The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #3 Review and *SPOILERS*

Captain Atom Rebirth

Written By: Cary Bates, Greg Weisman

Art By: Will Conrad, Ivan Nunes, Saida Temofonte

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: March 1, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Alright, it's Captain Atom time and since we saw him flung into our present at the end of the last issue, I'm guessing he's got some answering to do not only to his wife who he disappeared on....... you know, with all that time flinging, but also to the government and the Justice League because he was a bit of a hazard back in 2012 when he blew the hell up.  What I'm really looking forward to here though is Captain Atom finding out about the child he has because before his powers kicked back in and time protected itself by throwing Captain Atom back into the future, we found out that his wife Takara was pregnant.  Let's jump into this issue and see how traveling through time has affected our hero and what he'll do now that he's all powered up again.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with our hero appearing at the now being demolished Continuum site that he originally disappeared from and from there we head on over to where Dr. Megala now hangs his hat and we find out that not only has everything from 2012 concerning Captain Atom been shut down and Dr. Megala had to go and find new work, but also that Captain Atom is radically different than we've seen him before.  Instead of the blue, he's now red and his powers have becoming different and he also has the ability to change from Captain Atom to human at will.  This is all learned after Captain Atom follows a drone to Dr. Megala's new lab Mesaplex  that is inside of a mountain and where our hero finds out that his wife from the past died back in 2010.  

Captain Atom's first response is to leave Earth again and go back to the moon, but with his new powers he's no longer able to fly into space and crashes back down to Earth, where General Eiling finds him and takes him back to Mesaplex to brief him about what's gone down since his disappearance.  Yeah, the General is all about getting Nathaniel back in his pocket, but obviously Nathaniel has trepidation about this and only agrees to have them test his new powers for Dr. Megala's sake.  This leads to a big ass montage showing off things that this new Captain Atom can do and General Eiling likes what he sees because if he gets his way he's going to present Captain Atom as someone knew and as someone who can control his powers.   A sort of Captain Atom reboot to get the public behind someone they used to be fearful of.  Too bad the General is terrible at being a person because Nathaniel rejects his offer and really.......... our hero just wants time to grieve for his dead wife.

In the end, our hero goes to the apartment that was supposed to be his if he played ball with Eiling so he can catch himself up on his wife's death and also on the people who died when his powers went out of control back in 2012, but it doesn't look like he'll have much time to deal with all that because there's a knock on the door and waiting on the porch is a ipad that says play me and on the tablet, Nathaniel discovers that he has a seventeen year old son and whoever left this information for him only wanted to be known as "A Friend".  

That's it for this issue of Captain Atom and while I had a great time in the previous issue with Captain Atom's life while he was stuck in the past and learning about the rules of time travel, here I found myself just a bit bored at times because our hero is now red with new powers and besides for the basic show of force and stamina and Dr. Megala adding "Quantum" to the beginning of every power he sees Nathaniel display, there wasn't a lot going on in this issue.  It's almost back to business exactly where we left things in the first issue in 2012 and all I wanted to know about was what was up with Captain Atom's kid that we found out about at the end of the previous issue........which we got one panel of at the end.  It's weird too because we spent so much of this issue talking about how Captain Atom is different now and besides for knowing that he can't travel to space and now has the ability to turn his quantum field on and off........ I really don't know much else.  Even with these problems though, I still look forward to this mini and what it will bring and that goes double if the art continues looking as good as it has because goddamn, I love the art in this book.  

Bits and Pieces:

While this issue didn't "wow" me like the previous issue, it still maintained my interest as it tried to bring me up to date with what Captain Atom's new powers are and what the military has planned for him now, but even with that it was a bit of a rehash since it seemed like we were back at square one with our hero and his involvement with General Eiling and Dr. Megala.  The art in this book was great, but the story seriously slowed down here.

6.5/10