Action-Plus: The Atom (AC448 – 1975)

Action-Plus: The Atom (June, 1975)
“Nightmare in Gold!”
Writer – Martin Pasko
Pencils – Dick Dillin
Inks – Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez
Edits – Julius Schwartz
From: Action Comics #448


It’s gonna be a short one today… uh, no pun intended.


Wasn’t planning on dipping back into the Action-Plus well quite so quickly, but this weekend has turned into a podcasting X-Travaganza… and I just didn’t have the time to dig for the next installment of the “To Catch the Predator” series of Green Lantern posts.


On the podcasting front… if you do follow my audio exploits, I got somethin’ cookin’… I can’t say with certainty that it’s going to be “big”, but I can tell you, it’s going to be “long”.


Stay tuned, my friends!


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It’s time for some Action-Plus, starring the Atom!  We pick up with the Ray Palmer starting to turn into gold… a result of his lab assistant, Enrichetta (groan) Negrini dreaming about him.  Ya see, anything she dreams of (for the time being) transforms into gold.  Luckily, Ray transformed into the Atom… which halted his transformation.  Ya see, Enrichetta (groan) was thinking about Ray not the Atom.  Ya dig?

The Atom follows some coffee stains to the basement door and down a flight of stairs, whereupon he finds Enrichetta… dreaming, and surrounded by a pair of nogoodniks… and plenty of gold.  She begins dreaming of the bad guys… which begins their gilded transformation.

The Atom uses this to his advantage, and proceeds to beat the bad guys up.  Worth mentioning that Ray’s arm is still golden, so his punches pack a bit more of a wallop right now.  Ray notices that Enrichetta is wearing a Philosopher’s Stone that once belonged to an Alchemist… and deduces that must be the reason for the gilding.  He yanks it from her neck… and it gets stomped on by one of the baddies… reversing the spell.

The day is saved, Enrichetta reunites with her boyfriend Roberto… and Ray hangs up on Jean Loring when she suggests they see some movies with “gold” in the title.  Wonk wonk wonnnnnk. (wow, twice in one post!)

—

Welp.

This back-up… ehhhhhh… you know how I sometimes feel about back-ups, and this Atom short did nothing to change my stance.  This seems like a decent enough idea for a story, but it isn’t given any room to breathe.  The whole story could’ve been told in a single page… even forfeiting the bottom panel to shill Hostess Cup Cakes.