The Atom
28 years ago - Ryan Choi is born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, the son of Olympic gold medalist Ta-You Choi & history professor Ah-Lien Choi.
26 years ago - 2-year-old Ryan Choi start studying gymnastics with his mother Ta-You Choi
20 years ago - 8-year-old Ryan Choi begins half-heartedly studying Gung Fu.
14 years ago - 14-year-old Ryan Choi enrolls in an elite science High School in Hong Kong.
12 years ago - 16-year-old Ryan Choi is bullied by the school’s soccer star Alvin Quinfan into doing his homework, and gets him expelled. He meets the love of his life, Jia, at a dance with their sister school, but he is confronted by Alvin who nearly beats him to death in front of her. Humiliated, Ryan returns to his Gung Fu lessons with renewed focus.
11 years ago - 17-year-old Ryan Choi is accepted early to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, studying physics
8 years ago - 20-year-old Ryan Choi earns his bachelor’s degree in physics, and begins studying particle physics as a grad student.
6 years ago - 22-year-old Ryan Choi reads several research papers by Dr. Ray Palmer about his White Dwarf Star Matter. He has several theories and contacts Dr. Palmer, who corresponds with him about his proposed research. To pursue his research, Ryan changes his graduate focus from particle to radiation physics.
3 years ago - 25-year-old Ryan Choi published his research paper, Energy Harmonics in White Dwarf Star Matter Radiation, proposing that the reason Ray Palmer was only able to use his size changing technology on himself is because it uses energy harmonics with his own electromagnetic field, and that those harmonics could be manipulated. He earns his Doctorate in Radiation Physics. His mother Ta-You Choi passes away from cancer.
2 years ago - 26-year-old Ryan Choi is invited to Ivy University by Ray Palmer. They test his White Dwarf Star Matter theories and prove that it does function on energy harmonics. Ray helps adapt the matter to Ryan’s energy signature so he can begin using all his theories as the new Atom. He accepts a professorship at Ivy University in Dr. Palmer’s department.
1 year ago - 27-year-old Ryan Choi joins the fight against Mageddon. He accepts an invitation from Nathan Adam & Jefferson Pierce to join the Justice League Task Force for the American government.
Over the decades a lot of the original satellite era Justice League members have had new legacy characters pop up and take on their mantle. In almost every case the original characters have come back (We could get into WHY that happens elsewhere) and left those compelling new heroes sort of in the lurch. In Atom's case, this is Ryan Choi. He's a character that really didn't get much of a shot at carving out his own space, with his predecessor coming back WAY too fast, but people still remember him fondly.
We didn't originally include Ryan in our timeline, mostly because the original story in which the mantle was passed felt too clunky and we didn't have a better one in mind... even though the explanation we're now using should have been incredibly obvious. All I can say is that we got there eventually. We hope you like it!
We didn't originally include Ryan in our timeline, mostly because the original story in which the mantle was passed felt too clunky and we didn't have a better one in mind... even though the explanation we're now using should have been incredibly obvious. All I can say is that we got there eventually. We hope you like it!
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The Atom's Comic HistoryThe original Atom, Ray Palmer, had vanished in an earlier crossover, Identity Crisis, and so the stage was set to try introducing a new hero. As I understand it, Grant Morrison created a 12-page outline setting up the new Atom, but couldn't do it themselves thanks to their schedule on the series 52, so Gail Simone essentially fleshed out the proposal and created the new character and series. Ryan Choi made his first appearance in 2006, in a special called DCU: Brave New World that introduced several new series, but Ryan's story depicted there is actually set somewhere after issue 5 of his own ongoing series called The All New Atom.
Ryan's story is absolutely madcap. He's a young physics professor from Hong Kong who has a decent gymnastics background because his mother was an Olympic gold medalist. He's corresponded with Ray Palmer since he was a kid, but they've never actually met. Now that Ray has disappeared, he's coming to Ivy University to take over his post and even move into his house, where he finds a new size-changing belt left for him. He dons his own costume, invents the bangstick, a weapon he can use to fly at smaller sizes, and proceeds to try to solve the mystery of Ray's disappearance, while also dealing with an absolutely ludicrous number of strange goings-on in Ivy Town, which seems to have gone positively insane. A major part of the ongoing story is figuring out just why Ivy Town was just so chock-a-block full of WEIRDNESS. |
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The series might have been a little TOO zany, as wave after wave of Grant Morrison level story ideas kept coming at you along with Gail Simone's ability to focus way more on characters than on plot, meaning that after a few issues you were just swimming in unexplained weirdness, with the book making no attempt at all to resolve anything. It might not be for everyone, but Ryan was a solid, likable hero, and actually gave the whole thing enough structure to enjoy.
Unfortunately, this wasn't a period in DC's history when they were being particularly charitable with smaller, weirder stories. The book seemed to visibly wind itself down, creating pretty unsatisfying explanations to almost all it's mysteries (generally just "Chronos did it"). The final five issues were written by Rick Remender, making a valiant effort to create the sort of dark sci-fi adventure serial he'd done with his own books like Fear Agent and Black Science, but it seemed DC had pretty much already made up its mind that the book would be canceled. Shortly afterward, Ryan fell victim to the joyless morbidity of 2000s DC when he was killed in Titans: Villains for Hire for absolutely no reason at all. I'm not a fan. After the New 52 it seems like both Ryan and Ray were considered equally viable candidates to be the current Atom, so much so that they often are just BOTH the Atom, working alongside each other. I do absolutely know some people who just don't mind multiple characters operating at the same time with the same name... but... please stop doing that. |
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Our Atom StoryWhat kept us from using Ryan for the longest time was working out how he took over as the Atom. Stepping into the role after Ray disappeared just felt like it was missing some key steps. We want Ray to participate in the handoff, we want to SEE their relationship and why this works. Finally it just dawned on us; Ray retires as the Atom. It's already pretty much in our timeline anyway. Ray and Ryan are both academics, we don't need to get too fancy to explain why they would interact with each other, even from different countries. It happens all the time.
We also needed to explain why the Atom technology, which previously only worked for Ray, would now work for Ryan. The answer was that Ryan had developed a new understanding of how it works, which is why they were corresponding. Ray's White Dwarf Star Matter worked for him because it used energy harmonics with his own electromagnetic field. Once Ryan recalibrated it to HIS field, he can now also use new equipment to manipulate its effects, allowing his Atom to do all sorts of things Ray never could. Also, this gives us an excuse to get creative with his costume... |
The Atom's CostumeThere is absolutely nothing wrong with Ray's costume, and the visual of him riding on his bangstick weapon is really creative... BUT... if we're going to create a new Atom, and that Atom is definitely going to have new equipment that he can use as a weapon or to travel or even have other effects like regrowing damaged tissue or altering something's internal molecular density... there are some ideas we really want to play with. The first is Atom's costume in the JLA story Rock of Ages, where a future Atom wears a white and red costume with shoulder straps, short sleeves, and gloves. It's a GREAT Atom look that I think everyone adores, and should really be a candidate for Ryan's costume. Also... there's some classic Atom costume redesign fanart on the internet that gives him a lightsaber weapon and a cool backpack that could absolutely be how he manipulates his new White Dwarf Star Matter equipment. The bangstick is cool... this is cooler.
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The Atom's FutureThis is one of those times were we're having to deploy a little bit more of our imagination than usual, because we really didn't get enough of Ryan in his one ongoing series. He's a really likable person, and we can very much imagine how it would work for him and Ray Palmer to be colleagues in the Ivy University physics department, and for Ray to see that Ryan has found whole new utility for the size-change technology, and help him become the new Atom. Basically, for that relationship to be handled like a story we actually want to tell.
The Atom has always been a sort of support hero, working alongside others, and Ray gets to really lean into that with his new technology. As we leave the timeline, Ryan has been invited to work with other heroes in the new Justice League Task Force, a government-backed branch of the Justice League where his scientific expertise and his ability to do so much more than just fight bad guys will likely make him one of the most important members of that new team. That just means we're now primed for Ryan to have some madcap adventures of his own. |
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