From Morrison's mind: The All-New Atom by Gail Simone

Once upon a time Morrison gave to DC some ideas on how to update some of their old properties. These ideas would then be developed by other writers. One such case was the ongoing series about new Atom, Ryan Choi, written by Gail Simone.


Compared to other Morrison's ideas All-New Atom made the most impact and this led to a somewhat divisive question, who created Ryan Choi? Simone has basically said that she had read only parts of Morrison's proposal and he was mostly created by her. How much can you read for it to still be your creation? Who knows.

So anyway, how was Simone's run? It was very Gail Simone. Some weirdness, comedy and characters being horny. Since Ryan ends up dating Giganta we also got some borderline fetish stuff with small guy, big girl panels. I remember back in the day Simone's Secret Six was one of my favorite ongoings, easily sitting next to GL by Johns and Morrison's Batman. But since those years I never really revisited it. And well, this year I finally did revisit it and... didn't like it at all. I don't know if I "grew up" or my tastes changed over the years, but I just couldn't get into it again. So it probably isn't surprising that I didn't like Simone's writing here either. Maybe if I followed it when it was published I'd have some fond memories, but oh well.

There are issues with plotting as well. Simone mentioned that Ryan's first adventure, that we saw in Brave New World one-shot, came from Morrison. But chronologically it happens in the third act of the first arc in the ongoing... and it doesn't really fit well with big magic vs science story that Simone was telling. And besides that, the whole thing didn't make much sense in how it was presented.

After that we got 2 short arcs that are much better plotted. But there is also weird story decision when character responsible for most of the mess goes free without any consequences.

Next arc is probably the reason why Simone left the title - Search for Ray Palmer. On paper it probably made sense - Ryan looking for Ray was plot point since the first issue and other characters looking for Ray was a big plot point in Countdown weekly. But as most things concerning Countdown it ended up as a mess. Regular issues of the ongoing don't flow well and reading related Countdown issues doesn't help things much either. But the worst part is that Ryan eventually moves to other things and doesn't have anything to do with Palmer being found so a big plot point from the ongoing just gets dropped.

Then we get couple of fill-ins and Simone tries to wrap her run with 3 more issues. Her attempt is not bad all things considered and we get a short team-up with Wonder Woman. But it doesn't feel like it was what Simone originally had in mind. And even if I didn't enjoy the writing much I still can't help, but feel disappointed that this is how her run ended.

What about the visual side of things? Byrne draws first few issues then Barrows and Norton drew the rest. Their work wasn't spectacular, but at the same time it was solid and didn't get in the way of the story. It is a small thing, but I also appreciate that we didn't really get any over the top pages with female characters despite Ryan being into almost every woman he encounters on his journey.

But maybe other writers had better luck with the character? That is a story for another time.

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