By 1948, the bantam champion Al Pratt could out-muscle a steam shovel.
I really should look into that weightlifting course the Atom took.
“Al Pratt was a college sophomore who stood 5’1″ and, after a youth spent being teased and ridiculed, had built himself up through obsessive bodybuilding to the point where he could whip the snot out of four husky bruisers at the same time,” noted Doc Hermes.
“He did this regularly, with obvious relish. I can’t help but think of the obvious overcompensation going on here. You can imagine every time the Atom punched a Nazi spy or threw a bank robber through a window, he was really getting back at the boys and girls who had made his life miserable in school.
“He was a founding member of the Justice Society and only missed two or three cases (only Hawkman had a perfect attendance record). I just love this guy’s cockiness. He’s what, 19 years old and just over five feet tall, but he feels perfectly at home sitting at a table with the Spectre or Green Lantern as a peer.”
The background of Mystery of the Midway Tunnel (Comic Cavalcade 28, Aug. 1948) was timely: concerns about G.I.s returning to work.
Economists fretted about finding jobs for troops returning home, but the problem wasn’t as troublesome as they feared.
“History proved the pessimists wrong,” noted history writer Sarah Pruitt. “Most returning veterans had no trouble finding jobs, according to (historian Arthur) Herman. U.S. factories that had proven so essential to the war effort quickly mobilized for peacetime, rising to meet the needs of consumers who had been encouraged to save up their money in preparation for just such a post-war boom.”
College student Al Pratt’s engineering instructor — an ex-G.I. himself, Prof. Purvis — is managing a river tunnel project. It means many jobs for former soldiers, but it’s plagued by accidents.
The Atom stops a runaway railcar, seals a gushing breach in the retaining wall, breaks through a steel door, and overturns a steam shovel before he discovers that a disgruntled contractor is behind the sabotage.
In this adventure drawn by Carmine Infantino and written by Joseph Greene, the Atom also pointedly displays his college education. He gives a little lecture on engineering principles while he frees his professor from the underground chamber in which they’re trapped.
I imagine that might have seemed irritating to someone who was running out of air.
“He also went from just being a scrappy and well-trained fighter to having actual superpowers,” noted Elle Collins. “At the time, no origin was given for his new abilities; it was just sort of a soft reboot in 1948, in which he got a costume that was more superheroic than his original — a cowl with a head-fin instead of the Spider-Man style full-face number, and a red ‘atom’ symbol on his chest. He was also given ‘atomic strength.’ What was atomic about it was never explained, but this was the dawn of the Atomic Age, and it was perhaps inevitable that a guy who’d already been called the Atom (originally just for being small) would suddenly be much more powerful.”
Writer Roy Thomas would finally explain the Atom’s radiation-derived powers 30 years later
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