Profile: Mary James-Pratt

Mary James-Pratt
First appearance: All-American Comics #19, October 1940
Creators: Bill O'Connor, Ben Flinton

History: Mary James was the girlfriend/wife of the Golden Age Atom Al Pratt, and the godmother of Nuklon/Al Rothstein of Infinity Inc. She'd eventually been told who the Atom was and married him, though in later years, it was established they'd been estranged/divorced, not unlike the Silver Age Atom and Jean Loring, another couple who'd been wronged by successive editorial boards.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: around the time of the 1994 Zero Hour crossover, it was written that she was kidnapped by Vandal Savage while pregnant, and her unborn child (Grant Emerson) was altered in the womb and then, when Mary bore him, the son was taken away and she was murdered circa the publication of Damage #12 in 1995.

What's wrong with how this was done? There seem to have been quite a few very badly arranged "replacement setups" for established characters, Al Pratt being one of them, during Zero Hour, and Mary was just one of the biggest victims at the time, of a shoddy cliche that was particularly disastrous for the DCU. What can I say? Even Damage's premise was alarmingly poor, and 3 decades later, it's clear nobody was interested in his series or later appearances in JSA, because of how badly the setup for his "ascension" as an heir to the Golden Age Atom was handled.

Mary James did not need to be turned into a sacrifical lamb any more than any other veteran character in the DCU, civilian or otherwise.