Article originally written by Jordan Jennings
If you are reading Blackest Night you may have taken notice of a certain miniature hero jumping through phone lines and wearing purple. His name is Ray Palmer, The Atom. The Atom got his start way back in the Silver Age when Ray, a physicist, discovered a fractured piece of a white dwarf star. He makes the great leap in thought and figures that the star chunk can cause him to shrink and grow. I am not going to go on about how screwed up this idea is, scientifically speaking. Let’s just say the idea is perfectly sound in a world where people fly in space with multiple colors of lights and a math equation can control lives
Of all of the Silver Age heroes, Ray Palmer has gotten the raw end of the deal. Well, Elongated man got it bad as well, if not worse. The two characters’ fates are somewhat interconnected actually. During the adventures as the “Atom” Ray’s wife, Jean, would grow bored while her husband was away and slowly drifted into an affair. Ray wasn’t going stand for that and divorced his wife. Well a few years later, about 15 or so in real-time, Jean wanted Ray back in her life. So using Ray’s size-changing belt, Jean would jump the phone lines and land in Sue Dibny’s brain, inadvertently killing her. This sets Elongated man down a road of depression, but that is a story for another Character Spotlight. For this spotlight, after learning that Jean was behind the death of a friend, Ray would shrink down to the nanoverse and never be seen again till Countdown to Final Crisis when we learn that Ray was jumping universes looking for a perfect world. He would find it on Earth-51. After a lab accident kills Earth-51 Ray Palmer, Earth-1 Ray Palmer takes his place (Got that?). Ray would be ultimately found by the Challengers From Beyond. This would ignite a powder keg of issues and in the end bring Ray Palmer back to Earth-1. Ray is now a major player in Blackest Night and a 24 hour member of the Indigo Tribe.
The reason I enjoy this character so much is that he is a scientist. I am a sucker for scientists. Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, and obviously Ray Palmer. Oddly enough DC, the company that started the whole Silver Age Sci-fi type stories, has less Super-scientists than one would expect and they tend to not treat them well. The Atom just makes you feel bad for him and the crap he’s been put through. If I had to name a B list character that is most deserving of a backup feature (or even a miniseries) that would be the Atom. I suggest everyone check out Ray’s past adventures. You can find his stories collected in multiple trades-
DC’s Showcase Presents The Atom vol. 1
DC’s Showcase Presents The Atom vol. 2
Sword of the Atom
Not much, but the guy was more of a team player anyways. These three books collect almost all of his ongoing appearances and Sword of the Atom is often considered one of the best stories from the 80’s. I hope I’ve shed some light on a character who is growing in more popularity with each issue of Blackest Night and hopefully will earn a back up feature in Justice League of America, Flash, or maybe, just maybe, be a plot-line with Brightest Day.
PS- Please for the love of Odin , do not read Countdown to Final Crisis. It will kill your will to live. Countdown to Final Crisis is the Anti-life equation.
