Gardner Fox Goodies: The Atom #19

Hepcat Hermits dig Zatanna. She's a brunette and she wears fishnets in her civilian and superhero identities. This story is about the the Atom's first meeting with Zee and is illustrated by Gil Kane. If you like Gil in his more basic sixties style as opposed to the the more choppy style of later, this one's for you.

The thing I find particularly cool about this story is that Fox was clearly mixing together a love of fantasy with a love of science fiction by teaming a science based superhero with a magic based one. Zatanna recruits the Atom's help in trying to find her father. (This was an ongoing storyline of several sixties DC Titles, now compiled in Zatanna's Search, which contains this story.)
Together they go to a world inside a single atom of a book of magic Zee has. That's so rad! They find a dangerous cat by the name of the Druid, who sics all sorts of nasties on them and drains Zee's magic. What's interesting to me is that with her magic drained, Zatanna's top hat falls off. This backs up my theory that Zee keeps it on during battle using magic. Her spells are spoken backwards, so likely she says, "Tah yats no!" It's important to bring this up as there is an unfortunate tendency lately to have Zee just walking around without her hat. Booooo!

Well, the Atom ends up figuring out a solution that involves no magic. He's a pretty crafty little guy. Also significant about this story is that the Atom has adapted his size changing device to be controlled by his fingers putting pressure on his palms. Sound familiar? Yes, clearly Ray Palmer had been reading some Spidey tales. No sooner does he make the change than he finds himself in a situation where his old controls on his belt would have spelled certain doom.

Every shot is extraordinarily well executed. It's a Silver Age beauty, and Kane's surreal subatomic trip is comparable with Ditko visuals. I was enchanted.