Frankenstein: Ray Palmer

Since there is nothing really new being released with Frankenstein I figure that I might as well cover some of the supporting characters that appeared in his stories or are somehow related. And what better place to start than with Ray Palmer?

Now, I can see someone raising an eyebrow here. After all, Ray Palmer is classic Silver Age character with many appearances and solo stories. Meanwhile Frankenstein had like a decade of prominence and now is fading into obscurity. Well, regardless of that Palmer did appear as a supporting character in Frankenstein's ongoing and was attached to SHADE during New 52 era.

But we'll start a bit earlier. Just like with Frankenstein and Creature Commandos during Flashpoint, Lemire actually wrote Ray Palmer before New 52. After All-New Atom flopped for one reason or another DC decided to try again with Ray Palmer as Atom with Nucleus storyline.

This story starts in Brightest Day: The Atom #1, then continues as backups in Adventures Comics #516-521 and ends in Giant-Size Atom #1. DC sure made it easy to follow, some fan wikis even says that this storyline wasn't completed. And obviously it was never collected. So why I'm bringing it up? Because, just like with Creature Commandos, Lemire reused some of the ideas from this storyline in his Frankenstein run.

Nucleus storyline is where Ant Farm was first introduced, but this version of Ant Farm was created by Palmer's uncle. Whole story is about super secret organization that Palmer's uncle once belonged to and now they are after Palmer. Atom solo stories never really did much to me and this wasn't an exception. I'm really just bringing it up for "historic significance" of this being Ant Farm's first appearance.

So anyway, New 52 happens and Palmer becomes scientist in SHADE. This time he is the one responsible for Ant Farm. Asides of making things small his role is mostly to cancel out Father Time's more twisted approach to things, moral compass if you will. Important point is that he is not Atom yet, he is "just" scientist.

Outside of that he appears in Batman/Superman as well. #10 is written by Lemire and is an origin story of sorts, this is where he debuts as Atom in New 52 + we get some visual callbacks to his Sword of Atom days. Later he appears during Xa-Du's story arc (#16-20), written by Greg Pak, in more prominent role as well. Asides of that he also makes some appearances in Red Hood (after Frankenstein's guest appearance) and few other places, but nothing significant.

His next bigger role comes in Futures End weekly. First part is his appearances in Frankenstein's story, again written by Lemire. Turns out that all the size changing done something to his mind and he is a bit crazy, with a big beard and all that. I did enjoy these Frankenstein segments overall, but sadly Palmer was the weak link there. To be more specific at one point in the story he gets a pep talk from a character he never saw before and... shaves his beard and is "sane" again. What?

After Frankenstein's story ends Ray plays an important role in the finale of Futures End. I'd guess that Jurgens (or whoever else wrote the final battle) just wanted to use classic Ray Palmer so Lemire had to change his plans abruptly. Or maybe Lemire just wrote something stupid on his own. Who knows and who cares at this point.

Now, you can probably see that Palmer being involved with SHADE and Frankenstein was written mostly by Lemire. So it is not surprising that with DC going into Rebirth and Lemire doing less and less work for DC this Palmer's direction was dropped.

On one hand you could argue that nothing great was done during this period, but I felt like it had much untapped potential. Rivalry with Father Time could have been developed more and SHADE could have worked as a good setting for Sword of Atom type storylines. And it is not like you couldn't have added classic stuff (like friendship with Hawkman) to the mix. Sadly that was not the direction that DC choose and at some point later I'll probably cover the Rebirth of All-New Atom and Palmer's role in it.

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