Let's set the stage here: it's the early sixties, you're a comic book editor working for National Periodical Publications (known today as DC Comics), and you're under the gun to come up with an idea for the next issue of 'Showcase'. What do you do? What do you do?
Well, you've already had a high degree of success by recycling old super-heroes such as the Flash and Green Lantern into new features, so you go back to the archives to look at the Atom, a vertically-challenged Golden Age hero who's really strong. Obviously, a short, strong dude isn't going to make it as a hero with the sophisticated audience of the 1960's, so you have to jazz it up some. Instead of just being short, how about you make him really short, say about six inches tall?
Hey, presto, you have a new hero who uses the atomic radiation of a white, dwarf star fragment to manipulate his size and mass.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with the above strip, but now you know.
- NP
