Ray Palmer

39 years ago - Ray Palmer is born in Rhode Island.

21 years ago - 18-year-old Ray is accepted into the prestigious Ivy University in Ivy Town, Connecticut.

18 years ago - 21-year-old Ray Palmer earns his bachelor's degree in physics, and begins studying particle physics as a grad student.

16 years ago - 23-year-old Ray Palmer earns his masters degree in particle physics. He becomes an adjunct professor at Ivy University while beginning his doctoral research.

13 years ago - 26-year-old Ray Palmer earns his doctorate in particle physics. He first meets Jean Loring, an assistant to the DA, and they start dating.

12 years ago - 27-year-old Ray Palmer observes a meteor shower, and arrives at the crater of a small meteor, which he takes to his labs at Ivy University. Discovering that the meteor contains mysterious White Dwarf Star Matter, and attempts to use it to create shrinking technology, but is unsuccessful. When he is trapped in a cave-in during a student expedition, he uses the technology on himself, and successfully shrinks himself to save everyone. He designs his size-changing belt and begins to use it to explore incredibly tiny space, but also manages to save several people around Ivy Town. He is soon asked to join the Justice League, where he takes the name of the Justice Society hero the Atom.

11 years ago - 28-year-old Ray Palmer’s girlfriend Jean Loring deduces that he is the Atom.

9 years ago - 30-year-old Ray takes on a brilliant teenage lab assistant, Karen Beecher. He is present when the Justice League votes on what to do with Arthur Light after he attacks Sue Dibny on the satellite, and votes to alter Light's mind.

8 years ago - 31-year-old Ray's White Dwarf Star Matter inexplicably erupts in his labs, activates Karen Beecher's metagene. She creates her own equipment to become the hero Bumblebee, leaving his labs. Ray joins the newly formed earth-based Justice League.

7 years ago - 32-year-old Ray marries Jean Loring. He chooses to focus on his research career and leaves the Justice League.

6 years ago - 33-year-old Ray is contacted by a physics researcher from Hong Kong, Ryan Choi, who has several theories on his White Dwarf Star Matter based on Ray’s published work. He corresponds with Ryan and helps him set up his research parameters.

5 years ago - 34-year-old Ray takes an appointment to run his own Star Labs facility on the Ivy University campus. He becomes the science adviser to Roy Harper's Titans.

4 years ago - 35-year-old Ray and Jean Loring are divorced. His Star Labs facility takes possession of Eclipso's Heart of Darkness.

2 years ago - 37-year-old Ray Palmer’s wife Jean Loring falls under the influence of Eclipso's Heart of Darkness and attacks Sue Dibny. She is found and saved by the Justice League and Shadowpact. Ray reads Ryan Choi's research paper, Energy Harmonics in White Dwarf Star Matter Radiation, and invites him to Ivy University. They work together, and Ryan proves that the matter works for Ray because it matches the energy harmonics of his own electromagnetic field. Ray helps Ryan alter the harmonic to himself, allowing him to use all his new theories as the new Atom.

While on the surface, the idea of a superhero whose sole power is the ability to make himself tiny seems pretty lame. It's only when you start to see the concept applied to broad science fiction principles that it gets fascinating; watching Atom ride on an electron or shuffle between realities by shrinking through the spaces of causality is immediately fascinating. The fact that Ray is a scientist first gives him a very specific role in the DC Universe, but his ability to find himself in mysterious new realms thanks to his constant exploration of the depths of sub-atomic reality makes him one of their consummate adventurers.

Ray Palmer's Comic History

Atom is another creation Gardner Fox, debuting in issue #34 of Showcase in 1961. Like other new Silver Age heroes like the Flash or Green Lantern, he's a reimagining of a Golden Age hero. The difference here is that the original hero had no powers at all, he was literally just a short guy. That was his whole deal. Given that as a jumping-off point, The innovation to make him a scientist who develops shrinking technology makes a certain amount of sense, and when you read that original story it actually reads like a fairly competent science fiction premise. This continued as Atom went on to star in his own ongoing series; he was less a traditional superhero and more a platform on which a wide variety of high-concept sci-fi stories could be told.

The Atom joined another Gardner Fox ongoing series in 1962 when he became one of the earliest characters to join the Justice League. This is by far where the bulk of Ray's appearances happened, and his character was really established here for decades until he starred in a Gil Kane miniseries in 1983 called Sword of The Atom. Trapped in the Amazon jungle in tiny form, Ray had a series of John Carter-style adventures among stranded aliens. While the book is VERY good and leads to its own ongoing series Powers of The Atom, it does include one detail that went on to have surprisingly lasting repercussions: the divorce of Ray Palmer and his love interest, Jean Loring. This seemingly mundane plot detail would wind up being used as a crux of the mystery in the 2004 miniseries Identity Crisis, it would lead to Ray abandoning his role as The Atom and passing it on to a new character, Ryan Choi.

Our Ray Palmer Story

The Atom is always at his best when his stories center around a solid science fiction premise that is tackled with the sensibilities of a 60's era drive-in movie. This doesn't necessarily mean he needs to be acting like a superhero all the time. He's more of an adventurer, exploring the unknown microscopic worlds that only he can access. Of course, as a long-time League member he often absolutely IS a superhero. So how do you find that balance?

For our purposes, the best delineation was around his actual League membership. We can essentially say that for most of his career, his time is spent devoted to research and exploration of the various microscopic realms he discovers, which allows him to do things like run his own division of Star Labs, or to take on Karen Beecher as a lab tech. His time as a full member of the Justice League, however, means we have all the room we need for all his heroic escapades.

Also: in the comics, Atom was de-aged and was briefly the leader of the Dan Jurgens Teen Titans; we chose to reference that briefly by making him the science advisor to the Roy Harper-led Titans.

Ray's Future

A lot of the classic Satellite Era Justice League members have at some point in their story retired, died, stepped down, or otherwise relinquished their mantle so that a new young hero could take their place. For Ray, this was right after the 2004 miniseries Identity Crisis, when Jean Loring wound up being the bad guy and Ray disappeared into the sub world in grief. Then in the midst of Infinite Crisis, One Year Later, 52, Countdown, Brave New World, and a whole soup of continuity shakeups, we were introduced to Ray's successor Ryan Choi in his own series, the All New Atom.

Ryan is a really fun character and he had some absolutely madcap adventures, but unfortunately the hand-off between the characters was really shaky, and Ray came back way too quickly, meaning modern continuity features both characters concurrently, and they aren't really different enough to justify that

We, however, get to treat this with a lot more forethought to make the passing of the mantle of the Atom a much cleaner part of Ray's story. He is already, canonically, stepped away from regular super heroics in favor on focusing on his research, and after the (very reimagined) events of Jean's unfortunate possession by Eclipso, it makes absolute sense that, when a young researcher filled with new ideas and excitement about ways to use the mantle of Atom, that Ray would absolutely and eagerly help Ryan take the role.

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