COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Atom 21 Universal
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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4146732006
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
The cover of Atom #21 immediately reminded me of Challengers of the Unknown #1. In the story, “Combat Under Glass!"
Jean Lorings father was hired by the government to come up with new scientific discoveries, however whenever he succeeds in coming up with something, it always appears as though the Russians have beat him too it as news stories about the Russian's discovering the idea "first" hit the newspapers. This trend begins to trouble the CIA when Loring wants to begin coming up with a means of using gravity to power space ships. Deciding to learn if there is a spy in their midst, the CIA hires Atom to investigate the situation. When Atom arrives the CIA gives them some disturbing information that they have collected that points out the possibility that a Russian spy has been using telepathy to steal the answers from the Professor's mind. While Atom laughs at this first, he can't deny the possibility when he is shown surveillance photos showing the same man wherever the Professor has gone, and that they have identified him as a foreign spy. The CIA asks the Atom to follow Professor Loring on an outing to the theater with Jean.
That night, hitching a ride on Jean, Atom spots the spy and decides to get a closer look at him. Hitching a ride on the man, Atom waits for him to leave the play in the hopes that he takes him right to the spies hideout. However, things take an unexpected twist when the spy is jumped by a group of men stalking in the alley looking for an easy mark to rob. This forces Atom to reveal himself and get involved in the fight, and it soon turns out it was all a ruse to capture Atom when the man he is saving suddenly turns on him and knocks him out. Removing the belt which has Atom's size changing controls, the spies take Atom back to their hideout and explain their whole ruse to capture him.
Along the way, the spy explains to his cohorts that, while telepathy is beyond their capabilities, they have developed a means to transmit thoughts into peoples heads, and have been feeding Professor Loring his "ideas" thus explaining how the Russians were able to beat his discoveries every time, all this just a plot to get Atom involved and learn the secret of his size changing abilities.
Putting Atom in a glass dome, the spies demand that he turn over the secret of his size change device. Atom refuses and is forced to fight a house cat with only a cuff-link and string as a defense. Although Atom is at a small size, he still has his average strength and easily defeats the cat. When one of the spies is foolish enough to come close to the glass dome with his size change belt in hand, Atom activates the hand controls -- the spies completely unaware that he had since upgraded his technology -- and causes his belt to weigh a ton and smash through the glass giving him a means of escape..Completely off guard by this development, the spies are easily defeated by Atom who turns them over to the authorities.
This was a book where we started with an 9.4, then upgraded to an 9.6 and then upgraded to what was at the time the single highest graded 9.8. Of course, things changed and our WP 9.8 is now one of two highest graded examples in the census. We acquired the book off an E-Bay listing on 11/18/2022.
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