“But I don’t have a pen and paper.”
Armageddon: The Alien Agenda #3
DC Comics (January, 1992)
“The West Years Of Our Lives” WRITER: Johnathan Peterson PENCILER: Alan Weiss INKER: Joe Rubinstein COLORIST: Tom McCraw LETTERER: Albert De Guzman ASSISTANT EDITOR: Kelley Puckett EDITOR: Denny O’Neil
Captain Atom finds himself in the old west. He is able to tap his powers to mostly protect him from the stampede he arrived in front of, but still gets knocked out. He’s found by some cowboys who get him some clothes (apparently when his power faded his Roman armor didn’t return) but one of the group decided it couldn’t be his and tried to sell it. Meanwhile, Monarch and the other soldiers awakened to a city at a growing war between military and religion over leaving the dome, and this Prime One is killed in the ensuing demonstration, his son deciding they only know how to kill so his would be the most violent of all. Not caring about that, Monarch and one of the other soldiers teleport to the Detonator, interrupting a barroom brawl and in the battle with Captain Atom Monarch ends up starting the great San Francisco earthquake, and unleashing an oil gusher, making more dispute between the Indians (or Native American to be modern) and cowboys over the land. As for Captain Atom, he teleports again when Monarch sets off the detonator again, this time finding himself outside a Nazi prison camp!
What they got right: Something I didn’t mention in the summary is that the writer fit in as many cameos from DC’s old Western stories as he could. Nat makes friends with Matt Savage and Johnny Thunder. He meets Jonah Hex, the Trigger Twins, Pow-Wow Smith and Flame Bird (no connection to the Kryptonian, I reckon), and Bull Honee, and I’m only guessing that all of them are classic Western characters since I’ve never really read National/DC’s Western comics.
What they got wrong: Which is also the problem. Most of the cameos are just there to be cameos but serve no purpose to the story. Matt saves Nat’s life and Johnny helps him prepare to go into town. Bull’s girlfriend, Darlene, tries to get Nat to buy her a drink before Bull shows up and immediately gets jealous even though Nat barely heard her or acknowledged her. This leads to the obligatory bar fight but unless you were a fan of the Western comics you’re not going to get much out of this fight.
Recommendation: That isn’t to say you’ll get nothing out of it, just not as much as a fan will, but the rest of the story is enough to make this a good issue, plus you still have the events in the alien city. Later today we’ll conclude this minseries but I’m still in favor of it right now.
BW Media Spotlight 
It sounds like a cool series. I like how history is integrated into the stories.
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