Showcase #35
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeShowcase #35 is the second appearance of the Silver Age Atom (Ray Palmer) and his soon-to-be-wife Jean Loring, arriving just one issue after the character's debut and firmly cementing that DC had a viable new franchise on its hands. The issue's quick follow-up — featuring the same writer-artist team on the same character — was precisely how the Showcase tryout system was designed to work, signaling editorial confidence and giving readers a second look before a solo title was greenlit. That confidence was vindicated: within months, Ray Palmer graduated to his own ongoing series (The Atom #1, July 1962), making this issue a direct link in the chain between debut and launch. It also carries a minor publishing footnote: it appeared in DC house ads in several December 1961 issues without a cover price, a production artifact of DC's transition away from the ten-cent price point.
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Editor Julius Schwartz had already been planning a Silver Age reimagining of the Golden Age Atom (Al Pratt) well before the character reached print, and had enlisted artist Gil Kane to sketch designs even before writer Gardner Fox was formally brought aboard. Fan and early-comics-historian Jerry Bails had written to Schwartz in late 1960 with suggestions for an updated Atom, and Fox corresponded with Bails in January 1961 confirming the project was underway. With Showcase #34 having introduced the character, Schwartz kept the identical creative unit — Fox on script, Kane on pencils, and Murphy Anderson on inks — for issue #35, running the feature for a second consecutive slot in the tryout anthology, exactly the pattern Showcase had used to test the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Second appearance of Silver Age Atom (Ray Palmer), following his debut in Showcase #34 (October 1961).
- Second appearance of Jean Loring, Ray Palmer's fiancée and later wife, here depicted in her professional role as an attorney executing a client's will — the plot hook that draws the Atom into the story.
- Lead story is 'The Dooms from Beyond!' (script: Gardner Fox; pencils: Gil Kane; inks: Murphy Anderson; editor: Julius Schwartz), in which the Atom uncovers machinery disguised as supernatural curses threatening an heir named Gordon Doolin/Heath.
- Cover date: November 1961; on-sale (arrival) date documented as September 21, 1961, per collector research cited in the Grand Comics Database.
- The issue includes a two-page text feature, 'Inside the Atom Part Two,' continuing from the text piece in Showcase #34, spotlighting creators Gardner Fox, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson with illustrated portraits — an unusually creator-centric editorial gesture for the era.
- Character name is an in-joke: Fox, Kane, and Schwartz named Ray Palmer after Raymond A. Palmer, the influential editor of Amazing Stories who purchased Isaac Asimov's first story for publication.
- The entire issue was reprinted in The Atom Archives Vol. 1 (DC, August 2001) and again in Showcase Presents: The Atom Vol. 1 (DC, August 2007), making it accessible to modern readers in both deluxe color hardcover and affordable black-and-white paperback formats.
- DC's house ads for this issue appeared in December 1961 comics without a cover price, a production artifact of the publisher's imminent shift from ten-cent to twelve-cent cover pricing.
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Reprints
Reprinted in The Atom #20 (1965), Wonder Woman #156 (1965), Sky Riders #1 (1967), The Atom & Hawkman #41 (1969), The Atom Archives #1 (2001), Showcase Presents: The Atom #1 (2007)
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