The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom #4 Review and *SPOILERS*

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Written By: Cary Bates, Greg Weisman

Art By: Will Conrad, Ivan Nunes, Saida Temofonte

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: April 5, 2017

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Captain Atom is now in our present time and rocking himself a new look and new powers........ Well, the same old powers really, just more stable with the added benefit of being able to turn back to human, but with that the sacrifice of not being able to travel into outer space anymore.  Yeah, you win some you lose some, but Nathaniel Adam won't really have time to deal with that because after being welcomed/blackmailed back into General Eiling's employment, Captain Atom was made aware of the fact that he has a son out there and after having the shock that his wife died during his quantum time hop, I'm sure he'll want to find the boy and explain where he's been his entire life.  Let's jump into this issue and see if Eiling continues to be a dick and if the Captain has himself a little father/son reunion.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins with me being shocked because even though we saw Captain Atom tell General Eiling to suck it in the previous issue, when the General pretty much said come back to work for me or face jail time for the people you killed when you exploded in 2012, it seems that Nathaniel has had a change of heart now that he knows he has a kid in the world and we see him putting on a demonstration for the news about who he is and what he can do........... which includes absorbing a nuclear bomb that was detonated right next to him as a way to win the people at home watching over to the idea of an all-new, all-different Captain Atom.  General Eiling seems happy about all of this and the fact that Nathaniel is finally playing ball, but what he doesn't know is that Nathaniel has secretly hired a detective to find the whereabouts of his orphaned son.

At first it seems that somebody went to great lengths to keep the boy's identity a secret, but eventually it's all brought to light with a little more digging that Captain Atom's deceased wife's sister adopted his son after she died and he changed his name............ probably because everyone believes that Vincent Mallory, which was the assumed name that Captain Atom was going by in the 90's was a deadbeat dad, who simply abandoned his family.  Captain Atom isn't going to have time though this issue to have that first encounter with his boy because General Eiling sends him on his first mission, which in a way is Captain Atom cleaning up his own mess because during one of his quantum flares before he exploded, the flare hit a maximum security prison, where an inmate named Max Thrane was in the middle of being executed by electric chair and the flare combined with the city's power grid created a quantum bubble around Thrane, practically stopping time around him and keeping him from being electrocuted.  

In the end, Captain Atom attempts to absorb the quantum bubble, bringing Max Thrane out of his stasis, but instead Thrane somehow manages to absorb Captain Atom's power instead, turning Thrane into a being much like Captain Atom is and maybe even more powerful because when Captain Atom tries to subdue Thrane, the villain easily takes our hero down.  As our issue closes, we go and check in on Captain Atom's son Genji, who seems to have some sort of mind reading powers........ or possibly his Aunt is just a smart ass, but during the night when the boy is asleep, we see that Dr. Megala is secretly running tests on the boy through a remote scanner and from the way it seems here, he's been doing it for awhile.

That's it for this issue of The Fall and Rise of Captain Atom and even though it does make sense that Captain Atom is willing to play ball with General Eiling so that he can keep his freedom and track down his boy, this issue feels like it jumped too far from where we were previously because we're right back to Captain Atom-ing like he never missed a beat and while I understand that we only have six issues to tell this story, it just felt off to me.  It's also odd to me that out of nowhere we have ourselves a villain for Captain Atom to fight and while this also makes a bit of sense in that we're dealing with a superhero comic, up until this point it really felt like we were dealing with a more intimate story concerning Captain Atom and to get into a more mainstream style of story in the fourth issue just feels odd.  Anyway, besides for those few gripes, I still found myself interested in the story and look forward to learning more about Captain Atom's son and what our hero will do when he finds out his employers have been testing him without his knowledge and while I still like the art as well, I find Captain Atom's new redesign a step down because instead of bright and vibrant like he was, his dark red color just comes off a bit muddy in this book and not great to look at.

Bits and Pieces:

While this feels like a step down from the more intimate kind of story that we were dealing with so that it could just straight up become a superhero type story, this series still continues to be interesting and I find myself continuing to look forward to it.  Hopefully though, Captain Atom will regain his original look because after seeing his new design for two issues now, it just comes off muddy looking to me and leaves me crying out for a return to form for our hero.

6.5/10