DC Finest: The Atom: Birth of the Atom

Born in 1911 in Brooklyn, New York, Gardner Fox was probably the single most imaginative and productive writer in the Golden Age of comics. In the 1940s, he created or co-created dozens of long-running features for DC Comics, including the Flash, Hawkman, the Sandman, and Doctor Fate, as well as penning most of the adventures of comics’ first super-team, the Justice Society of America. He was also the second person to script Batman, beginning somewhere around the Dark Knight Detective’s third story. For other companies over the years Fox also wrote Skyman, the Face, Jet Powers, Dr. Strange, Doc Savage and many others—including Crom the Barbarian, the first sword and sorcery series in comics. Following the revival in the late 1950s of the superhero genre, Fox assembled Earth’s Mightiest Heroes once more and scripted an unbroken 65-issue run of Justice League of America. Though he produced thousands of other scripts and wrote over 100 books, it is perhaps this body of work for which he is best known. Fox passed away in 1986.

Gil Kane is recognized as one of the most influential artists in comic books, with a string of credits at DC, Marvel, and other companies that includes Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, The Atom, The Flash, Conan, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and many others. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was the artist tapped to relaunch both Green Lantern and The Atom, and, during the ’60s, he was responsible for the first mass-market comic books, including the magazine His Name is Savage and the illustrated paperback novel Blackmark. With writer Ron Goulart, Kane created the newspaper comic strip Star Hawks.