DCU Comic Book Reviews

THE ALL-NEW ATOM #12

Hunt For Ray Palmer, Part One:  Never Too Small...

August 2007

Written by Gail Simone

Pencils by Mike Norton

Inks by Dan Scott

Cover by Ladronn

Synopsis

Somewhere cosmically small in Ivy Town, Sylbert Rudine realizes he is slowly growing.  And when he gets back to his own size, he plans on killing Ryan Choi.  At the airport, Ryan Choi returns home from China.  He hails a taxi and finds the driver is the dude spouting anagrams at him.  Ryan tries to learn more, but gets nothing out of him and ends up crashing the taxi.  When he gets home, Ryan finds his friends from the school are throwing a party.  Ryan just wants to go home, but he is suddenly confronted by a number of Ray Palmer’s old foes.  After Ryan knocks them all out, he is once more confronted by the cab driver, who tells Ryan that he sent the villains after him.  The cab driver wanted to make sure Ryan could carry the legacy of the Atom and to help in the search for Ray Palmer.  He then introduces himself as Chronos.

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

“Newly lowered radiation levels mean it’s probably okay to reproduce again!”

After a lackluster story arc delving into Ryan’s past featuring a plot that seemed so unlike what Simone had set out to achieve, this issue brings back everything that I truly like about this comic.  There is the wonderful humor, the return of the head, the jabs at the book’s own internal continuity, and the craziness of just being in Ivy town.  There is an overriding sense of zaniness to the entire enterprise and I like that because you just don’t know where Simone is going to take this book. 

At first the appearance of the Atom’s villains took me aback because it seemed strange to introduce these guys without providing any kind of information on who they are.  I fully expected one of the characters to refer to the other by name, but it never happened.  Frankly, I think Simone made the right choice.  They were just a momentary test by Chronos so I don’t think there was any need to delve further into and if she had I think it would’ve interrupted the flow of the story. 

The only drawback to this issue is the little tourist guide inserts through the issue.  This is not because there were intrusive to the story or they were not funny or did not add anything to the story.  It is because Simone is doing a similar type of gambit in one of her other books (Tranquility) and there is a feeling like she is repeating herself rather than a feeling of uniqueness. 

Quotables

Dr. David Goodstein - physicist and educator at CalTech who lectures about the conduct and misconduct of science.

Brian Posehn - actor and comedian, noted for the Just Shoot Me and Mr. Show. 

Dr. James Kakalios - physics professor at the University of Minnesota and the author of the “Physics of Superheroes”.

Nikola Tesla - inventor who is considered to be America’s greatest electrical engineer.  

Comic Connection

David Clinton (aka Chronos) was the arch-nemesis of Ray Palmer (aka The Atom) and first appeared in The Atom, issue #3 (1962).  Chronos created weapons and traps based around the concept of time.

Walker Gabriel was the second Chronos who appeared in The Chronos series that ran for 12 issues in 1998 and 1999.  This Chronos actually had the ability to travel through time.  He was killed by Per Degaton in the pages of JSA. 

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