Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part XIV: The All New Atom: The Hunt For Ray Palmer!

Comic trade paperback, 126 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007)
Borrowed from the library
Read April 2017

The All New Atom: The Hunt For Ray Palmer!

Writer: Gail Simone

Penciller: Mike Norton
Inkers: Dan Green, Trevor Scott
Letterers: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham, John J. Hill
Colorist: Alex Bleyaert
Bonus story writer: Roger Stern

This volume isn't great, but it's finally beginning to feel like Gail Simone and her artistic collaborators are getting a hold on the premise and character of The All New Atom. In this volume, Ryan Choi is recruited to find his predecessor, first by one of Ray Palmer's enemies, and then by the Challengers from Beyond from Countdown to Final Crisis. The inventive, fanciful ideas are in full force, as Ryan encounters a race of tiny aliens, half of whom consider the Atom a god and half a demon, then travels into a simulation of the afterlife where he meets the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, then helps prevent a giant monster attack on Ivy Town, then stops an evil alien using 1960s music to control the town.

But I can't help feeling that though this book has good jokes (the Ray Palmer impersonator in the tiny village is great), it's completely unfocused and not in a good way. Like, the whole fake afterlife thing is largely tossed off and irrelevant, even if it does give us Ryan kicking a jetpack-wearing Hitler in the face:

Related to this: Ryan declares that reality itself has jumped the shark.
from The All New Atom #14 (script by Gail Simone, art by Mike Norton & Trevor Scott)

I mean, one issue ends with the Challengers finding a message written in blood from Ray Palmer:

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part X: The All New Atom: Future/Past

Comic trade paperback, 127 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2007)
Borrowed from the library
Read March 2017

The All New Atom: Future/Past

Writer: Gail Simone

Pencils: Mike Norton, Eddy Barrows
Inks: Andy Owens, Trevor Scott
Letters: Pat Brosseau, Travis Lanham
Colors: Alex Bleyaert

Like the previous volume, Future/Past doesn't deliver on the potential that I see in the "all new" Atom, Ryan Choi. What makes him interesting is his academic background (okay, maybe as a college instructor I'm a little biased there) and the setting of Ivy Town, a place where so much mad science has been practiced that "normal" is a meaningless term. And I liked the cast of characters Gail Simone and John Byrne set up in volume one, Ryan's eccentric fellow professors who all play poker together.

This guy's research credentials had better be amazing, given how awful a teacher he is. Here I am slaving away in adjunct-land, and this awful guy has a tenure-track position at an Ivy!
from The All New Atom #7 (art by Mike Norton & Andy Owens)

The first story collected here, "The Man Who Swallowed Eternity," promises time-travel shenanigans, but is really depressingly straightforward. Ryan is told by a Linear Man* to turn in a guy if he asks Ryan for help, the guy appears and Ryan doesn't turn him in, the Linear Man comes back and Ryan persuades him to not kill the guy anyway. That's it, but somehow it takes two issues to play out. The fact that the Linear Man sends cowboys after Ryan, or that Ryan and the fugitive end up in a dystopian future Ivy Town, are just irrelevant side-shows. Neat ideas in this story, but nothing neat is done with them.

That said, Mike Norton does good, slick, action-filled artwork. Wish he was the primary artist for the series...
from The All New Atom #7 (art by Mike Norton & Andy Owens)

The second story, "Jia," feels like a misstep for the book at this stage: a girl Ryan loved from afar asks him to come back to Hong Kong to help deal with an abusive husband, who used to bully Ryan... only she neglected to mention that the husband is already dead but still angry! Ryan's bullied-nerd background is dull and stereotypical, and Jia's portrayal as a woman being fought over by two men is pretty surprising coming from the writer who coined the term "Women in Refrigerators," especially given the last twist in the story. The three-issue detour back to Hong Kong is mistimed for a book that's barely done much with its actual setting thus far. Let's see more of Ivy Town! Most of the book's recurring cast doesn't even appear in this volume, unfortunately. Establish your world, then take a break from it.

...as opposed to Eddy Barrows, who is terrible at drawing Asian faces. (Or maybe just faces.)
from The All New Atom #10 (art by Eddy Barrows & Trevor Scott)

So far The All New Atom isn't really delivering on its potential. Hopefully this happens in the third volume... because we're running out of volumes, as it only lasted four!

Next Week: Blue Beetle has to Reach for the Stars!

* Since when are the Linear Men murderous jerks, anyway?

Faster than a DC Bullet: All-New All-Different DC, Part VI: The All New Atom: My Life in Miniature

Comic trade paperback, 160 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2006-07)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2017

The All New Atom: My Life in Miniature

Writer: Gail Simone

Pencils: John Byrne, Eddy Barrows
Inks: Trevor Scott
Letters: Travis Lanham
Colors: Alex Bleyaert

At the end of Identity Crisis, Atom Ray Palmer vanished-- and given what had happened to him, it's hard to complain. The All New Atom follows the adventures of Ryan Choi, a young Ph.D. from Hong Kong who takes Palmer's place at Ivy University, Ivy Town, as a professor of nuclear physics. Choi was a correspondent of the Atom from a young age, and of course doesn't just take Palmer's place in the laboratory/classroom, but soon finds himself stepping into the role of the Atom.

The basic premise of this book is excellent. As an academic, I like that the book is not only set in a college town, but uses that-- Choi's best friend is another professor, and Choi is supported technologically by a group of professors who get together to play poker and complain about things. The Dean is a key character in the book. (That said, apparently the Dean of this university hires professors without campus visits!) I especially like the idea that years of wacky happenings have totally rewritten the laws of physics within Ivy Town:

It seems like someone should be doing more about the witch-burnings than they are.
from The All New Atom #4 (art by Eddy Barrows & Trevor Scott)

Also there are some good academic jokes:

This is like when my union local asked me to sign a petition supporting more STEM funding. I was like, "Where I'm standing from it seems like STEM has more than enough funding. How about some Humanties love?" I didn't try to murder anyone over it, though. Also I don't think the composition of reality was at stake.
from The All New Atom #6 (art by Eddy Barrows & Trevor Scott)

Plus John Byrne pencils most of the book, and you can almost never beat Byrne on a superhero book. Clear storytelling, good facial expressions, bold action:

Surely a car would be a faster way to travel?
Well, maybe not given the roads in some college towns.
from The All New Atom #2 (art by John Byrne & Trevor Scott)

I also liked Simone's device of placing quotations (mostly from scientists, real and fictional) juxtaposed with the dialogue, a nice comics-dependent device.

Unfortunately, the book's actually story remained too muddled for me to get into it. What exactly was at stake in the weird war between cancer and tiny people? What did the Dean and a serial killer have to do with it all? Why was there all of a sudden a threat to the President that was resolved just as quickly? Why would the Dean call in the father of a professor he's worried about-- and how on Earth could the father of a professor make him go home? I just never really got the relationships between a lot of what was going on throughout most of the book, making for a confusing and disappointing reading experience. Hopefully future volumes deliver on the strong premise of this series.

Next Week: Manhunter is back, and ready to be Unleashed!