COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Atom 29
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Pedigree:
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Rocky Mountain
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Certification #:
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1030993003
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Issue #29 is considered a mini-key, in that it features the first solo Golden Age Atom crossover in the Silver Age. In
"The Thinker's Earth-Shaking Robberies!", while Ray and Jean are on a date at a rare book-end exhibit, everyone in the exhibit hall suddenly doubles over in pain as though they have been hit with the bends. Ray spots the criminal known as the Thinker attempting to rob the book ends. Able to change into Atom, Ray attempts to stop the Thinker from making off with the rare book ends, however, he has to fight off his henchmen when they attack him with harpoon guns. Atom manages to fight them off, and when he turns to resume his attention to the Thinker, is shocked to see the crook escape through a portal. Looking at the other side as the portal closes, Atom realizes that the crook has escaped to Earth-Two.
Having escaped, the Thinker changes out of his costume, and drives off gloating how he can successfully rob Earth-One, and use Earth-Two as his getaway place where he is not guilty of any crimes. However, the Thinker is in for a shock when he returns home and turns on his television to find that someone else called the Thinker is pulling off similar crimes in Earth-Two, implicating the real Thinker of crimes he didn't even commit in this universe. Furious at this development, the Thinker then puts his thinking cap back on to try and determine who is the cause of these crimes on Earth-Two.
Elsewhere at the home of reformed crook Artie Perkins, Artie's girlfriend Alicia walks into his room to find the stolen book ends. Both are shocked, especially Artie who has no recollection of stealing the rare items and sincerely wants to go straight. Having promised Earth-Two's Atom that he would go straight, he calls the special number that the hero gave him in case of an emergency.
Earth-Two's Atom gets the call just after he finishes giving a class in his civilian identity of Al Pratt, teacher at Calvin College. Al decides to go and investigate, changing into his Atom costume driving to Perkins' home in his Atomoibile. As Atom is investigating Artie, the real Thinker has setup a device to monitor the energy transmissions to determine if someone else is using it's power while he goes on his next robbery on Earth-One. As he is committing the crime on Earth-One, on Earth-Two, Artie suddenly goes into a trance and begins robbing a nearby art gallery. Having followed Artie there, Atom attempts to stop him, but to no avail as Artie appears to be immune to Atom's blows and can easily bat the hero aside. Atom decides to stand back and let Artie continue his job and follows him back to his home with the stolen paintings. There Artie snaps out of his trance with no memory of the theft whatsoever.
Suddenly the phone rings, and Atom answers it to find his Earth-One counterpart jumping out of the phone. The Earth-One Atom explains that after realizing that there was an Earth-Two criminal operating on Earth-One, he built a dimensional vibrator to travel to Earth-Two and tracked this universes Atom down by listening to his messages.
The Thinker suddenly arrives, his device pinpointing the use of his powers to the Perkins house and attacks the two heroes. Despite the two Atom's best efforts, the Thinker manages to knock them and Artie Perkins unconscious. Taking them back to his hideout, the Thinker traps both Atoms and Artie in an electrified cage, and leaves to return the stolen goods from Earth-Two, making him innocent of any crimes on that Earth and resume his criminal activities on Earth-One. The Thinker however, had not accounted for the scope of the Earth-One Atom's powers. Ray shrinks himself to a microscopic size to get past the electrified cage, and uses a pair of rubbed handled clippers to cut open the cage to free Al and Artie.
Pooling their scientific knowledge together, both Atoms construct a device to track down the Thinker by detecting his thinking-cap's power output. Tracking him back to Earth-One, they catch him attempting to rob ancient Spanish Dubloons from the Oceanic Museum. While Al keeps the Thinker busy, Ray manages to float onto the crook's helmet and sever the relay connections on his helmet, rendering his telepathic powers inoperative. Ray and Al then land knock out blows on the Thinker and the crook is left to the authorities of both Earth's to deal with.
Ou 9.8 comes from the Rocky Mountain Collection. This pedigree was assigned to a large Marvel and DC Silver Age collection originally auctioned by Comiclink in 2008. The Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-men runs were first auctioned without pedigree, but due to high collector interest the decision was made by CGC to classify the collection as a pedigree. Subsequently those three runs were retroactively given the Rocky Mountain notation. Hailing from Colorado, the collection numbered around 5,000 books, initially stored in a basement in similar conditions to the Mile High collection. None of the books exhibit identifying marks, but are easily traceable back to Comiclink.
Believe it or not, this beautiful WP Rocky Mountain copy is not highest graded, as according to the census there is a 9.9 out there somewhere that I believe was once owned by Crazy Ed. Excuse my digression, but 9.9s in the Silver Age are not just anomalies, but a little scary if you are a serious collector. I think we all know that not all 9.8s are created equal. But CGC will tell you they are not set up to screen 9.8s for upgrades, which is fine with me. However, I fear that, if their business ever slows, they might fold to pressure from dealers to start screening 9.8s for upgrades, which would probably also force all serious collectors to screen their collections. The idea of making 9.9s out of the better 9.8s, would be not just expensive and time consuming, but potentially detrimental to the value of our collections.
I sincerely hope that CGC will just leave 9.8 as the top grade for Silver Age books and not turn all the values upside down by upgrading any 9.8s to 9.9s. It is disconcerting enough that CGC regularly presses and upgrades lower grade books, which can detrimentally alter the value of books you paid a premium to acquire. But it is nice to have some security that, if you shell out the money for a 9.8, you at least know there will never be any higher-graded examples. If CGC were to ever decide to start screening 9.8s for upgrades, I think that would be the time we would seriously consider selling our entire collection.
At any rate, we acquired our 9.8 in the 9/10/2020 Heritage Auction.
2024 Update: We are starting to see more and more 9.9s appear in Bronze Age books, which should be a concern to all collectors.
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