Who's the Golden Age Atom?

Who's This? A diminutive hero.

The facts: Al Pratt was the proverbial 98-pound weakling, measuring only 5'1", until he met boxer Joe Morgan who trained him up to a muscled 150 pounds (no change in height though). Eschewing a career as a prizefighter, Al instead went into the mystery man business and even became a charter member of the Justice Society of America. His adventures officially began in All-American Comics #19 (Oct. 1940), a book he would continue to appear in until issue 72, then moving to Flash Comics from #80 to #104, in addition to his JSA work from All-Star Comics #3 to #57 (in 1951). Later in life, he gained atomic strength, took part in Earth-1/2 team-ups, and spawned a legacy in his godson Nuklon (later, Atom-Smasher), a member of Infinity Inc., and in his son Damage. And even returned to active duty when the JSA did.
How you could have heard of him: The New52 reimagined Earth-2 as a world scurged by Apokolips, and Al Pratt is an army sergeant who delivers an atomic bomb to one of Steppenwolf's towers and somehow survives the blast to become a character closer to Atom-Smasher, with the power to become an atomic-powered giant or shrink down to doll size.
Example story: All-American Comics #33 (December 1941) "The Miracle Solvent" by Bill O'Connor, Ben Flinton and Leornard Sansone

With all due respect to Ben Flinton, he was one of the more primitive artists working at National and his Atom strips are only marginally more attractive than Hibbard's Flash. There's just something weird about the way Al Pratt's cape looks like bunched-up drapes, I dunno. Still, there are some good moments here and there. But how does a typical 6-page story stand up? In "The Miracle Solvent", the "Cootie Gang" (I kid you not) sets its sights on "a stuff that dissolved metals" and mean to steal it from its inventor. Safe-cracking made easy! And it's being kept at Calvin College where Al Pratt is tutoring one of the two women that make up his love triangle. The lesson is rudely interrupted not once, but twice:

Al gets pistol-whipped into unconsciousness for his trouble and the girls show the crooks where the solution is hidden. They put some of it in a plastic water pistol to test it out and convinced, they leave with the girls as hostages. Al comes to just in time to get a sense of what's going on and changes into his Atom duds, going off after them on a "borrowed" campus police motorcycle.

That's ONE way to call 9-1-1! Noreen and Mary give the Atom away by catching sight of him nearing the escape car, and the crooks shoot the metal solvent at him. Only a few drops and...

Now this is good moment. The Atom makes a purse out of a rubber tire and makes the crooks almost crash into a telephone pole. The driver puts the breaks on just in time, but that means the Atom can reach the car on foot. One punch, two punches, three, and all that's left to do is wait for the cops. They ask hard questions about the missing motorcycle, but Al demonstrates:

With the reward on these guys, Sam the Campus Cop can buy two motorcycles and ten badges (is the college really going to make him pay for it? probably, yes), and as for the solvent, it was the inventor's dream to end war by spraying tanks and guns with it from above. And that's why there was never a World War II. Cough.

At 6 pages, Atom strips were pretty slim. Set-up, action, punch (literally), and a bit of a laugh at the end. Not too thrilling, and the art is mostly just serviceable. But damn it, I've always like Al Pratt, whether in the All-Star Squadron, or as an older gent in Parobeck's JSA... He's a great underdog and going by this one, his stories had some charm. I am not dissuaded from my fandom.

Who's Next? An even more diminutive hero.