From Morrison's mind: Rebirth of The All-New Atom

As we all know, Ryan Choi died and some time later DC did the New 52 reboot. Everyone was younger and many important storylines hadn't happened "yet" so naturally Ryan wasn't around either. This changed during Rebirth when DC did even more weird things with their continuity. As a result Ryan returned as well, but did he really return or something else happened?

Many fans, and sometimes DC, claims that with Rebirth DC returned to post-Crisis continuity. But Ryan Choi is good example showing that it is not really what happened. He does get his first few pages in DC Rebirth #1 one-shot and it is obvious immediately that his relationship with Ray Palmer is different. But we didn't get any more information till DC launched Justice League of America by Orlando.

And well, there were lots of changes. In fact, asides of his name and nationality I'm not sure if anything at all was kept. And he obviously never died since his "adventure" starts only now. How does this work with DC being back to post-Crisis continuity? I have no idea and I never saw anyone give a solid explanation.

But continuity and characterizations change from time to time and what matters is good stories, right? Well, Orlando didn't really deliver on that front either with his JLA run. But he did understand one thing, for Ryan to work Ray has to be removed from the board. So we did get a story where Ryan searches for Ray (similar set-up to the pre-Flashpoint Ryan stories), finds him, but Ray decides to "retire" in Microverse leaving the mantle to Ryan.

But that never really works these days. Replacement heroes rarely get popular enough and there are always some creators around who like the "classic" version and bring it back. Ray was gone for like 2 months before he started appearing here and there again. You probably could even argue that his role in Hawkman's ongoing was more meaningful than anything Ryan got after Orlando's JLA ended.

More recently DC had a bright idea to bring together Ryan, Ray and Captain Atom in Atom Project mini-series. You know, three Atoms that each struggle and two of them are hard to tell apart when in costume. It doesn't look like it had much of an impact or changed anything for the featured characters. Maybe next step is creating Atom Corps.

Simone claimed that she never used much from Morrison's proposal and maybe Orlando saw it and this version of Ryan is actually closer to what Morrison had in mind? I don't know and probably nobody is going to tell us. And it is not like Orlando's version was well defined either. So this is probably good spot for me to leave both Atoms since it doesn't look like anything meaningful (or Morrison related) is likely to happen with them.

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