#bob downs

I love Nancy Yu, private eye. "Let Yu Help You". That girl is so cool.

October 1940. Third on the list of original JSA members who didn't seem straight was Al Pratt, the Golden Age Atom. Al was a student at Calvin College, constantly pushed around for being short and skinny (and implicitly for being Jewish, although that was never spelled out) and rudely dismissed by a girl he liked, Mary James, as a "spineless little amoeba." Dejected, Al buys dinner for a washed-up boxing trainer named Joe Morgan, who suggests that he can "make a li'l Superman" of Al in less than a year. Al suggests that the two of them go to live on his uncle's old farm, where they spend the next year in an intense training regime to build Al's physique.

It's important here to note a conundrum in the popular attitudes of this period: While boxing was considered an appropriately macho pursuit, interest in "physical culture" for its own sake was more suspect and might well have been read as gay (in part because fitness magazines were a way to see nude or mostly nude men that might get past the censorship and obscenity laws of the time). Also, the context is suggestive: Al drops out of college for an entire year to live with a man at least twice his age and spend a lot of time getting mostly naked with him to train. Moreover, after a year, Al expresses his wish for Joe to continue living with him:

In the subsequent issue, Al — who is now so strong he keeps accidentally breaking things — has apparently given up on Mary James, although Joe gives him a push in that direction. Joe seems self-conscious about the age difference between him and Al (and presumably the other Calvin College students in their area), but he and Al continue to live together for a few months. By ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #30 (September 1941), Joe has apparently moved out and started his own health camp. Al resumed his pursuit of Mary, although she was still often contemptuous of him as too meek and timid, unaware that he routinely put on a mask to beat people up and fight crime. They were still dating as of the Atom's final Golden Age solo appearance in FLASH COMICS #104 in 1949.

The modern retelling of the Atom's origin in SECRET ORIGINS #25 makes some changes to the Golden Age version, suggesting that Al merely spent weekends with Joe on the farm for a year rather than living there with him, and asserting that Joe left as soon as Al became the Atom rather than months later. However, in this version, Joe's departure reduces Al to tears and sobbing:

(As alluded to in the above panels, ALL-STAR SQUADRON Annual #1 (1982) tried to link the origins of the Atom, Wildcat, and the Guardian by claiming that Joe Morgan had a split personality and trained all three men under different names. This didn't make a lot of sense — the man who trained Ted Grant, "Socker" Smith, was a heavyweight champion prizefighter, not a trainer, and the origin of Wildcat involved Ted inadvertently killing Smith in the ring after gangsters slipped a poisoned needle into his glove!)

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Annual

Vol 1 1

1990

Writers: Dan Mishkin, Jeff Grub, Ben Schwartz, Dan Raspler, Don Kraar

Pencils: Ken Penders, Jan Duursema, Fernado da Silva

Inks: Ken Penders, Bob Downs, Tom Mandrake, Jan Duursema, Fernado da Silva