![Captain Atom Captain Atom](/gallery/logos/captainatom2.gif)
![Captain Atom Captain Atom](/gallery/characters/c/captainatom.jpg)
Name: Captain Atom
Universe: Earth-4
Alter Ego: Nathaniel Christopher Adam
Occupation: Captain, U.S. Air Force
Marital Status: Single
Group Affiliation: None
Base of Operations: Cape Canaveral, Florida
Known Relatives: None
Height: 6 ft. 1 in.
Weight: 195 lbs.
Hair Color: White
Eye Color: Blue
First Appearance: Space Adventures #33
History:
A trained, dedicated soldier who was a Physics prodigy at eight, a chemist, and a ballistics expert, Captain Nathaniel Adam was making a few last-second adjustments in an Atlas missile when he dropped his screwdriver. Unable to retrieve it in time, Adam was still inside the missile when it was launched on a test flight.
At 300 miles above the Earth, the atomic warhead in the missile exploded, disintegrating Adam utterly, yet somehow leaving his molecular skeleton intact.
Reintegrating himself through sheer force of will, Adam reappeared on the Cape Canaveral launching pad, alive but radioactive. At Adam's suggestion, Cape scientists provided him with a protective suit made from diulustel, a special light-weight metal designed to shield radiation. Twenty-four hours after demonstrating his newfound powers, Adam was summoned to Washington, where the President himself presented him with a unique uniform made from that same diulustel, and told Adam he was to become America's new secret weapon, code-named Captain Atom.
In the months that followed, Captain Atom protected America against alien invasions and a variety of super-villains, until he was forced to extend himself to the limit to shut down a nuclear reactor gone wild. He then found that the encounter had left him powerless. Captured by the renegade scientist who had tampered with the reactor, Captain Atom was unmasked on nationwide television.
Finding his super-powers gradually returning, Captain Atom escaped his captor, then decided it was time for a new image. Since his radiation levels were becoming more and more unstable, Captain Atom allowed himself to be sprayed from head to toe with an experimental new liquid metal, a formula that was absorbed under his skin and was absolutely radiation-proof. Triggered by a power surge from his body, the metal covering would become visible, revealing Captain Atom's new costume, while completely containing Atom's excessive radiation. Thus clad, Captain Atom tracked down the renegade scientist and finally brought him to justice.
At this writing, Captain Atom is still active, defending his country against those who would seek to destroy it.
Powers:
An Olympic-level athlete and highly skilled hand-to-hand combatant, Captain Atom also possesses a wide variety of atomic radiation-based super-powers, including super-strength, limited invulnerability, the ability to pass through solid objects, the power to hurl highly focused nuclear firebolts, and the ability to fly by focusing an infinitesimal amount of his atomic power through his lower body. At his fastest, Captain Atom has been clocked at speeds over 20,000 m.p.h. As it requires a great deal of effort to maintain such speed for any long amount of time, this can leave Captain Atom temporarily exhausted.
It should also be noted that the power surge that transforms Captain Adam into Captain Atom also changes his normally brown hair into silver-white.
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