Atomic Knight
| Atomic Knight | |
|---|---|
Atomic Knight Gardner Grayle.
|
|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance |
Historical: Strange Adventures #117 (June 1960) Canon: DC Comics Presents #57 (May 1983) |
| Created by |
John Broome Murphy Anderson |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Gardner Grayle |
| Team affiliations | Atomic Knights Outsiders Forgotten Heroes Seven Soldiers of Victory |
| Notable aliases | Shining Knight |
| Abilities | Precognition, and a suit of armor granting enhanced strength, speed, endurance and blasts of energy, as well as being adaptable to other technology |
Atomic Knight is a DC Comics superhero and was briefly a member of the Outsiders team. He is sometimes depicted as one of a group of Atomic Knights, which first appeared in Strange Adventures #117 (June 1960) and ran quarterly in that monthly comic up through #160 (January 1964).
The Atomic Knights appeared in every third issue of Strange Adventures in the early 1960s, beginning with #117 (June 1960) and running through #160 (January 1964). In all there were 15 early-1960s Atomic Knights stories created by writer John Broome and artist Murphy Anderson; they were a band of heroes living in and protecting the post-apocalyptic future of 1992.
Following the catastrophic Hydrogen War of 1986, a petty tyrant named the Black Baron ruled a small section of the Midwestern United States with an iron fist. He was opposed by Sgt. Gardner Grayle and the Atomic Knights, who wore medieval suits of armor that were impervious to the Baron's energy weapons, the armor having been irradiated in the war. The other Knights were twins Wayne and Hollis Hobard, Bryndon Smith, the last scientist left on Earth, and brother and sister Douglas and Marene Herald.
The 15 Atomic Knights stories in Strange Adventures took place in 'real time' (three months usually passed between the events of each story as well as in the real world) and generally dealt with post-holocaust recovery, as the Knights would fend off menaces and attempt to rebuild the area around their homebase of Durvale, though they also managed to travel to Los Angeles, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, and Washington, D.C.
The Atomic Knights concept then lay dormant for more than a decade, until Cary Bates used the Knights as guest-stars in the mid-1970s series Hercules Unbound, beginning with #10 (April–May 1977). Hercules, Kamandi, and the Atomic Knights all inhabited the same comics universe, one in which the Great Disaster had taken place (references to 1986 became less and less frequent as that date actually approached). Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition had two Great Disaster realities: Earth-86 (where the Great Disaster was an atomic war) and Earth-295 (where the Great Disaster was natural). Since the Great Disaster on Earth-295 was natural that reality had no atomic knights.
...
Wikipedia