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sebeth · 4 months

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Who's Who In The DC Universe #1: The Atom I, The Atom II, The Atomic Knight, The Atomic Skull, Auron

The Atom I by Rick Hoberg & Romeo Tanghal

The “original 98-lb. weakling, Al Pratt bought dinner for a drunken vagabond who turned out to be Joe Morgan, a former boxing champ

Morgan put Pratt through an intensive training and exercise program

Pratt chose to become a costumed crime-fighter instead of pursuing a boxing career

Atom gained “atomic strength” from an encounter with Cyclotron in 1948

The Atom was a charter member of the Justice Society and later joined the All-Star Squadron

The Atom retired after the JSA’s breakup in the 1950s

He later became a professor of nuclear physics and married a woman named Mary

Al’s godson is Nuklon (aka Atom-Smasher) of Infinity Inc

He remains mostly retired but will don the costume when duty calls

The Atom made frequent appearances in the various Justice Society series and in All-Star Squadron. Damage (Grant Emerson) was later revealed to be Al Pratt’s long-lost son. If I remember correctly, Atom died in the Zero Hour mini-series so he never encountered Grant. I am unsure of the explanation behind the disappearance of Al & Marys son or how Grant ended up in the bad guy’s custody.

The Atom II by Gi Kane

Ray Palmer was a graduate student trying to find a way to reduce matter in an effort to aid farmers in increasing their yield. Ray discovered white dwarf matter was needed to successfully reduce objects.

Palmer shrunk himself in order to free himself and others from a cave-in.

Ray became a professor at Ivy University and the hero known as the Atom.

Palmer married Jean Loring but the duo later divorced.

Ray and Jean told their story to author Norman Brawler, ending Ray’s secret identity.

Ray suffered adverse health effects due to years of exposure to white dwarf matter.

He currently lives with an alien culture located somewhere in South America, permanently remaining at his six-inch size. The aliens are around six inches in height.

I’ve always loved Ray – a likable, relatable genius. “The Sword of the Atom” was the mini-series/special where Ray moves to South America. He fell in love with one of the aliens (I can’t remember her name) but their love was doomed when loggers (I think) destroyed the alien civilization, causing her death.

Ray returned to America, solved his shrinking health-related issues, and resumed his heroic adventures.

The 2000s were not friendly to Ray. Jean, his ex-wife, decided to murder Sue Dibny, among others, for…reasons. Ray became a shrunken recluse allowing Ryan Choi to become the third atom. Donna Troy, Jason Todd, and Kyle Rayner searched the multiverse for Ray Palmer for…reasons. Jean Loring became Eclipso and a Black Lantern and murdered more people for…reasons. Ryan Choi, a delightful character, was murdered for…reasons causing Ray to resume the mantle of Atom.

Did DC have to murder Ryan? DC has dozens of speedsters, kryptonians and Bat Family members. I think the universe can handle two Atoms.

…reasons = bad storylines I can’t be bothered to remember the details of.

Ray has had multiple solo titles and is a long-standing member of the Justice League.

Ray has appeared in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon and made multiple appearances in CW’s Arrowverse, most notably the Legends of Tomorrow series.

The Atomic Knight by Murphy Anderson

Gardner Grayle was an army sergeant who was placed in a sensory deprivation tank and subjected to a series of simulations, studying his response to nuclear war and its aftermath

Grayle tapped into his latent telepathic abilities and took over the simulations and the staff

He fantasized beyond a nuclear war, instead conjuring up a fantasy where he and a group of others wore radiation-proof suits of armor. The Atomic Knights helped restore order to post World-War III America.

The fantasies expanded to include an appearance by the mythological Hercules

Grayle fell in love with Marene Herald, a psychiatrist attached to the project and included her in his fantasies

Superman discovered the project when Grayle’s fantasies began reshaping reality. Superman shut down the project and freed Grayle from the tank.

The sergeant had to re-adjust to life in the real world and Marlene’s real place in his life.

Grayle joined S.T.A.R. Labs and use his precognitive abilities to prevent catastrophes

Grayle occasionally dons a suit of armor, stolen from the army, and goes into action as the Atomic Knight

The only Atomic Knight(s) I’ve read was their appearance in the Convergence Legion Of Super-Heroes mini-series. I will say, if I was stuck in a sensory deprivation tank and subjected to a series of post-Nuclear War scenarios, I too would create my own fantasy world.

The Atomic Skull by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson

Albert Michaels was a director of S.T.A.R. who suffered from a rare nervous disorder that short-circuited the electrical impulses of his brain.

Michaels stole his own inventions from S.T.A.R. and turned them over to SKULL, where he quickly became the leader

Skull attempted to cure Michaels by implanting a neural pacemaker made of radium in his brain.

The implant malfunctioned, mutating Michaels’ brain waves into a new form of energy

The Atomic Skull is a C – D level Superman villain. He did make a few appearances in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.

Auron

Kidnapped by the Psions, the Okaaran woman X-Hal was forced to take part in a genetic experiment and was mated with a Branx warrior. The mating produced two children, one who became the first Citadelian, the other the being called Lambien.

The Citadelian left Okaara when X’Hal went mad and destroyed three of Vega’s 25 planets in her fury.

Lambien was raised by X’Hal once the Warlords of Okaara found a way to harness the incredible power granted her by the Psions’ experiment.

Lambien received some of X’Hal’s powers and appointed himself the guardian of Okarra

Lambien later joined the Omega Men

His power continued to grow and though he feared he may become as insane as his mother, he retained his sanity

Lambien changed his name to Aurion

Aurion and the Omega Men destroyed a Gordian fleet of Citadel slavers on earth and then returned to Vega, where they helped end the Citadel tyranny.

If you are a fan of the Wolfman/Perez era of the Teen Titans, a few of these names should be familiar even if you’ve never read an issue of Omega Men. The Citadel and the Warlords of Okaara feature in the origin of Starfire. And Kori swears by “X’Hal” in almost every Titans issue. Marv Wolfman is the creator of the Omega Men and Starfire which is why he can interweave the story elements between the two series. Starfire debuted in late 1980 and the Omega Men in mid-1981.

I’ve never read the 1980s Omega Men series (it’s on my TBR list as I’ve heard it is excellent). I have read many of the other appearances of the Omega Men from the 1980s to present day – their Teen Titans appearances, the Invasion, the Adam Strange, Rann-Thanagar War, and Tom King mini-series and I can’t recall Auron featuring in any of them.

Love the Omega Men, they’re a fun group.

#dc comics #dcu #atom #al pratt #ray palmer #atomic knight #atomic skull #auron #omega men #teen titans #starfire #marv wolfman #who's who in the dc universe

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random-movie-ideas · 6 months

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Clark Kent Across the Multiverse (Movie Concept)

And here is the third in our standalone trilogy, centered on a young Clark growing up and learning about his powers. This time, it's a crossover movie with the Supergirl and Power Girl of the Cinematic Universe, paving the way for a Crisis on Infinite Earths event:

We start out back at Clark’s home in Smallville, as his parents throw him a birthday for his eighteenth birthday. Lois is there, now his girlfriend, and Chloe, Pete, and Lana are all in attendance, Krypto running around and being a happy dog. They talk about his plans now that they’re about to graduate and he mentions that he and Lois both have a paid internship at the Daily Planet, and have saved up for an apartment in the city.

The next day, Clark visits his old friend Leslie in the hospital, still comatose from her run-in with the Parasite two years before, her skin still a grayish blue. Clark talks to her, confessing to her that he was the hero who saved her all those years ago but failed to save her parents, and apologizes to her that he wasn’t able to save her the second time. He touches her hand as he goes, just a little bit of his energy passing into her.

As he goes out and meets up with Lois, strange things happen at the hospital, Leslie’s eyes shifting around, as the lights and machinery flicker and objects start to float around the room. Clark and Lois are right in the middle of tossing a frisbee with Krypto when a loud explosion rocks the part, and both Clark and Krypto are nearly debilitated by a loud buzzing. Lois holds Krypto while Clark races to see what happened.

He arrives to see the hospital in flames, the entire ward where Leslie had been exploded. A strange figure entirely made of electricity rises from the smoke. Her eyes fall on Clark, recognizing him and saying “You!” Clark, believing her to have killed his friend, goes after the lightning person, trying to attack her, but finding her invulnerable to his attacks. She shocks him with a lot of volts, enough to actually do damage to him. Their battle leads them away from the hospital, towards a power plant, where Clark tries to overload her the way he did the Parasite. He manages to do it, just as reality seems to warp around him for a second, and the electric person vanishes into thin air.

He returns to the hospital to find that Leslie is gone, everything that had been in her room disintegrated. He cries out in despair, Krypto and Lois arriving to comfort him. Meanwhile, Leslie Willis finds herself tumbling through a void of twisting shapes and colors, her mind slowly coming back to itself as her body regains some amount of form. As she falls, she sees strange images, of worlds like her own, but with slight differences to each. Here we possibly have lots of cameos of other renditions of Superman and DC universes, as well as one where she sees herself, surrounded by her parents and siblings alive and well.

She finally lands in a strange void, where a machine floats on a chunk of rock, a strange man in an owl costume trying to work on it. The man introduces himself as Owlman, the same from the Supergirl movie, and played by the Batman actor from said cinematic universe. He tells her that his machine was meant to open a doorway through the multiverse, but thanks to some meddlers, the machine malfunctioned and was pulled through its own doorway, taking him with it. He theorizes that because of her electrical powers, she was pulled into the multiverse at the same moment from her own universe. He makes a deal with her that if she will use her powers to traverse universes and gather supplies for him, he will cure her and send her back to her own universe or any universe she wants.

A few days later, Clark is working on his farm, feeling miserable and thinking about Leslie. As he works, he is surprised when two identical twins, both blonde and wearing strange superhero costumes show up on the farm, saying they’re looking for Clark, but not recognizing him as such. After a moment of confusion, one of the women swears and calls out for someone named Mr. Mxyzptlk. She explains that she comes from another universe, the cousin of that world’s version of Clark, and she’d just come from an adventure where an imp had transported her to another universe and she had met her own variant, the other girl. The imp had been supposed to send her home, but apparently had sent them here instead.

Clark agrees to help them figure out a way back if this imp never showed up to explain himself. Lois digs up a bunch of articles about the concept of parallel universes, and is a little weirded out when Kara talks about how they are friends in her world. Kara II mentions she got in a fight with her version once. Finally, Mr. Mxyzptlk shows up, telling them sorry for the mixup, but saying that their fixing of the Ultraman problem resulted in a new multiversal threat that they now had to fix. He pops into existence a control device for them which will let them traverse universes and track the threat, because he hasn’t quite been able to find its exact location. Before they can talk about it, he pushes Clark and the two Karas through a portal.

After a similar tumbling scene, Clark and the Karas find themselves in a strange multiversal void, with flashes from other universes appearing in the sky. Kara decides she’s not playing Mxy’s game and tries to use it to open a portal back to her own universe. After two failed attempts, Mxy appears on the device’s screen, apologizing again and saying that he felt it prudent to put a blocker on their three individual universes until the job was finished. Kara yells at Mxy, but he disappears from the screen.

For the moment, they decide to look for the threat, opening a portal to a universe where the threat was detected. They walk through and find themselves in what seems to be an over-the-top supervillain’s lair with a giant nuclear collider in the center. Kara I and Clark find themselves caught in kryptonite traps, as the villain appears, what looks like a skull in a space suit, the helmet glowing green. He introduces himself as the Atomic Skull, and no matter how many super people show up, they’ll never stop him from unleashing a nuclear blast powerful enough to wipe out the whole world. Kara and Clark verbally spar with him, questioning his plan as such a blast would destroy the planet, leaving him with nothing to rule.

This discussion distracts the villain enough for Power Girl to sneak around, find the controls to the Kryptonite traps, and release her companions. The three heroes battle the villain, taking him out fairly easily. In a last ditch effort, he tries to detonate his bomb, only to find that a key component has been removed. The lightning figure appears again, this time with a full body, which Clark recognizes as Leslie, but with gray skin and blue hair that’s become spiked with electricity. Before he can say anything, she vanishes in a burst of electricity, taking the component with her.

After the Atomic Skull is restrained, our heroes pursue Leslie back to the void world, detecting her there somewhere. Clark tells the Karas about who she is and what happened to her, and they promise him, they’ll help get her back. They chase Livewire through several different worlds, each some reference to some version of Superman, before finally landing in an animated world where everything seems to be based in the 1950s, finding that world’s version of Superman, a big cartoonish “defender of justice.” Neither Kara is particularly impressed, while Clark gets to see himself as a genuine hero.

We get a short sequence of them exploring his world, and highlighting some of the most corny parts, questioning his story about his first nemesis turning into a white gorilla. Eventually, Leslie arrives, attacking his version of Lex Luthor, to steal from him a “dimensional blaster” he had just completed. Both Clarks and both Karas challenge her, but she electrifies most of them, leaving her and Clark to face off alone. Clark pleads with her to come back, but she refuses, telling him he ruined her life and that she’s going to get a new one, planning to take over the life of the happy Leslie she saw. Clark says that she’ll just be destroying that Leslie’s life, but she ignores him, taking the blaster and managing to get away.

Leslie returns to Owlman and the machine. Owlman uses the components to complete the machine, and Livewire smiles excitedly, ready to start a new life. She ends up being betrayed by Owlman though, who shoots her with a device he’d had her steal that would drain her of power. He then begins activating his machine again, proclaiming that he will finish what he and Ultraman started. A weakened Leslie crawls to the machine, placing her hand on it and drawing power out of it, recharging herself way more than before. She turns on Owlman and disintegrates him before he can attack again.

She then uses the machine to rip a hole to the dimension where she was happy, planning to travel through the machine and take over the body of her counterpart. The Clarks and the Karas find her and her machine, rushing to try to stop her. 50s Superman tries to stop the beam with “the power of justice” and simply gets blasted. The two Karas work together to try to stop the machine while Clark and Leslie face off.

Clark tries again and again to get through to Leslie, but she won’t listen. She blasts the Karas away from her machine as the machine starts to become unstable, ripping dimensions apart as it tries to open a permanent doorway. She only relents when she sees the other Leslie and her parents being ripped away from each other as their universe falls apart. She helps Clark destroy the machine, depriving herself of her powers for good.

After the machine is gone and the multiverse goes back to normal, Leslie breaks down in the middle of the void. Clark lands beside her, where he genuinely apologizes for his failure to save her parents that day. Leslie accepts his apology and hugs him, fully letting go of her repressed emotions. Mr. Mxyzptlk finally reappears, snapping his fingers and saying everyone can go back home now. Clark lets Leslie head back through to their world, while he stays behind to say goodbye to the Karas and the other Clark. While they are doing so, the portal becomes unstable and vanishes, their device not working anymore either. They ask Mxy what’s going on, and he says, “Oop, I guess you guys didn’t fix it fast enough to convince him,” then disappears before elaborating.

In a post-credits scene, we see Mxy kneeling before the Anti-Monitor, clearly terrified of him, and trying to point out that they did fix the problem, but the Anti-Monitor ignores him.

If any of you remember the full plan I laid out a while back, this leads straight into Crisis on Infinite Earths, resulting in the destruction of this Clark's universe, erasing Lois, Krypto, Leslie, Jonathan, Martha, and everyone else from this series, leaving Clark as the only survivor and setting him up to become the Cinematic Universe's Superboy-Prime.

What do you think? Would you watch it?

#superman #clark kent #superman movie #supergirl #kara zor el #power girl #atomic skull #leslie willis #livewire #lois lane #krypto the superdog #jonathan kent #martha kent #mr mxyzptlk #anti monitor #lex luthor #owlman

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