Atlas: The Destructor

Story: "The Destructor" in The Destructor #1 (February 1975)
Creative team: Archie Goodwin, Steve Ditko and Wally Wood
Altas' analog for: Spider-Man, kind of, but cut from the same cloth as the Punisher (who premiered a year before as a Spidey antagonist), but also, Batman

In my notes, I kept calling him the Destroyer, which is not a good sign... But given that the previous Atlas Comics I reviewed were fantasy and pulp books, I wanted to take a gander at one of their strict superhero books. The Destructor "bursts from the city darkness, a figure grim and mysterious, moving with the speed, the instinct of a wild animal stalking its prey. The roar of gunfire, the shrill whine of bullets, do not stop him, for he is a man with a mission, a vigilante, an avenger vowed to turn all his strange powers to smashing, destroying the beasts and predators of the human jungle that is organized crime."

Within that description, we're promised powers, possibly of an animalistic nature, and a dark vigilante of the night... Except Ditko renders him as a bright, red and blue spandex acrobat. We're on shaky ground. The opening is at least gritty. Mob guys are torturing one of their own who they suspect of being a traitor. Enter Jay Hunter, a kid who acts as runner for the organization and he's seen a little too much, perhaps. You realize this is an origin story when Jay goes home to see his mad scientist dad who is ready to move to human trials on a serum that could "give man the full freedom of his senses". Are you sure it's not just Ecstasy?

On the cusp of curing blindness, deafness, etc., the REAL dream is apparently turning his son into a superhero. Well, you can't become a superhero without tragedy, so the mob guys decide to barge in to off the kid (and his dad), with just enough time to pump Jay with ketchup--I mean, serum, before the lights go out.

When emergency services get there, they're both dead, but riddled with bullets or not, Jay wakes up! While he recuperates, the mob kills Blitz in case Jay can finger him, but also make plans to bump the kid off. Jay knows what's what and of course, his dad left "something" for him in the lab closet, so he has plans of his own. And he IS alone, since his criminal activities have cut him off from kids his age. In sneaking back into his dad's lab, he realizes his physical attributes have been enhanced and then finds a costume in the closet. He didn't get to pick his colors, but he got to choose his code name!

Jay starts to dismantle Raven's operation and burns a hide-out/warehouse down before putting in a call to the big man - as himself - and claiming credit for it. Raven assumes the Destructor and Jay aren't the same person, merely working together. And since Raven goes underground until Jay is found and kill, Jay decides to hole up in Raven's own luxury apartment. Cocky! More and more of Raven's operations fall to the Destructor over the next few days, always followed by a taunting phone call. Other criminal families are moving in, smelling blood in the water. Desperate, Raven calls for a super hitman: Slaymaster! (Oof, rough name. Well... Destructor ain't great either.) Raven sets up a meet with our hero - an ambush! At Giant Novelty Co.? With big clown faces from which Slaymaster can shoot at the Destructor? This really is meant to be Atlas' Batman!

You know, they keep saying the serum was principally about boosting one's senses, but I've yet to see anything like Daredevil's power package, or even a Spider Sense. The Destructor manages to dodge, but bullets still scratch past him and draw blood. It's dark in the warehouse, and Slaymaster is using a voice distorter that makes it impossible for anyone to zero in on his voice, so finally, Jay has to figure out those super-senses. And finally, he's started dodging bullets based on his super-instinct.

Destructor eventually overcomes Slaymaster who is shot in the gut by his own gun in the struggle. He reaches Raven and is about to take his revenge and unmask when he hears people rushing in. Raven's own men took a deal from a rival family and they shoot Raven as Jay ducks out of the room. He still gets his licks in after he trounces the assassins.

And the story ends on a Spider-Man/Batman story beat, with a visit to a graveyard.

So final analysis... This was better than I expected. But in a market saturated with superheroes, even the twists on familiar formulas aren't enough to make the Destructor a star. He's got a terrible name, and a costume that doesn't fit the world he operates in. As of the third issue, they make the blue acceptably darker, but visually, he never comes off as anything other than generic. One of Ditko's most boring designs. And just looking at the covers for subsequent issues, there seems to be an emphasis on super-powered villains that undermines the mob connection. And so...

So how long did the series last? 4 issues
How did it end? The last issue is inked by Al Migrom (still ALLEN Milgrom) and like all the Atlas books, it announces a next issue ("The Man with the Golden Bomb!", which failed to materialize. So they seemed to be invested in this one, and it was only cancelled because the company self-(heh)destructed.