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Captain Atom is a comic book superhero. He was created by Steve Ditko for Charlton Comics, and was later acquired and revised by DC Comics.
Charlton Comics
The Charlton Comics version of Captain Atom first appeared in 1960 and focused upon the adventures of Captain Allen Adam. The character's origin was that Captain Adam was working in a special experimental rocket when it accidentally launched with himself trapped inside. Entering the upper atmosphere, the rocket exploded and Capt. Adam was atomized. However, Adam somehow gained superpowers which included the ability to reform his body safely on the ground. Realizing what his other abilities were, like the ability to fly and fire powerful blasts, Adam decided to fight the forces of evil as Captain Atom.
The rights to this, and other, Charlton characters were purchased by DC Comics and became the basis for Alan Moore's Watchmen. Captain Atom was changed into Doctor Manhattan.
DC Comics
In addition, another version of the character was introduced into DC Universe in 1986 in a monthly comic written by Cary Bates (a long-time writer of The Flash and Superman) and drawn by Pat Broderick. The captain's name was established as Capt. Nathaniel Adam, an Air Force officer in Vietnam framed for a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to death under the watch of Col. Wade Eiling in 1968. As an alternative to execution, he was invited to participate in a military experiment with little chance of survival. The experiment involved testing the hull of an crashed alien ship's durability by exploding a nuclear bomb under it. Adam survived as the metal melted into his body and the excess energy triggered a strange effect which jumped him ahead to 1986.
Upon arrival and regaining coherence from his experience, Adam found himself a man out of his time, in the hands of Eiling, now a general and once the second husband of Adam's now-deceased wife. After an attempt to kill Adam failed, Eiling settled for assigning Adam as a spy in the superhero community under the code-name "Captain Atom." The events of the Charlton stories were established as simply the cover story for Adam, who also was assigned the alias of Air Force intelligence operative Cameron Scott. Atom/Adam served under Eiling reluctantly, while succeeding in clearing his name. Eventually, Atom rebelled against Eiling completely, resigned from the Air Force and found some fulfillment as an actual superhero.
Becoming a superhero, Captain Atom joined the Justice League at the request of the U.S. government, serving as leader of Justice League Europe. In 1991, Atom was slated to become the hero-turned villain Monarch in DC's Armageddon 2001 story arc, but when word of this leaked out, DC changed the ending but leaving him lost in time and cancelling his ongoing series.
He returned to the present and to the League, founding an offshoot team, Extreme Justice. In 2003, he once again teamed up with several former members of the JL in the humorous Formerly Known as the Justice League.
Also in 2003, writer Jeph Loeb returned Captain Atom to his roots as he went back to work for the government, this time for President Lex Luthor in a new Superman/Batman series. Atom seemingly gave his life to save Superman and Earth, but most readers expect that he will return to the background of the DC Universe.
Other Media Depiction
The character appears in the animated television series, Justice League Unlimited. In that series, his premise is actually closer to the Legionnare Wildfire, in that Atom is a disembodied mass of sentient energy that is contained in a special suit. He also basically fulfills the mild antagonistic role that the Pre-Crisis Hawkman was to the Green Arrow as a bickering conflict between the military officer and the peace activist. He is voiced by George Eads in the episode Initiation and in The Greatest Story Never Told by Chris Cox.
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