The Book of Hsssh

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 doe...

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...

So what happened with our new Atom after Simone's run ended? Looking at the title of this post we can already see that fate wasn't kind to Ryan. But before we get to that we have to cover few other things. Simone's run had two fill-ins and they were good fill-ins. Good in a sense that they advanced the main plot of the series and their one and done stories weren't bad. But I didn't find the main plot well executed even before Countdown derailed everything. If you liked what Simone was doing then they are worth checking out, otherwise? Not really. After Simone left we got a new writer - Rick Remender, and I'm not sure what DC was really thinking here. Simone's run didn't end with good sales numbers so were they really expecting that Remender, who wasn't well known at the time, was going to turn the ship around in couple of issues? So what happened is that the title got canceled after 5 issues. But were those issues good? It is hard to judge them since...

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 ...