COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Atom and Hawkman 43 Universal
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Grade:
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9.6
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Pedigree:
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John G. Fantucchio
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Certification #:
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0345459005
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
The cover story in Issue #43 features Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who learn that the Gentleman Ghost has been staging a series of robberies at Trafalgar Square in London, England. They fly across the ocean to Europe and being investigating the sightings. They find the Ghost and his cronies near Nelson's Monument in the square. Hawkman dives into the thugs and incapacitates them with his mace, but the Gentleman Ghost manages to grab a hold of Hawkgirl. Hawkman tries to rescue her, but the Ghost and Hawkgirl both disappear.
Hawkman tracks them back to London Tower. While he fights off more of the Gentleman Ghost's henchmen, Hawkgirl manages to free herself. Hawkman chases the Ghost to the face of Big Ben. Although the Ghost escapes, Hawkman does succeed in finding where he's been stashing his loot. Hawkgirl finds a movie projector inside of Big Ben, which convinces Hawkman that they were not fighting a true spirit, but rather a con man, armed with tape recorders and trick cameras.
In the back-up Atom story, Ray attempts to perform an experiment before his peers when suddenly a small insect distracts him, causing him to forget what he was trying to do. Horace McByrd, head of the Physics department, harshly criticizes Palmer, angering him to great length.
Ray leaves and turns into the Atom. He goes into a subatomic realm and fights a mindless monster just to let off some steam. When he returns to his office, he finds a student named Hap Coogan rifling through his files. Coogan angrily accuses Palmer of being a spy. Suddenly, that strange insect appears again and Coogan loses his memory. Palmer grows extremely suspicious and decides to follow the insect as the Atom.
He discovers that the bug is actually a micro-device designed to rob people of their memories. He traces it back to the office of Horace McByrd, who confesses that he used Ray’s theories to create the device and set it against him to discredit him. McByrd feels that he cannot match the visionary intellect of the university's younger staff members, and wanted to sabotage Palmer's career in order to improve his own standing. Atom listens to the professor's confession and then takes him off to prison.
This is one of the few later Atom issues wheee we lack a 9.8 since as of this writing none exist. Our 9.6 is one of four highest graded and comes from the John Fantucchio Collection. Fantucchio was a well-known artist in '60s fandom, drawing covers for RBCC and the Comic Buyers Guide (including the #1 cover), and even worked as an illustrator for the CIA from 1963 to 1988. During this time he amassed full runs of Marvel, DC, Gold Key, Charlton, ACG and Dell, among others, keeping them locked away and untouched, which resulted in uniformly high grades and near perfect cover inks. After his passing in 2016, the family auctioned the collection through Comiclink. Even though the books have no distinctive markings, many were CGC graded.
We acquired the book from the 9/1/2018 CL Auction.
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