Showcase Presents: Great Disaster Featuring the Atomic Knights, Vol. 1

Showcase Presents #102

by John Broome, Gerry Conway, Murphy Anderson (Illustrator)

In these stories, a variety of heroes including the Atomic Knights, Kamandi, Hercules and many others must face a post-apocalyptic future brought about by the mysterious "Great Disaster."


Collects stories from STRANGE ADVENTURES #117, 120, 123, 126, 129, 132, 135, 138, 141, 144, 147, 150, 153, 156 and 160, 1st ISSUE SPECIAL #1, HERCULES UNBOUND #1-10, KAMANDI #43-46, WEIRD WAR TALES #22, 23, 30, 32, 40, 42-44, 46-49, 51-53, 64, 68, 69 and 123, HOUSE OF MYSTERY #318, SUPERMAN #295, HOUSE OF SECRETS #86, 95 and 97, THE UNEXPECTED #215 and 221, and AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS #12.

Genres: Comics, Science Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Comic Book, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bro...

Reviews

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

I loved this one! As other reviews have said, with this volume its not just the content, but the eclectic material all collected in one volume. You have many post apocalyptic stories from all over the DC Universe, many of which you'd probably never come across unless by accident. There are two main runs collected in this book.

One is the Atomic Knights from the Amazing Adventures series. While the premise is silly (medieval armor somehow ages in a way to make it impervious to radiation), this is pure Silver Age Gold...er, or something like that. You have knights in armor in a post apocalyptic universe riding giant Dalmatians around to fight everything from renegade warriors from Atlantis (yes, that Atlantis) to sentient plants very similar to Triffids. It's all outrageous and it's all great fun.

The next series is Hercules Unbound. The premise here is Ares, the God of War, caused World War 3 which created the post apocalyptic universe. His arch nemesis, Hercules, is still around and out to stop him. The idea of Hercules wandering around in a Mad Max environment seems like a bad idea at first, but really it works much better than you'd think.

Then there are several shorter stories collected from all over the DCU and at various times. I suppose the idea is the stories are all set in the same post WWIII universe, although I don't think that was necessarily the idea when the stories were created.

Regardless this is a really great and unique volume. Kudos to whoever came up with the initial concept of this volume as its one of my favorites in the Showcase Presents line. If you like post apocalyptic stories and don't mind a little bit of camp, this is a great read for you.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great collection of DC's apocalyptic Series.. Fun read. Recommended

[Jason Luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of different alternative, short lived post apocalyptic stories, and most of them quite well written.

The occasional cameos of Superman in the late 70s and 80s were good, he had good writers (Dan Mishkin and Gary Kohn of "Amethyst" were particularly good).

The "Day after Doomsday" mini-series was a little bit cheesy on the moralistic twists, but they're pretty short and sort of ambitious and stuff.

"The Atomic Knights" is really good for John Broome (a really big caveat), I think maybe because the ambitious and dark aspect of knights in an age of massive nuclear apocalypse added good tension and intrigue.

Jack Kirby's random story about a God guy was good, but the "Hercules in the future" stories are excellent. A really simple but good job of giving Hercules friends and trying their ability to survive in the post-apocalypse.

The few stories about the monkey guy in a post-apocalyptic world of dangerous talking animals was also good, could've used more space to develop as a story, but it was interesting.

Paul Levitz story at the end, about how the alternate timelines for DC in the distant future work, a little uninspired but interesting.

A must have for so much condensed and different ways of solid writing and excellent artwork (5/5)

[K.T. Katzmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now this is a grab bag, and that's not bad at all.

Herein, DC Comics as many disparate apocalyptic comics as they can without just reprinting all of Kamandi, the Last Boy on Earth Omnibus, Vol. 1, (although I would have liked to see the very fun Kamandi #29, referenced inside, reprinted.

What do you get?

*A fantasy of knights, brigands , and time travel in crumbling Manhattan.

*Two to four page vignettes of the post-atomic war with Tales From the Crypt levels of nihilism.

* A Jack Kirby fantasy story.

* Silver Age sci-fi which reads like a game of Fallout with everyone wearing plate mail.

* Hercules wandering a modern Earth ruled and ruined by Ares.

* Mutated animal kingdoms after the bomb.

* Really weird-ass Superman stories.

If you're looking for a cohesive narrative, skip it. If you want a fun gallery of truly bizarre finds, this is it. Just as one thing almost starts to get repetitive, it becomes completely different.

And they say that war never changes . . .

[Skjam! · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between the late 1940s and somewhere in the 1990s, one of the most pervasive fears of the American public was atomic war. For the first time in known history, humans were truly capable of destroying all civilization, perhaps all life on Earth. One of the ways people dealt with this fear was science fiction. After all, the SF writers had forseen the possibility of annihilation well before such a thing was actually possible–and their stories would tell us the ways things might fall out. At DC Comics, this became a loose theme called “The Great Disaster.”

Unlike other Showcase volumes, this one collects not one series or character’s appearances, but a thematically linked set of stories, dealing with the aftermath of atomic war. As such, it provides a wide array of notable comics writers and artists.

The volume opens with a couple of stories about people traveling from after the Great Disaster to the present, or vice versa. This is followed by a collection of short-shock stories all titled “The Day After Doomsday”, presenting varied scenarios for what life after the Bomb might be like. Perhaps the most effective of these is the “Adam and Gertrude” trilogy.by Len Wein and Jack Sparling, but they all have their charms.

Then we have the feature event, the “Atomic Knights” stories. These were all by John Broome and Murphy Anderson. World War Three began in October 1986, and lasted less than a month, but wiped out much of human civilization, leaving a world without many animals or plants, and only a few pockets of humans struggling for survival. Into this world comes Sergeant Gardner Grayle. When he joined the Army, they discovered he was exactly average both mentally and physically, but during the War he was trapped in a bomb shelter that collapsed from a near-hit. The experience gave him traumatic amnesia, and only months after the disaster does he come to himself.

Grayle happens to be near a town named Durvale that was relatively untouched by the war, which is to say it’s a total wreck. It’s come under the thumb of the Black Baron (so named because of his hair color) who has managed to corner the local food supply. By coincidence, Grayle and a local school teacher, John Herald, discover that the suits of medieval armor in the museum have become resistant to most forms of radiation, including the ray-pistols used by the Black Baron and his men. There are six sets of armor, and soon Grayle and Herald recruit twin ex-soldiers Hollis and Wayne Hobbard, as well as scientist Bryndon (who is feared and despised for being one of those who made the bombs that ruined the world.) The last suit is deemed too small to be usable by any combat-ready man, so the Atomic Knight five set off. John’s sister, Marene Herald, who is small enough to fit in the last armor, takes it upon herself to follow them, and helps out in a tight situation.

The Atomic Knights became the new force for law and order in the post-apocalyptic world, fighting bizarre radiation-spawned monsters, evil dictators, the remnants of Atlantis and the mysterious mole people (who it turned out had actually caused the war.) Bit by bit, they began to make Earth liveable again.

These stories were all about the cool ideas, and were aimed primarily at children, so scientific plausibility and deep characterization were generally skipped. Bryndon being reluctant to discuss his pre-War research and the Hobard brothers being jazz fans was about as much as we learned about them as persons. Speaking of jazz, the early 1960s habit of only depicting white people in comics was on full display on a visit to New Orleans, where names of black performers are dropped, but there are no people of color in town. Marene, of course, is often excluded from dangerous missions and seems to have no particular skill set beyond “being feminine.” She even muses to herself that she’s “just a woman!” Perhaps appropriately, the last official Atomic Knights story from 1963 has her disguising herself as a boy and demonstrating some athletic talent.

Next up are stories of the return of the gods. There’s a one-shot about Atlas by Jack Kirby that doesn’t tie into anything in particular, but shared a resemblance to his Kamandi series, also set after the Great Disaster. The Kamandi series lasted long enough to get its own Showcase volume, so the next set of stories are Hercules Unbound, which ran 1975-77.

We open with Hercules bound to a rock, as he has been for the last millenium or so. Suddenly, the chains holding him snap–could this mean that Ares, who treacherously bound Hercules there, is dead? No time to think about that, as a blind boy and his dog are battling sea monsters nearby. Kevin, the blind boy, explains that he was in Greece when World War Three broke out, and he set out in a sailboat to see if he can get to his father, an ambassador to the Vatican. As it happens, Ares is in Rome, and very much alive, pitting the remnants of armies against each other for his own amusement. While Hercules triumphs against Ares’ champion, the opening chapter ends in tragedy for Kevin.

Hercules and his companions begin wandering the post-apocalyptic earth, encountering mad gods and mutants. There’s one person of color, a loincloth-clad hunter named Cerebus (not the aardvark) who is repeatedly referred to as “Nubian.” Yeah. The new-fangled “Women’s Lib” is mentioned a few times, mostly in association with Jennifer Monroe, a woman who was a model before the war, and mostly serves as a damsel in distress for Hercules.

Over the course of the series, it ties into OMAC, Kamandi and the Atomic Knights, despite these series not precisely being in continuity with each other. The last couple of chapters return to the question of why Hercules was chained to that rock in the first place; it answers some lingering subplots, ignores others, and flatly contradicts some of the earlier characterization. (The series had changed writers more than once in a dozen issues.)

After that are a few back-ups from Kamandi, and one last “The Day After Doomsday” shock story. To close out the volume, we have a Superman story from 1983. By this time, it was looking less and less likely that we would actually have an atomic war in 1986, and even if we did, it wouldn’t have the future-Fifties design aesthetic and cultural behavior seen in the Atomic Knights series. So when Superman suddenly finds himself in the Atomic Knights future, he is quick to point out the scientific implausibiliy of the scenario. Yes, this is hilarious coming from Mr. “The laws of physics are just mild suggestions.” Turns out it’s a virtual reality scenario gone horribly wrong, with the moral being “The task before man-kind isn’t to survive an atomic war! It’s to work in this world we’re living in to make certain such a war can never begin!” The story is also notable for giving Marene Herald a much more important role.

All together, this is a mixed bag with something for many comic book fans, including rare stories. It’s well worth a loan from your library, and if you’re a collector, consider buying it.

[Rex Hurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Great Disaster is an era in DC comics’ lore where in October, 1986 a nuclear war erupts devastating most of the planet. Various reasons are given for this (none of them actual governmental decisions) ranging from a race of mole people setting off WW III in order to conquer the surface, to a nuclear missile being shunted from the future to blow up in Greece in 1986, to the presence of Ares, God of War, coming to the Earth setting off conflict, to maybe it's all a huge computer simulation.

Keep in mind all of the events and issues here are Pre-Crisis D.C. and thus have probably been retconned out of existence, but they are still worth a look. The stories are presented in the chronological order in which they take place in the D.C. universe, rather than from the earliest date they were originally published. Thus there are dramatic shifts in story telling style, pacing, and art from tale to tale.

The Great Disaster also encompassed the stories in OMAC and Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, but neither of these series are included in this book. Instead we have a short story series called The Day After Doomsday which appeared sporadically in Weird War Tales, a four part short story from the back of Kamandi called Tales of the Great Disaster, a Kirby drawn origin issue of Atlas (which doesn't seem to fit in this collection), The Atomic Knights from Strange Tales (published in 1960 where the beginnings of The Great Disaster was conceived), the complete run of Hercules Unchained where the demigod emerges into a war torn world. Two issues of Superman bookend the series. One explaining that the Great Disaster is part of an alternate universe. The other stating the entire Great Disaster was part of a computer simulation gone wrong.


As this volume takes from all over the spectrum in the silver and bronze age material, the quality of art and writing is a crapshoot. Probably the best stories are the apocalyptic The Day After Doomsday, most of the art is moody and ink heavy adding to the dramatic effect of a nuclear disaster. In addition to that, the latter issues of Hercules Unbound were drawn by a young Walt Simonson, honing his talent and demonstrating his style in ink and prose that would soon be so iconic in Thor. Well worth a look.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is the second Showcase Presents after the Superfriends edition to be surprisingly good. The idea behind this one, however, is very different. Most Showcases choose one series, maybe two if its Batman, and then go chronologically. For this volume, the editors went through the DC archive, took a wide variety of sources, and spun it together into a crude narrative detailing a nuclear war and its aftermath in the distant year of...1986.

Well, it was distant when the first stories were written, but not too far distant.

So, after a few random stories of a time traveler from a feudal future and Superman visiting and inspiring a post-nuclear future, we get to a series of random short stories, all called "The Day After Doomsday," of the first few days of after the bombs go off. Frank Miller and Steve Ditko were among the artists, and most featured a "last man on Earth" dying somehow. Len Wein was among the writers. Those stories were mostly from the 70s.

After that, there was the complete original run of the Atomic Knights. Written by John Broome with art by the fantastic Murphy Anderson, US Army sergeant Gardner Grayle survives the nukes in a bunker, hooks up with the small town of Durvale and some strangely radiation-proof armor to form the Atomic Knights, which include standard sexist treatment of the lone female member, Marene (sometimes Marlene), often called the "smallest knight" and usually told to stay behind and protect the town while the other Knights went off and had adventures. Broome plays very fast and loose with science. All plants and animals, we are initially told, were dead aside from the few humans. This probably seemed more feasible to kid readers from that time period, and possibly a few adults as well. Plant life is eventually returned, but hey, who needs oxygen?

Jack Kirby's Atlas one shot came next. It ends on a cliffhanger. I am not sure why its here.

Then came the 12 issue run of Hercules, with an eventual cameo by the Atomic Knights. Some really high quality creators worked on this series, including Wally Wood, but the best may be the pre-Thor Walter Simonson. That's his artwork used as the cover for this volume.

After that, there was a short series of back-ups from Kamandi with what may have been some light political satire, one last "Day After Doomday," by writer Len Wein, and then a DC Comics Presents where Superman meets Hercules and the surviving Knights in an issue from 1983 and...points out the science problems with the old Atomic Knights stories, like how mutations aren't that fast, and the radiation would be far more dangerous. This coming from a man who can fly and shoot laser beams from his eyes...

The last two pages are text explaining how this future could come about instead of the Legion timeline while tying up everything (including Kamandi, who does not appear in this volume). Not a bad way to do a different kind of reprint.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and it gets 4 stars not so much because of the content, but because of the really cool way it's organized, and how it takes disparate tales and series from DC's past and re-presents them into a coherent (well, sorta) whole. Someone in DC's collections department took a LOT of time and effort to do this, and it's just an amazing job. To see it rounded out with a text-only piece from an old issue of DC's in-house fanzine, Amazing World of DC Comics, was just fantastic.

GR reader Skjam! gives a great review, so I won't reproduce it with one of my own. I think I may have enjoyed the book more than he did, but I always had a soft spot for those crazy mystery/horror/sci-fi anthologies DC used to publish.

The Atomic Knights stories I read recently in the hardback collection from 2010, so I did skip over those. The highlight of the book, however, was Hercules Unbound, a series I didn't read in the 70s when it first came out. There are some inconsistencies, but not too many, considering there were 3 writers over 12 issues, but it was a real treat to read them today. Additionally, there's great art by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez and Wally Wood, and early Walt Simonson. (One of the shorter tales that begins the book has art by a young Howard Chaykin.)

Would love for DC to do more "theme" collections. Maybe a spy collection that reprints the original Secret Six and some of the one-shots that appeared in Showcase (the original series)? That would be groovy!

[PJ Ebbrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of nostalgia here and some fun. A Kirby cameo for Atlas.

[Craig Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This covered some interesting ground for DC and ended up tying into Jack Kirby's Kamandi. A great collection of 60's and 70's post-apocalyptic comics.

[J. Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Great Disaster" collects various short stories and short-lived series from the '60s, '70s, and '80s, loosely united under the theme of "What happens after World War III?" Younger readers may have trouble grasping just how pervasive the fear of nuclear war was during the time between the end of WWII and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It seemed inevitable that, sooner or later, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. would launch nukes at each other, and that would be it for civilization. That paranoia spawned a whole sub-genre of science fiction, and "after the bomb" stories were all over books, tv shows, movies...and comics.

This book is a fascinating time capsule of changing attitudes over the decades. The early-60s series "The Atomic Knights" (by writer John Broome and artist Murphy Anderson) takes an optimistic view, as a band of ordinary men (and one token woman) join forces to try and rebuild civilization and maintain law and order. There's plenty of action and adventure, but we also see them dealing with mundane concerns like maintaining food supplies, setting up medical care and education, and coping with would-be dictators who are setting up their own little fiefdoms in the aftermath of the war. These little details help make the more outlandish sci-fi elements (evil mole people, killer ambulatory trees, time-travelers from Atlantis) easier to swallow. The thoughtful scripts and clean, meticulous artwork made this my favorite section of the book.

The other ongoing series collected here is "Hercules Unbound", which has the bizarre premise of the Greek god Hercules wandering the post-apocalyptic Earth. Now we're well into the cynical '70s, and there's little hope of rebuilding anything; this bomb-blasted landscape full of mutants and monsters is the new normal, and Hercules just has to survive it. There's some truly spectacular artwork here by the likes of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Wally Wood, and Walt Simonson. The writing is not bad -- with three different writers over the course of twelve issues, you don't exactly get a cohesive vision, but individual issues hold up fine as dramatic and exciting adventures. And hey, our pals the Atomic Knights show up at the end, so that's fun.

Less fun is the issue of "DC Comics Presents", which proports to be a team-up of Superman and the Atomic Knights. But now we're into the '80s, where meta-fictional commentary and deconstruction are all the rage, and really its just flipping a big middle finger at the original Knights series, dismissing it as naïve and irresponsible for "glamorizing" nuclear war. They may have a valid point in there somewhere, but mostly it comes across as shallow and mean-spirited.

The real head-scratcher here is the one and only appearance of Jack Kirby's "Atlas". It has nothing to do with the post-WWIII theme, and seems to take place at the dawn of civilization (the premise being that this is the guy who inspired the myths of Atlas the Titan). So why is it even here? Oh well, it's prime Kirby, full of his over-the-top action and crazy concepts, so enjoy it for what it is.

The book is rounded out with various other bits, mostly taken from the anthology "Weird War Tales". These sport some excellent artwork (including an early piece by Frank Miller), but the writing mostly falls flat. They're aspiring towards shocking or ironic "twist" endings, in the vein of the "Twilight Zone" tv series, but don't really pull it off.

I think the "Atomic Knights" and "Hercules Unbound" sections are more than worth the price of admission by themselves, and the rest of it, while a bit uneven, makes for a fascinating look at what was running through peoples' minds during the height of the Cold War.

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a fan of the classic Jack Kirby disaster title known as Kamandi, this is the essential collection to read! Collecting stories from numerous titles including Action Comics, DC Comics Presents, Weird War Tales, and Strange Tales among others, you will learn everything that lead up to the Great Disaster and the coming of The Last Boy on Earth!

I started this book in September. Then I came across the section on the Atomic Knights. And I fell in love. These post-apocalyptic heroes who wear medieval knights armor (due to it's radiation resistant properties) just resonated with me. Maybe it was because I saw a little of myself in a pandemic atmosphere in the post-nuclear war struggle of those Knights. I'm not saying surviving COVID-19 is on par with surviving the fallout from World War III. But sometimes we find solace in our trials by experiencing worse fates in our fiction reads.

Anyways, by mid-September, I was not looking forward to saying good-bye to the Knights. That's when I came across the 'Thanksgiving. 1990' 2-parter. Being a lover of holiday comics and considering how few Turkey Day books there are out there, I got to extend my goodbyes for a couple of months. Then the holidays hit and I delayed things again.

Thankfully, I knew that there was at least 1 more Atomic Knights story based on this books cover. With the close of that main story, we are introduced to the Greek hero Hercules. The atomic wars weakened the prison in which Ares had trapped the half-human son of Zeus. Upon his released, Zeus befriends a number of humans and seeks revenge on his captor. With a friendly puppy in the mix, I found myself cheating ahead to make sure of one of my unforgivable comic book reading rules isn't broken- That doggie better not die!

While the pages of Atomic Knights and Hercules stories give insight as to why is it that animals turn into humanistic creatures, why do the humans turn into savages and what started the bombs falling in the first place, the last couple of stories inside offer alternatives. One ending is a trippy Superman team-up with those Atomic Knights. The other is a lengthy essay by Paul Levitz that blames the meddling of that dastardly New God, Darkseid. While I liked the adventure with the Man of Steel, I think Levitz's recount is the gospel truth.

These stories are very Pre-Crisis; which I must admit, I love. The Greek gods aren't as evil as what happens to the Amazons at their hands in the midst of the George Perez Wonder Woman era. So if you adhere to cancel culture, you might have so difficulty admiring the heroic exploits of Hercules and his godly family in this book. But since all this occurs nearly a decade prior to the publisher's 1986's history change, it didn't happen!

So relax and enjoy an engaging read about a future to come that never come to be!

[Devero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ho atteso a lungo questo volume, questa raccolta di storie in parte slegate tra loro. L'attendevo perché le tavole di Kirby su Atlas non sono mai state tradotte in italiano. Lo attendevo per la serie di Ercole, i cui ultimi cinque numeri sono matitati da Walt Simonson, gli ultimi due matitati, inchiostrati e forse ha anche collaborato alla trama. Un giovane Simonson a fianco di un Kirby maturo. Già questo sarebbe più che sufficiente a ripagarmi dell'attesa biennale per leggere le storie.
Poi la bella scoperta degli Atomic Knights. Vero, le storie di John Broome sono abbastanza naif, ma i disegni di Murphy Anderson sono stati una bella scoperta per me. Un tratto decisamente classico, piacevole a vedersi.
Come bonus, alcune pagine di Curt Swan, di Alfredo Alcala, di Steve Ditko.
Nel complesso una ottima lettura.

[Kevinjwoods · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth reading just for the Frank Miller story from a cockroaches point of view.