Captain Atom #8

The word "de-evolved" gets this song stuck in my head. Also, awesome video.

Future Captain Atom drags Present Captain Atom (or Past Captain Atom?!) outside of time so they can talk. Or fight.

Or maybe he's dragged into time! Mind blown!

And then I turn the page....

If I were schizophrenic, I would believe the comic book and I were having a discussion.

Captain Atom has been pulled into the time stream to see how events ripple across time. He sees how small events with small waves can eventually lead to big events that cause massive waves which affect many things throughout the time stream. Future Captain Atom knows that the event that led to the destruction of Earth happened sometime around Present Captain Atom's current time. But he's not sure what the event was because the giant wave of Earth's destruction blocks out the smaller waves preceding it.

That's the moment, the tiny wave, where J.T. Krul's analogy falls apart. Because now he's saying that events in the time stream can't be viewed from any direction? They can't watch a small wave gather up and turn into a big wave? Dumb. But even dumber, the Time Stream is chock full of Captain Atoms!

But still just one Captain Atom! Mind blown?

The Future Captain Atom's want to stop Earth from being destroyed. But they can't change the past because it would destroy themselves in the process. But they've contacted Present Captain Atom because he can stop Earth from being destroyed!

Same thing, dillhole.

See? This is what I was talking about last issue. The problem with people viewing time in two distinct ways. Believing that a person can change the future. That's an illusion because the future is just tomorrow's past. Once it's come to fruition, that's it. Forget about changing it. Unless you want to deal with multiple time lines as in the movie Primer. But if that's the case, then it doesn't matter what Captain Atom does anyway. Because, in theory, a timeline exists for every action and choice that Captain Atom makes. So the Earth will always be destroyed in some timelines and it will never be destroyed in others.

But these Captain Atoms make a point of telling Present Captain Atom that they are all from one universe, one timeline. No parallel dimensions here. Which means they're changing their past by telling a Past Captain Atom to change his future.

Like I said. This can only end in stupidity.

The Future Captain Atom's send Past Captain Atom to the day before the end of the world so that he can stop the world from ending. Is that going to work? Are the Future Captain Atom's saying that the big wave that caused Earth's destruction began the day before? No. Captain Atom probably isn't here to stop the destruction of the Earth the day before it happens. He's probably here to learn how the Earth is destroyed so that it will give him a clue as to the moment in his time that set the Earth on this path. So he checks on the people from his past to see how they're doing.

Nope, Scott Scott Alexander Scott isn't causing trouble.

General Eiling seems to have calmed down twenty years in the future as well. So Captain Atom doesn't believe he's a problem. Next he visits the Continuum and Dr. Megala.

Well, he's become a Super Villain but he's not going to end the world.

Captain Atom asks Dr. Megala where Ranita is. And while Captain Atom doesn't find her in this issue, the reader gets to see what's become of her.

Uh oh. I think we've found the problem!

I guess that means Captain Atom is going to have to return to the present and take Ranita's hand back. That might not go over so well with the whole trying to make her fall in love with him plan.

Captain Atom Issue #8 Rating: No change in the ranks. Again, the comic was told much better than many of the initial comics. But I will never allow a comic to move up the rankings for telling stupid out of time future possibility stories. Any plot based on the character deriving his motivation from a future event and acting on that knowledge to deal with the present is bullshit. It's crib sheets for writing a story. Much easier to come up with a story if you have a problem at hand (pun!) and you can make the protagonist react to that problem. But it's just dumb when you choose to make the conflict a problem from the future.