Nagging Thoughts for 2/12
Isn't Captain Atom currently married to Plastique?
Shouldn't he have mentioned this in his Armageddon series...that he left a wife behind in the other universe?
General Eiling was a creep, but does anyone think it was a bit weird for him to become The General?
So, is the other Captain Atom (Monarch) out there still?
I wonder if Monarch would have become a popular villain if he was Captain Atom.
I wonder what Jurgens' reasons for turning Atom into Monarch were...
Shouldn't he have mentioned this in his Armageddon series...that he left a wife behind in the other universe?
General Eiling was a creep, but does anyone think it was a bit weird for him to become The General?
So, is the other Captain Atom (Monarch) out there still?
I wonder if Monarch would have become a popular villain if he was Captain Atom.
I wonder what Jurgens' reasons for turning Atom into Monarch were...
posted by Brian Cronin at 3:52 AM
5 Comments:
"General Eiling was a creep, but does anyone think it was a bit weird for him to become The General?"
I think the central problem underlying all these questions is that Cary Bates and Greg Weisman are the *only* people who have ever had a good handle on Captain Atom and his supporting cast. Everybody else screws it up, or gets some element dead wrong.
Eiling was really one of the most nuanced adversaries in comics - not necessarily a muah-ha-ha "villain" by any means. I especially liked a bit where he's talking with an old ally who thinks Eiling is still plotting a military coup. But Eiling laughs at him, saying how outmoded that is after Superman's arrival, increasing awareness of a larger galactic community, etc.
I was really irritated when Morrison ignored all the nuances and just wrote him as the central casting British leftist's Evil Military Man stereotype.
I guess they kinda covered for the incongruity by giving Eiling brain damage, but it's a waste of a good character either way.
"So, is the other Captain Atom (Monarch) out there still?"
Wasn't he absorbed by Extant in Zero Hour? Not sure what Extant's been up to since then, though.
"I wonder what Jurgens' reasons for turning Atom into Monarch were..."
I can only guess why Atom was originally supposed to be Monarch. Presumably it was because they wanted a hero was powerful enough to be a credible threat yet not popular enough to get too many people upset about him turning evil. I doubt it was anything personal aginst Captain Atom, but I'm really not sure.
On the Monarch thing, I think Ken's about right. I remember at the time, most people were up in arms about DC's "bait and switch" change, and I was in a tiny minority saying "But the idea of Captain Atom being Monarch was totally out of character in the first place!"
The other Captain Atom (Monarch) showed up AFTER Zero Hour, in the pages of Extreme Justice.
I guess, like most events of Extreme Justice, it was just forgotten...hehe.
The whole "You're not really Nathanial Adams, but a Quantum Clone of him!" thing kind of annoyed me, evne if it did almost kind of fit in with what Ostrander did with the last three issues of Captain Atom when he revealed that Cap was, in fact, a Quantum Elemental of sorts.
And David C is right. Nothing holds up to the original run of Captain Atom. Issues 1-50 read like a great mini series. Every Cap appearance since has been in the shadow of that run, for me.
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