Direct Course #1

Atom #7

 “Why have you strayed from you regular route?"-Hawkman 

The Case of the Cosmic Camera 

by Gardner Fox, Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson
                         
At a telegraph company station in Ivy Town, they receive a signal that somebody tripped an alarm at the Avalone Factory payroll office. The cops are dispatched and rush up through the building as the robbery is in progress, but fail to find the crooks. They reach the roof where they the criminals were, finding no one when they reach it. With the nearest roof being 60 feet away, and the absence of any kind of helicopter or plan, the police are baffled in how they escaped. So, they decide to ask Ray Palmer, research scientist, to help them figure the mystery out.

The next morning, Ray receives a visit from the chief of police, Baxter, to help them figure out what happened. Ray Palmer theorizes that the crooks escaped the rooftop via helium gas-filled balloons (like Gonzo in The Muppet Movie). Apparently there was a fad in Europe called “balloon jumping” where people would jump over buildings while holding onto balloons. Ray just so happened to be working on a net-trap with helium balloons strapped to it, so he can capture and band some birds. The police chief leaves, as Ray Palmer tells him he’s getting ready to go on a bird-watching date with his girlfriend, Jean Loring.

On their date, Ray uses a doppler radar unit to measure the speed of the birds’ flight, when Jean notices something odd through her binoculars. Before she can alert Ray, a massive earthquake trembles beneath the two of them, causing them to fall to the ground. The shaking suddenly ceases, and Jean reveals that the type of birds they are watching are flying in the wrong migratory direction. They suddenly see more birds flying the wrong way.

Meanwhile, Hawkman is talking to a couple of birds, who tell him that they don’t know why they are being driven to fly in an abnormal way. Hawkman quickly guesses that it has something to do with radiation. He cannot use his spaceship to trace the radiation, because his wife Shayera has taken it back to their planet Thanagar and report to the police chief there. Instead, Hawkman finds some contact lenses that were used in a previous mission of his, that are specially designed to track radiation waves.

Seeing the radiation with his contacts in, Hawkman realizes that this radiation is more rare than the normal kind. A kind which can only be emitted from a Cosmitron, which exists back on his planet Thanagar in a museum. He decides to contact his wife to see if the camera-like device has been stolen.

The Atom (Ray Palmer) is at the Ivy Town police station, trying to help them solve the case of crooks that vanished off the rooftop. An alarm is sprung, and the police rally to go after the criminals along with the Atom. As the police arrive at a building near the coast, they look up to see the criminals escaping just how Ray Palmer figured, by balloons. They hit a searchlight on the men, but one of the crooks shoots it, so the cops can’t see them. The Atom reveals he borrowed a spear-gun, and at a size small enough to do so, plans to ride it up to them.

Shot right up to the crooks, the Atom rides the spear all the way to their balloons. He takes out a small pin, to him as big as a sword, and starts popping the balloons one by one, forcing the criminals to come down over the sea. The last of the three crooks, manages to make it to their getaway boat, before his balloons are popped. The driver of the boat quickly pulls away, and the Atom fails to capture them. Being blown by the wind out towards the sea instead inland, the Atom his grasped by a flying hand.

The hand belongs to Hawkman, who decides to help the Atom capture the crooks that got away. Reaching the boat, they knock them both out and the Atom stays, as Hawkman flies off in search of the Cosmitron. Hawman finds the device, which looks like a camera, on the ground of the coast. Suddenly, a tiny spaceship full of tiny aliens descend over Hawkman, attacking him. They latch on to Hawkman’s wings and use gravity controls to push him down to the ground. The tiny aliens take off, leaving Hawkman unconscious as his head hits the ground hard. After he reawakens, Hawkman goes to the Ivy Town police station to tell Atom what has just happened.

On their spaceship, the tiny aliens reveal that what the Cosmitron does, is that it absorbs the energy of earthquakes. The aliens then use that energy to create a small tri-dimensional replica of earth, and whatever they do to that earth, happens to the real one. To test it, one of the aliens sends a telepathic message to the UN, to tell them that they are now the rulers of earth. If they agree, they are to send up a green flare for them to see, if not, then a red flare. They threaten that if they don’t, the aliens will cause terrible disasters to the planet. The people in the UN vote no, and a red flare is sent up. Dissatisfied, the aliens hold a knife to the earth, and start making a small incision.

Back on earth, Hawkman with the Atom on his shoulder, fly over the damaged area of middle America. We are then told that a long time ago, the tiny aliens are actually from earth. They lived under the surface of earth, in a place called Thale, where a million years ago they created the Cosmitron. They used it many, many times to conquer other planets. Eventually it ran out of power, so they had to return to earth in order to recharge it from the power of the earth’s earthquakes.

Trying to figure out how to approach the Thalens, Hawkaman realizes that he can send the Atom up in a fully operational model that he has, of his Thanagar spaceship. After reaching their ship, the Atom shrinks so small he can travel between the atoms of both ships to board them. Once on the ship, he quickly finds the Cosmitron. He throws it down towards earth, where Hawkman manages to catch it. Unaware that the miniature globe that the Thalens were using, is actually inside the Cosmitron.

The Thalens quickly descend to earth after Hawkman. The Atom battles the beings on top of the Cosmitron, as Hawkman uses his mace to batter their small spaceship. Hawkman captures them all in his hands, before they die plummeting to the ground. The Atom shrinks more to go inside the Cosmitron and stitch up the section of earth that they had made the incision in. Once outside, he takes one of the Thalens’ ray guns and blasts it at the Cosmitron, disabling the whole thing including the duplicate of earth.
As the story wraps up, Ray Palmer and Jean are about to go bird-watching once more, when they are come upon by a man named Carter Hall (who is really Hawkman) along with his wife (who is Shayera). He says that they too enjoy bird-watching and would like to accompany them. They both have an odd feelings about the other, but agree, with Ray predicting that they’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.

Notes/Observations/Thoughts

• In my DC posts, I don't think I'll have more quotes aside from the heading for most of these and just let the stories breathe by themselves. I am also not going to cover them chronologically, as I have with the Marvel ones. I think it's a lot easier with DC to just grab a random issue or storyline, for older stories in particular, than it is to do with Marvel stuff.

• For my first DC synopsis, I decided to pick what felt like a quintessential silver age story. It’s the first time the Atom and Hawkman team up, which is something that will happen quite a lot. There’s something I find oddly comforting about them being friends. It’s not like Marvel, where whenever heroes meet, they always, ALWAYS, have to have some big egostitical throw-down. In here they meet up, hang out, and solve the strange plot they find themselves in.

• Apart from that, it also has the weird plot involving the criminals and their balloons. And then the even stranger plot of the Thalens and their Cosmitron. Which has 3 of the major componets to a silver age story. It has unidentified random criminals, not just some arch super-baddies, and aliens invading at the same time. And weirdness, my favorite.

• I think the idea of the copied earth is kind of interesting. If you think about it a little deeply, it’s almost like they created a voodoo or poppet doll of earth. It uses natural ingredients just like them to this universe, the energy out of earthquakes. Then they take pictures of the earth and from their copy, they start pricking it with a knife instead of a needle.

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