al pratt

Little Man With A Big Punch: Al Pratt, The Original Atom
Little Man With A Big Punch: Al Pratt, The Original Atom
Little Man With A Big Punch: Al Pratt, The Original Atom
Who is the Atom? If you said Ray Palmer, or Ryan Choi, or "that guy from the Justice League who changes size," or Brandon Routh on Legends of Tomorrow, you certainly wouldn't be wrong. But there was an Atom who came before all of them. His name was Al Pratt, and while he's not the most well-remembered Golden Age hero, he was an early version of a far-reaching archetype: the unstoppably tough undersized scrapper.
Grant Morrison's 'The Multiversity 'Annotations, Part 2
Grant Morrison's 'The Multiversity 'Annotations, Part 2
Grant Morrison's 'The Multiversity 'Annotations, Part 2
We'll be focusing here on the second issue of the maxiseries, the unwieldily titled The Multiversity: The Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World, written by Grant Morrison with pencils by Tom Strong's Chris Sprouse, inks by Karl Story and Walden Wong, and gorgeous colors by Dave McCaig. I'll admit here from the beginning that while I can talk about this series' relationship to the DC Universe and Morrison's oeuvre, I'm close to clueless about the vagaries of early 20th century pulp fiction and would be incredibly interested in hearing from more learned readers whatever I've missed from that angle. That said, there's still a great deal of meat to dig into in this issue, which serves as a sort of conceptual counterpoint to Final Crisis's opening scene, showing us the end of Anthro and Vandal Savage's 40,000-year feud. So, with no further ado...