seems fairly likeable and it sure seems like they were positioning him as the new Atom by series end.

The story is action packed and not just by today's decompressed standards. It almost felt like a Norvell Page Spider book at times. It just never let up in the original miniseries. The Specials weren't quite so fast paced but they had a lot going on too.

I really don't have anything bad to say about these stories except they were apparently forgotten or wiped away in one of the various Crises. Power of the Atom had Ray back to status quo after some minor costume changes and I think he was even back with Jean at that point. Jean, of course, went on to infamy in Identity Crisis and whatever that Eclipso story was that I can't remember the name of at the moment.

Seriously, how does the Atom go from being a barbarian and killing his enemies back to the cops and robbers world of regular super heroes after this? They should have left Ray in the jungle for at least a year and gave Paul Hoben the chance to juggle being The Atom with his law practice and his wife. Not to mention, maybe the Atom has some half-alien, size changing barbarian kids out there?

I don't know if it was worth waiting 35 years to read Sword of the Atom in its entirety but it was pretty damn good and holds up very well. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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