In 1975, The Six Million Dollar Man was one of the most popular shows on TV and his action figure was a top seller. Hasbro, whose GI JOE line was fading and needed a shot in the arm, came out with their own cyborg style dude, The Atomic Man! As you can see from the catalog photo above, he was a stylin’ dude who proudly showed off his freakish “atomic-powered” limbs with no shame whatsoever. But how did he get to be this way? Steve Austin was in a horrible rocket crash and was made into The Bionic Man, but as this comic book ad shows, The Atomic Man had a more interesting origin story.
Funny that a dude can just walk up into the mountains and join GI JOE’S ADVENTURE TEAMtm and find his “secret” outpost so easily. Of course, when it says “Outpost” right on the “secret” door, I suppose it isn’t too hard. If you’ll notice, Mike Power is already wearing a jacket with the Adventure Team logo on it, so that should be another advantage. Check out the last panel, it’s far more horrifying than it appears at first glance. He says, “I wouldn’t settle for the disabled limbs I was born with and spent my entire life creating fantastic new atomic parts for my body!!!” But all 3 scenes in his memory show that both of his arms appear to be working just fine. This sick fuck just amputated a good right arm all on his own. I’d love to see how he replaced the arm with his real one cut off. And thank god we don’t have to see how he gave himself an atomic eye!
I love how GI Joe just happens to have a machine that can measure your curling strength up to 10,000 pounds as if there was a need for that prior to The Atomic Man showing up. And how hilarious would it be to watch him run 200 MPH on a single atomic leg? I’m sure the muscles in his good leg would blow up instantly with that sort of abuse.
And what a riot that Joe’s computer testing says “ACCEPTED” after all of those tests, as if the other members of his crew were able to do such feats of strength before they were accepted. Of course, you didn’t hear much about Mike Power, The Atomic Man, after 1975. As a result of the large amounts of atomic power coursing through his body, he ended up dying from simultaneous brain, colon, prostate, and lung cancer the next year.