“Childhood is over, John; you can’t hide behind its weak fences anymore. You’re the Subatomic Kid now, and you should start acting like him.”

John Smith is thirteen years old. He has never hurtled through the space between worlds in a cloud of atomic particles. Never transformed himself into a bowling ball or befriended the ever-changing masters of another world, never gotten into anyone’s head and tipped them into craziness, or even given thought to the fact that he could become someone he’s not. All John has ever known is schoolwork, mediocrity, and bullies that won’t leave him alone, getting him so rattled he can’t find enough courage to talk to the girl he has a crush on.

One afternoon at school, he exits the bathroom to find he’s inside a gleaming stainless steel space ship. He begins running through a maze of corridors, and upon reaching a dark round porthole up on the wall, he dives into the emptiness and is blown into another dimension: a transformational moment that changes his life forever.

Waking up on the school roof later, he wants to forget anything happened at all; he is then kidnapped by a granite-jawed goon, thrown together in a white room with the two bullies and the girl he’s nuts about, and he has to find an escape. The four kids bond using humor for strength and song for sustenance, when suddenly his new talent for change does kick, the adventure ramps up, and fate challenges him to become the superhero he really is.