The Man of the Atom passed one traditional superhero rite of passage — a fight against dinosaurs — in his 13th issue.
“Like many fledgling comics characters of the early 1960s, Doctor Solar was a superhero,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “He got his broad energy-related powers the same way Captain Atom had two years earlier — by (a nuclear accident). Solar didn’t immediately go the gaudy-outfit, spiffy-name route of most superheroes, however. At first, he performed his super deeds while wearing a regular suit, with a lab coat on top, with only a little coloration to indicate his super status (when he used his powers, his skin turned green).”
“As off-brand superheroes go, the Man of the Atom (the ungainly moniker Solar went by when in costume) was reasonably successful. His comic was published regularly until 1969 and revived for a few issues in 1981-82. In between, he made a few guest appearances in The Occult Files of Dr. Spektor.”
In Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom 13, the nuclear marvel had to contend with the effects of the Meteor from 100 Million B.C., which fell in the Florida Everglades.
Echoing our own planet’s evolution at an accelerated rate, the thing from space spawns a plague of giant insects last seen in the Carboniferous period. But Solar — in his secret identity as an Atom Valley physicist — can surreptitiously use his radiation like a giant can of Raid.
After torching a giant amoeba that has grabbed his love interest, Dr. Gail Sanders, Solar suits up to fight a herd of dinosaurs, which prove resistant to his radiation. He is finally able to subdue them by stopping the molecular motion of the air surrounding the creatures and freezing them.
Then the Man of the Atom faces a looming ethical dilemma.
“The Pleistocene era is coming up on that tiny planet’s geological time scale,” the Atom Valley director, Dr. Clarkson, warns Solar.
“Pleistocene period… Isn’t that when…?”
“Yes, Solar — when man first appeared! If we don’t destroy that meteorite now, we must either let its human life survive. Or become… murderers!”
As always, the omnipotent Man of the Atom is up to the challenge.
One intriguing aspect of the character is that the Gold Key superhero universe was so sparsely populated. In fact, Dr. Solar seemed to be the only superhero around, at least in his historic era. His innumerable powers — the speed of light, super-heat, super-cold, magnetism, lightning projection, radar vision, a tornado form, ad infinitum — were as formidable as Superman’s, and as Earth’s sole protector, he needed them.
“I discovered him late via hardcover compilations,” Bruce Kanin noted. “Despite their cost, I bought as many as Midtown Comics (NYC) had. The early ones in which he wasn’t costumed were the best, in my book.’ What a great book — both story, art, and title character!
I savored those non-costumed Solar stories when I was a kid, but kind of yawned when he finally donned a costume. Costumed superheroes, scarce in the 1950s, were already pretty numerous by mid-1963.
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