that's too bad then. no shrinking powers, not a professor in ivy university but a ceo of queen consolidated, not a physicist, love interest is felicity instead of jean (which is actually better)...
well, at least his is still named ray palmer, and has an armour with a red and blue color scheme...
Hope we can get the shrinking at some point. Haing him in a suit that flies around basically makes him nothing more than DC's Iron Man.
Good Marvel characters- Bring Them Back!!!
Doesn't Shrink...not good. Not a fan of the suit either...could've been better IMHO.
The Fantastic Four looked good in the movies, so I think a similar look could've worked for
a TV series with The Atom.
Last edited by Herowatcher; 02-26-2015 at 12:47 AM.
"History of the DC Universe" by Wolfman and Perez, when the DCU use to make sense.
Part of the issue might have been personality. I think they wanted someone funny and quirky to seem like a good match for Felicity (like I said: quirky, wise-cracking tech billionaire does sound a lot more like Ted Kord). Judging from old issues of Hawkman and the Atom, Power of the Atom and even some episodes of Justice League Unlimited, Ray has shown such a personality in the past.
It's an interesting contrast. Keep the personality (well, from some versions) and change the powers for Atom, keep the powers/skills and change the personality for Green Arrow.
Mento & Steel (who might be appearing on The Flash) would've been perfect. I know that this is their own take, which is common in the comic book fandom......but this was upsetting. They should have just put Atom on The Flash.
i wonder if the budget affected the decision to change ray palmer's power set. it probably cost more to render in cgi if ray constantly shrank.
I think the release of Ant-Man had something to do with DCE wanting to get Ray Palmer out there on Arrow. Draw interest to the character. But maybe the show runners were pretty set in their ways that the character would be far more like Ted Kord.
I was thinking the other day about how Ant Man never seemed to get enough momentum to carry an ongoing series in much the same way as the Atom or Aquaman. And I think in both Atom and Ant Man's cases the reason is the same: the characters would be best served as vehicles for science fiction, and comic book writers tend to ignore science in favor of action. Plus, how many writers really feel qualified today to write SF?
I was on FB today, looking at a conversation which began with semantics and graduated quickly into it's real topic, the cloud (the semantics were just a lead-in). Apparently the people involved were experts. It was as if they were speaking another language. How do you write science-based fantasy (which is all science fiction is really) when modern science is so specialized that English becomes a cipher?
My point is that finding a proper writer for true science heroes would probably be difficult. If DC can find a successful Atom writer, they should try like hell to keep them for the next hundred issues.
It is interesting that the GA Doll Man, who is pretty much the template the later heroes are based on, had a longer and successful title run despite being saddled with a lamer name, outlasting most of his contemporaries. And, is mostly forgotten today.
Even Al Pratt Atom was one of the more successful JSA characters. He is second in his appearances with the GA JSA stories, behind Hawkman. I also think the basic idea of the character would make a good supporting cast member on the shows, his original costume only needing some minor tweaking (maybe get rid of the shorts).
I thought the Ryan Choi Atom series was very well done, balancing the action with science fiction and odd-ball threats. That it failed I think speaks a lot to the current comic marketplace and the marketing of comics in general. Too much is a "build it and they will come" approach. A strong SF writer alone is not going to make it a success.
Maybe if they did digital first, build up interest and readership and releasing the stories in print after they are completed as a single "novel". Or scrap comics, and actually release some well-written novels with some of the top artists doing the covers and a few interior illustrations. Both DC & Marvel have tons of great characters that are either languishing or the companies completely overhaul and trash what went before in trying to make a blockbuster success. And, when it fails as 75% of them do, they have another failed attempt and lost the original which generally had the most potential. Maybe they should try looking at the untapped markets first, and see what characters AND formats they could use to reach them AND not concern themselves with trying to get those readers buying a half dozen other books and whatever current crossover/event. Aim for a series of small successes instead of gouging the same readership over and over for more or their wallet. I gave up Batman and Superman books a long time ago because I could not afford to get every book of the line and about once a year, a Family-wide storyline would co-opt the one book I was reading. The best continuity is one of consistency and non-contradiction if possible. IE you had familiar companies, organizations, concepts, villains to make the books seem part of the same universe without actually requiring reading the whole line to stay up to date.
Another rule of thumb-- if a costume is designed by Gil Kane, minor tweaks are ok, but you should otherwise probably leave it alone.
Ray Palmer I think works best as the go-to research science/physicist guy in the JLA. Problem was he was introduced at a time when everyone was a super-scientist. Any character with a basic scientific background was working on fantastic inventions that had nothing to do really with their specialty. Even Batman and Superman were building super computers. And, it's hard for DC to pull back from that. Ted Kord's background seems to be engineering, aeronautics and possibly robotics. Barry is a forensic scientist (so lots of biology and chemistry), etc. So, he's not necessarily a heavy hitter, but invaluable as part of specialized missions ala how Busiek had him figure prominently in the JLA/Avengers, at a time when the Atom was being rarely used at DC.
Totally with you about the Gil Kane design.
An important thing to remember about the 50s and 60s is how so much of SF got attention in books, film, and television. The space race was born at that time, and SF writers with authentic backgrounds in science were put to work writing, to put these things forward in the public eye. If so many hadn't been eager to write this stuff, it would almost be considered a kind of propaganda.
When Dollman and Pratt were popular, few readers were well acquainted with the science that science fiction was based on. Simply the idea of a shrinking man was exotic enough to capture the imagination. I agree, though, that today's writer needs more than science alone can provide.
It's now necessary to capture and hold the reader's attention first, and that is a science all its own. In film, it's been proven- to me at least- that too much action can put a viewer to sleep as surely as too little. The adaptation of "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale", which was recently released as a remake of Total Recall, actually put me to sleep twice via overstimulation- first in the theater, then again at home a couple years later.
Last edited by thetrellan; 02-27-2015 at 06:18 PM.
No but in his first appearance he had his mini computer on his belt which very much reminded me of where the Atom keeps his shrinking device. Probably intentionally done.
If he's not gonna shrink then he's the Atom in name only. He doesn't really have Ray's characteristics or backstory (There was never a Palmer Industries and he hasn't made mention of Ivy University) and of course he apparently won't have the Atom's trademark powers. So this whole thing is kinda disappointing.