DCU Comic Book Reviews

THE ALL-NEW ATOM #6

My Life In Miniature:  Part Six.  Charge Particles

February 2007

Written by Gail Simone

Pencils by Eddy Barrows

Inks by Trevor Scott

Cover by Ariel Olivetti

Synopsis

A war between the forces of chaos and reason has descended upon Ivy Town.  Stuck in the middle is Ryan Choi (aka The Atom).  However, Rudine Sylbert (aka Dwarfstar) has picked his side and is an agent of chaos.  On the streets of Ivy Town, Rudine finds Ryan and stabs him in the shoulder.  Unable to fight back, Ryan flees.  He then concocts a plan to end the war, but before he can put it into motion, Rudine once more finds Ryan.  Using his size-changing belt, Ryan shrinks down.  Rudine uses his own belt to do the same.  Then, Ryan grows back to normal size, taking Rudine’s belt with him.  Once back to normal, Ryan threatens the aliens and the war ends.  The next day, Ryan goes back to teaching class, but has trouble getting his students to listen.  A stern lecture from Ryan’s father to the students changes that.  Later, Ryan sees his father to airport when he gets a garbled message from the cabbie.  When he unscrambles the message, Ryan learns the belt did not previously belong to Ray Palmer.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

“Kick their war-mongering asses, boy!”

The final conclusion to the so-called war was a bit of a letdown.  Simone and Barrows provided a lot of cool scenes with various villains battling other villains with similar powers and managed to eschew the chance to go “widescreen” with an epic battle.  Instead they focus on Ryan and keep things very intimate.  Unfortunately, Ryan is also the one who must stop the war and in the end all it took was for Ryan to threaten the aliens in his dog.  Based on the threat, the aliens give up, which means of course the side of magic give up as well.  Imagine if Hitler gave up when the United States threatened to kick his ass.  You see how that would have been a letdown.  Granted, it was nice the solution tied into an moment in an earlier issue, but it still got the, “is that all there is to it?” grunt after I finished reading. 

However, pushing the above criticisms aside, there were a lot of good stuff in this issue, including the battle between Rudine and Ryan.  It was handled well, with Rudine winning the physical fight, but Ryan succeeding with the use of his brains.  Plus, Rudine was not killed so he can come back later (which I hope is soon; the poem gimmick is a killer.  Sorry about the bad joke).  The ending with Ryan and his father was also well done and manages to conclude that particular subplot.  I am uncertain why Ryan had visions of his mother; thematically it might’ve worked better if it had been his father. 

Quotables

Mercedes Lackey - an American writer of fantasy novels