Trivia / Captain Atom

• Executive Meddling: Monarch. Period.
• What Could Have Been: Of the Depending on the Artist variety. The original Charlton Comics Captain Atom, Allen Adam, was originally supposed to wear a blue-purple suit with his hair turning red in superhero mode, as can be seen at the end of his origin issue. By his second appearance, he had switched over to the yellow-orange-red suit with silver-white hair in superhero mode (while retaining brown hair in his civilian mode, which intentionally or not made him look like the Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan), which in turn would be replaced by another red/blue/silver armed costume while retaining the white/silver hair.
  • Per Executive Meddling, Atom was intended to be one of DC's eminent fallen heroes, Big Bad Monarch. Unfortunately, the original storyline where this was intended got rewritten at the last minute. Subsequent attempts in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis and Countdown to Final Crisis were similarly muddled.
  • After realizing he didn't have the rights to the MLJ Comics Superheroes^note DC later bought the rights to said superheroes, which are part of DC's Impact Comics brand; however, said purchase was not made until 1991, after Watchmen had been published, Alan Moore intended to use the Charlton Comics characters in Watchmen, and Captain Atom would've taken the role Doctor Manhattan has in said comic. However, because DC planned on integrating the Charlton Comics characters into the main DC Universe following Crisis on Infinite Earths, his proposal was rejected.