Like I keep saying one of the best parts of this whole middle life vision quest “trying to get sixty years of comics before I die” trip* that I’m on is I keep finding out just wrong I can be. For instance, back when I worked in a comic book shop occasionally I’d get an older customer who would claim that you used to be able to get a comic for five cents. Wanting to keep my job I didn’t tell them comics never cost a nickel. O.K., sure Fawcett published eight biweekly issues of Nickel Comics in 1941…

..but it was a failed attempt to raise sales by lowering prices, but that’s it. Except while researching this piece I went to the Grand Comic Book Database looking for a better cover scan of Fawcett’s Nickel Comics I came across a completely unrelated Nickel Comics, this one a one-shot published in 1938 by Dell Comics.

Then I came across a random issue of Captain Atom. Not that one;

Image via Wikipedia

Or this one.

Image via Wikipedia

After a little digging I discovered between 1950-1952 a publisher calling itself Nation-Wide Publishing experimented with a line of miniature (5 inches by 7 1/2 inches tall) monthly 52 page color comics cover priced a nickel.

There were five titles in all in the line including Captain Atom; Lucky Star (‘all western cowboy stories’, as opposed to all eastern cowboy stories, I suppose), Do-Do (‘funny animal circus stories’). I’m going to stop right there for a moment so you can process that. There really was a comic book called Do-Do that featured ‘funny animal circus stories’. It’s titular star Do-Do being a, um, circus clown dog; a strong contender for the top five most unusual characters to have their own series in American comics.

And, finally, there was Mazie (‘tops in teenage fun stories’). The title rang a bell from all my research on Archie imitators; its not commonly known but not only did Harvey Comics have an entry in the teen comics derby called Mazie, but it was relatively long running and spawned the spin-offs Stevie and Mortie. At first I wasn’t sure this was the same character because the Harvey Mazie looked like this:

And the Nation-Wide Mazie looked like this:

The logo’s are different and the art is, to be extremely kind, very different. According to the GCBD both Harvey and Nation-Wide shared the same address so I’m just going to go ahead and assume the companies are in some way related.

Getting back to Captain Atom, it lasted seven issues (plus a one-shot called Captain Atom “Secret of the Columbian Jungle”). In spite of all the evidence to the contrary (patently fake name, distinctive wardrobe, young lookalike assistant/son/nephew/clone who dressed in a similar outfit, etc.), this Captain Atom wasn’t so much a superhero as one of those two-fisted scientific adventurers that were all the rage in the 1950′s.

A word about that outfit; as I have previously noted oddly enough once short pants were considered perfectly acceptable attire for grown-up costumed adventurers. It is a bold fashion statement though and if it was me, I would have stuck with just that. But Captain Atom double downs with short-sleeves as well plus a tunic with a lightning motif collar, Saturn chest insignia and a unnecessary accessory in a ‘A’ belt buckle. I’m just saying it’s a trifle ‘busy’.

According to the Public Domain Super Heroes Wiki among the many inventions he used against the filthy Commies were a ”walkie-talkie television, atom powered noiseless ram rocket, and an auto-gyro parachute”. Nation-Wide really played up the whole “based on scientific facts” thing to try and put an educational veneer on Captain Atom, most stories ending with one of these overheated, hyperbolic “It’s a Fact!” panels, like so:

I’ve only read Captain Atom #6 and have no idea who wrote it or drew it but it’s pretty awful and this story is dull, long and cramped; you can blame two out of three of those things on the smaller than usual space the writer and artist had to work with. But that doesn’t excuse the ‘dull’ part.

But one thing you can say for Captain Action; he had his own letter’s page.

*the longer I do this the more I’m reminded of my old boss I had who had a mid-life crisis, took a leave of absence and decided to visit every AAA baseball park in America in a desperate attempt to find himself. He returned three months later, mission accomplished; it hadn’t helped one bit.