The Atooooooooooommmmmmmmmmic KNIGHTS!

Well that's how it should be pronounced, anyhow.

Despite being forever banished to Marvel's shadow, it's worth knowing that DC actually had begun producing some slick, innovative and exciting comics a few years before Fantastic Four #1 hit the stands.  Characters such as the re-booted Flash and Green Lantern, and team books including The Challengers of the Unknown (Jack Kirby again), the Sea-Devils, the Suicide Squad, and the re-booted Blackhawks all appeared in the late 50's/early 60's and injected some new and interesting blood into the comix world.  

The Atomic Knights ran as a feature in Strange Adventures for 15 issues between mid 1960 and the end of `63.  SA was a science-fiction-based anthology series that began in 1950 and carried on (evolving in a number of unexpected directions) until the early 70's.  It carried several ongoing series characters, of which the Knights is one of the most fondly remembered.

Atomic Knights told the story of Gardner Grayle (Grail? Geddit?), a soldier who awakens from (a coma? suspended animation? an afternoon snooze? We are never told) with a bad case of amnesia, and finds himself being chased through the ruins of civilization by a gang of feral, desperate men.  He soon discovers that, five years previously, the world suffered a full-scale nuclear holocaust, and only pockets of civilization remain, scraping for survival on some saved canned foods (all plant and non homo sapien animal life was snuffed out).  Gardner finds his way to Durvale, one of those pockets of civilization.  He makes some friends - Douglas Herald, a former schoolteacher, Marene, his cute blonde sister, Prof. Bryndon, "one of the last scientists left alive on Earth!", and Wayne and Hollis Hobard, a pair of twin brothers, ex-military, with a fair bit of skills and a shared happy-go-lucky attitude.

He also finds a half-dozen suits of armor, and makes an interesting discovery.  Fallout from the hydrogen bombs has somehow effected the armor, making it partially invulnerable to radiation.  Thus armed, Gardner, Doug, Prof, Wayne, Hollis, and an unauthorized Marene overthrow The Black Baron, a self-appointed local warlord who's been hordeing food and lording it over Durvale, thug-style, abetted by some high-tech weapons, which turn out to be useless against the Knights' armor.

Having set things right in Durvale, the six agree to carry on as The Atomic Knights, bringing Truth, Justice and the American Way to the bombed-out remnants of civilization.  In an interesting twist, the Knights appeared in every third issue of Strange Adventures, and each story was set three months after the previous adventure.




The Atomic Knights was the brainchild of John Broome, one of the original comic book scribes with a record going back to the 40's, and played a major role in developing DC's sci-fi titles, the revived Flash, and was the driving force behind the revived Green Lantern.  He had a wild imagination, possibly second only to Jack Kirby himself.  Some of his more bizarre inspirations in The Atomic Knights included a giant salt monster, demonic creatures that manifested from the mutating mind of a young woman, and a breed of giant dalmatians which ended up becoming the Knights' preferred mounts.  Art was by Murphy Anderson, best known for his classic Superman.  Anderson lacked the dynamism of the Marvel artists, but his clean, handsome characters and pristine linework fit the tone of the series perfectly.

That tone was a positive one.  I suspect Broome was up on his science fiction (editor Julius Schwartz, who'd cut his teeth as an agent to sci-fi authors, certainly was), and much of the series recalls the fairly tame vision of Pat Frank's Alas Babylon (published about a year before the Knights appeared). Other notable sci-fi works of the time that are referenced are John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, and possibly his later The Chrysalids, and Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow.  

 One could hardly expect a DC comic aimed at pre-teens to depict the horrors of a post-nuclear world - and it doesn't.  Yet, for all its sanitization, issues such as lack of medical care and facilities crop up in the stories, and food shortages remain a major plot point throughout the series.  Still, the tone is one of Kennedy-era optimism.  Durvale continues to rebuild and prosper, and the Knights inevitably set things right wherever they go.  One is left with the impression that the Good Guys will prevail and America will rise again, in all its clean-cut glory.

To be sure, the series is dated as hell.  There's not a single non-white face (not even in New Orleans!?!).  And Marene, after the first couple adventures, is forever relegated to staying back in Durvale to take care of the home front, where she spends most of her time worrying about Gardner coming home safely, and wondering when he's gonna get off his Dirk Squarejaw ass and propose to her.  Characterization is minimal to non-existent.  The stories are all short (10-15 pages total), thus making them very compact and to-the-point.  A modern reader may find them very terse.  Still, they're a fun read, a relic of a simpler and more optimistic time, and a good look at comic book sci-fi in the early 60's.

DC has published the entire run of Atomic Knights in a nice slim little volume.  It appears to be getting inflated prices these days, though.  A b&w paperback collection: The Great Disaster includes all of the above, plus some unrelated stories, a complete run of the short-lived Hercules Unbound, and Jack Kirby's one-shot Atlas.