Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part III: Captain Atom: Armageddon

Forget Armageddon, it's DOOOOOM. The sixteen-part eighth Doctor epic Doom Coalition is finally over, and I've reviewed the final part.

Comic trade paperback, 223 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2005-06)
Borrowed from the library
Read December 2016

Captain Atom: Armageddon

Written by Will Pfeifer

Penciled by Giuseppe Camuncoli
Inked by Sandra Hope (with Trevor Scott), (with Camuncoli)
Additional art: Jim Lee, Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair
Color by Randy Mayor, Jonny Rench, Tony Aviña
Letters by Rob Leigh, Phil Balsman, Patrick Brosseau

Wildstorm was an independent comics publisher founded in 1993; in 1999, it was purchased by DC Comics, and in 2011's Flashpoint event, DC merged the two continuities into one. That means that from 1999 to 2011, DC was publishing stories set in two separate superhero universes, and they occasionally took advantage of that by having characters cross from one to the other. In this case, that character was Captain Atom; Armageddon reveals that though he was apparently killed in an explosion at the end of Superman Batman: Public Enemies, he actually crossed over in the Wildstorm universe. But his atomic structure is incompatible with this universe, and he's going to explode and destroy it if something can't be done to stop it.

I don't know what the Wildstorm universe was originally like, but by 2005 it was a dark place, thanks to books like The Authority, where a group of superheroes decide to use murder to remake Earth as a better place. Will Pfeifer does a good job of contrasting this with the main DC universe: while in DC, Captain Atom is a bit of an also-ran, in Wildstorm he's the most standup guy there is, surrounded by antiheroes like the Authority, the WildC.A.T.s (including freakin' Grifter), and Mister Majestic, none of whom exactly aspire to virtuous altruism. They'll do whatever it takes, but Captain Atom has lines he won't cross.

Some of these lines include fashion, thank God.
from Captain Atom: Armageddon #4 (art by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Sandra Hope)

In some ways, Armageddon is a tour of the Wildstorm universe, I suspect designed to hook DC readers who followed Captain Atom into the crossover, hence Atom's encounters with all the heavy hitters of this reality (minus, I suppose, Gen¹³). I don't know much a new-to-Wildstorm reader really gets out of it, though; I'd already read The Authority so I followed those bits fine, but part of the book seems to assume you know more about WildC.A.T.s than I did-- who or what is the Void? And who cares about Grifter anyway?