{"id":4222,"date":"2009-11-14T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2009-11-14T06:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=4222"},"modified":"2009-11-11T20:15:45","modified_gmt":"2009-11-11T20:15:45","slug":"the-all-new-atom-my-life-in-miniature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2009\/11\/14\/the-all-new-atom-my-life-in-miniature\/","title":{"rendered":"The All-New Atom: My Life in Miniature"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nBy Gail Simone<\/strong>, John Byrne, Eddy Barrows <\/strong>& Trevor Scott<\/strong> (DC Comics)
\nISBN: 978-1-4012-1325-1<\/p>\n

Gail Simone is probably the best writer of straight superhero stories currently working in the business. Big concepts might garner out-industry publicity but I’ll take solid plotting, believable characterization, bravura whimsy and the sharpest, funniest dialogue money can buy any day.<\/p>\n

Here she takes a crack at the freshest incarnation of one of my very favourite super-doers and makes me love it. In the post Identity Crisis<\/a>\/Infinite Crisis<\/a><\/strong> DC universe, the size-changing physics Professor Ray Palmer had deliberately disappeared, leaving his world behind him. But life goes on, and his teaching chair at Ivy University is offered to young Ryan Choi, a prodigy from Hong Kong who just happens to be a pen-friend and confidante of Palmer’s: privy to his predecessor’s secrets ever since he was a little boy.<\/p>\n

Ivy Town is not the sedate place Palmer made it sound however, as this collection (reprinting the first six issues of The All-New Atom<\/strong> and the teaser prequel from the one-shot Brave New World<\/strong>) clearly displays. The city is plagued by temporal anomalies, the new Dean is an unctuous toad, and his fellow professors are a bizarre band of brilliant loons. There’s also a weird cab-driver turning up, leaving the new kid crazy palindromic clues\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 but to what?<\/p>\n

‘Indivisible’<\/em> and ‘Atomic Shell’<\/em> barrel right along setting up the new premise, which of course leads to young Ryan discovering hidden size and weight equipment and learning the rules of sub-atomic transmigration as well as discovering the strangest race of alien invaders I’ve ever seen, lurking in the very last place you’d ever look for them (Really. The absolute and utter last place) whilst ‘Binding Energies’<\/em> introduces some impressive sub-plots including a secret war between science and magic in Ivy town, an immortal cancer god, a personal arch enemy and a fifty foot tall naked chick rampaging through campus and city.<\/p>\n

These gems were all illustrated by venerable veteran John Byrne, but Eddy Barrows takes over for ‘Aggressive Ideologies’<\/em> as all those plotlines coalesce and the new Atom is forced to escape from the grossest death-trap ever, in the funniest manner permitted by (borderline) good taste\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

‘Redline Shift’<\/em> sees the young hero’s career almost ended by a parental curfew, whilst the time-bent ‘Handle of the Teacup’<\/em> (from Brave New World<\/strong>, with art by Byrne) neatly slots in here with the belated and action-packed introduction of those invading aliens I mentioned before. This first book ends with ‘Charged Particles’<\/em> as Ivy town becomes ground zero for the science\/magic war, and the psychotic serial killer Dwarfstar goes on killing spree.<\/p>\n

Suddenly the hero-game isn’t all fun anymore and, more importantly, the brilliant young man realises something isn’t right with Palmer’s size-changing gear and indeed the entire set-up of his new career\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

And thus begins the superb run of a new \u00e2\u20ac\u0153legacy hero\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (comicbook-ese for a new guy using an established name) that’s funny, charming stirring and incredibly addictive: moreover this is a completely planned book, there are clues and hints here that will only make sense when the final book is completed – and the creative team even have the nerve and confidence to treat the entire venture as a fair-play mystery.<\/p>\n

Stick with the All-New Atom<\/strong>, match wits with the writers and have a huge amount of fun along the way\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gail Simone, John Byrne, Eddy Barrows & Trevor Scott (DC Comics) ISBN: 978-1-4012-1325-1 Gail Simone is probably the best writer of straight superhero stories currently working in the business. Big concepts might garner out-industry publicity but I’ll take solid plotting, believable characterization, bravura whimsy and the sharpest, funniest dialogue money can buy any day. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The All-New Atom: My Life in Miniature”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc-superhero"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-166","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}