How to Rationalize Like a Comic Book Fan

Or What the Hell Happened to Captain Atom?

Why did Captain Atom decide to take over the multiverse?

What led him down the path from superhero to super villain?

Who corrupted him?

When did the turn happen?

Where was point of no return from good to evil?

How did it all happen?

I've been asking myself these questions since before the beginning of Countdown. I knew from the solicits that he'd be turning bad. I knew that he was going to raise an army out of the 52 universes which he'd use to take over the entire multiverse. And so I've wondered, why?

Captain Atom, in the DC universe at least, started out as a man, Captain Nathanial Adam, out of time. He was a military man in the sixties who had some problems and got to decide to spend years in prison or be stuffed into an egg made out of some alien alloy while bombs were exploded outside the egg to test the alloy's strength. While I would pick prison, he picked the alien egg. The bombs exploded and everything disappeared. Years later Adam re-appeared with the alloy grafted to his skin and the ability to tap into and manipulate the Quantum Field. (Don't think about the science, please. You'll only hurt yourself.) Obviously, the military wanted to use him to get good press, so he did and eventually became a real hero, not just a military shill, and eventually led the European team of the Justice League International.

Captain Atom fought Monarch (a former hero who went bad when his future self came back in time and killed his partner, who he was in love with, which sent his present day self into wacoville and caused him to kill his future self and then put on his future self's armor and go to kill all the superheroes) and they went on a wacky trip through time, with only Atom ending up back in the present. From there, after some (a lot) of time in the background, he formed an "extreme" Justice League team, fought "extreme" Wonder Twins, and even an "extreme" quantum clone of himself. Then he spent more time off the page until he sacrificed himself by flying a giant robot in the shape of the Composite Superman into a gigantic meteor made up of kryptonite. He blew up, saving the day, and dying.

Except he didn't die, he was blow into another universe. The Wildstorm comics universe. There he found an Earth full of superheroes who scared the regular people as much as, but often more than, the super villains and alien invaders who are waging war on the backwater world known as Earth. Atom gets frustrated and almost becomes as frightening as the heroes of the Wildstorm Earth, but he doesn't. He clings to his ideals and morals. He refuses to kill. He tries to convince regular folks he won't hurt them. He helps a young woman come to terms with the god-like powers she received because of the way he broke through the universal barriers. He does good and in the end he's sent back to DC's New Earth to a city that was blown up by a giant creature full of bizarre chemicals being dropped on the city, cracked and leaking radiation, which forces him into a coma.

Eventually, he's discovered being used to help breed government meta-humans, still in a coma and leaking massive amounts of radiation, by heroes called the Atomic Knights. They take him away and to keep him from going critical and blowing up the city even worse, the put him in Monarch's armor and wake him up. He's kind of angry when he wakes up and sort of blows up what's left of the destroyed city and anyone or anything left there.

After that, he's seen in Countdown recruiting alternate heroes and villains and already having a large army of normal people hidden in the bleed. He's decided to force his brand of order on the 52 universes.

I thought that Countdown would have explained this change in him by now. It hasn't.

In Countdown to Final Crisis #17 they claim to give Monarch origin in the back-up. I expected them to explain the change in Atom there. Here's what they said:

To prevent further catastrophe caused by the quantum energies seeping from Captain Aton's Damaged skin, the Atomic Knights sealed him within the recovered armor of Monarch.
His abilities enhanced but his control overwhelmed, Captain Aton became the very thing he feared and fought on that alternate Earth.
He Repaid the Knights' kindness by destroying what little remained of Blüdhaven before embracing his future as the one true Monarch...

The origin didn't explain anything, but it did remind me of the story of the armor. So I pulled out the books where it was introduced the event that crossed the annuals put out in 1991, Armageddon 2001.

Monarch's armor was built sometime in the future and had the ability to absorb nearly infinite amounts of energy, but it came back in time where the original owner was killed by his past self. His past self was a superhero named Hawk, an agent of the Lords of Chaos, who was part of a team built to balance Order and Chaos with Dove, an agent of the Lords of Order. Dove was killed by Monarch. Without her to help balance him, Hawk got mad, embraced the chaos and killed his future self. Angry and nutso, Hawk became Monarch and decided to kill all the superheroes and impose order, which is a stupid thing to do for an agent of Chaos. Of course, he was defeated (by Captain Atom, the man who was originally going to be Monarch, but didn't, due to the story leaking to the comic "press" of the day, BBSes).

A few years, our time, later, Monarch showed up again and declared that he now understood: without Dove, he was also the embodiment of Order and his power was increased and called himself Extant, a guy with an omega on his chest because, you know, he's come to end it all, and he ditches the armor.

And there, there's my answer:

To absorb the power from the Lords of Order, Monarch had to give up some of the power from the Lords of Chaos. He couldn't keep all of one and just take more of the other into his body, so what happened to the Chaos power? It was absorbed by the armor! So when Captain Atom, a hero of science, was crammed into the armor, the Chaos was too strong for him, especially since the Lords have left (or were killed or stomped by the Spectre or punched out of existence) the Chaos trapped in the armor is all there is in the universe. It just overwhelmed Captain Atom and drove him as mad as, or madder than, Hawk was when Hawk watched his future self kill Dove and then killed his future self. Hawk was created to hold and use the powers of Chaos, Captain Atom was not.

When I figured that out, I felt better, even if it's complete and utter horse shit. Still won't stop me from asking about it at WonderCon in February, though.