Today, a different Captain punching Nazis.

And lions, and cowboys, and aliens, oh my! From 1991-92, Armageddon: the Alien Agenda #2-4, written by Jonathan Peterson, pencils by Mike Netzer, Alan Weiss, and Dick Giordano; inks by Joe Rubinstein and Steve Mitchell.

I re-read the first issue of this mini-series last year, but I thought there was another Captain Atom-led mini-series between this one and Armageddon: Inferno. Nope! It's all piled up here. Nathaniel Adam ends up in Nero's Rome, then DC's wild west, then World War II; thrown forward from prehistoric times by the energy released from the detonator aliens intended to use to collapse earth (and the rest of the solar system) into a wormhole. His powers keep kicking on and off as well, just to keep it from being too easy. Meanwhile, stupid lunkhead dope Monarch works with the aliens, who promise to send him to his correct time if he gets the detonator for them; but that's a lie: travelling back in time would kill him, then the aliens would destroy earth in prehistoric times, so he'd never be born, either! Which either makes the aliens' plan hinge on causing a paradox, or Monarch double-stupid.

While the aliens are able to put Monarch and a few others in suspended animation, to chase down Atom in the 'future,' the rest of them live out their lives, hidden behind a force field that both protects and separates them from the outside world. By the mid-twentieth century, their society seems to have gone a bit mad; partially because they hadn't realized if Monarch was going to have ever succeeded, they would never have existed there. After smashing a concentration camp, Captain Atom catches up with Monarch at a secret Pacific atomic bomb test. In the ensuing scuffle the detonator is shattered, the a-bomb causes a massive tidal wave that swamps the observer ships, and the Captain is thrown forward to the present, 1991! Monarch disappears in the timestream, the aliens are still plotting against Captain Atom, and a caption box promises a new title for him...that didn't seem to happen, but he would go on with the Justice League, Extreme Justice, and L.A.W. Kind of a downward spiral there...

Years later, there would be another miniseries, Captain Atom: Armageddon, where he was sent to the Wildstorm universe for a bit. I haven't read it, but it did set up my favorite post from the old blog Random Panels.