It’s the finale to a series that has shown a certain consistency – it’s been consistently disappointing. I won’t repeat points made in previous reviews, optimism has kept me buying – let’s see if my fantastically open heart is rewarded.
What’s been going on? Amanda Waller stole super powers from lots of heroes. The heroes managed to take them back off her but several power sets went into the wrong people. Somehow Captain Atom is key to rescuing the situation, and Atom Ray Palmer and protege Atom Ryan Choi have been trying to get things back to normal by using him as a receptacle for powers-in-transit.
Or something. The swapped super powers bit has never been especially clear, none of it makes a lick of sense.
Anyway, Captain Atom fled as Ray and Ryan’s experiments got ever more painful, the US Army tried to capture him, Ray and Ryan tried to rescue him, the Legion of Doom popped across from current issues of Justice League Unlimited and World’s Finest and captured him, but unknown to the bad guys, Ryan stowed away.
(Excuse me, I need to take a breath.)
As this issue opens, Ray is back on the League’s satellite and Mr Terrific is being encouraging about their chances of finding the missing heroes .
Meanwhile, at the Legion of Doom’s peripatetic secret HQ, the evildoers are having a bit of a barney – Lex Luthor and Sinestro had taken it upon themselves to get Captain Atom, no consultation with the other Doomsters. The hope is that they can grab some of the super-power sets for themselves and their (currently peeved) colleagues.
Legion of Doom leader Super Gorilla Grodd is all for seeing what they can get from Captain Atom, but for the moment he’s happy to leave the hero in a cell, an inhibitor collar stopping him from escaping. Black Manta and Pythoness, though, don’t trust the plan.
The element of surprise allows Atom Ryan to help Captain Atom overcome the villains. Ryan beats up Black Manta, while Captain Atom uses the inhibitor collar to take down the strangely useless sorceress… it really isn’t clear how, I’m guessing that trying to access his powers causes a feedback shock which he transfers to Pythoness.
Also unclear is what happens next.
Is that Captain Atom combined with the Atom? Is it the Atom with extra powers leant to him by Captain Atom? Writers Ryan Parrott and John Ridley don’t bother to tell us. Eventually Captain Atom shows up and I guess that Ryan Atom has indeed had some temporary powers. It’s shockingly shoddy and typical of this series, which really seems to exist purely because someone noticed Justice League Unlimited had three characters answering to ‘Atom’.
I’m particularly peeved at the mischaracterising of Ray Palmer – that imposter syndrome is pure Hank Pym… Ray has always known his worth.
Back to the story, such as it is.
Our heroes escape and get back to the Justice League Watchtower. We hear that Captain Atom’s old handler General Eiling is in trouble for siccing the Army, and the supervillain Major Force, on him. Finally an exchange between Ray and Ryan makes it clear Captain Atom had indeed transferred his powers to the latter, temporarily. And all the heroes have their correct powers back, the quest for same being the whole point of this six-issue series.
Kidding.
And…
Keep buying the comics, kids!
OK, I realise that sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination, but I do like to get to the destination, and this journey has been all kinds of frustrating.
Positives. Ryan is wonderfully rude and cocky in his fight with Black Manta. The villain interaction is great fun, I like the betrayals, that’s how it should be with a bunch of scumbags like the Legion of Doom. Captain Atom cheers up.
And Mike Perkins produces his best work since this series began, with the villains looking delightfully dark. The storytelling problems lie with the script, not the art. Ryan and Ray look good with their masks down, and we don’t get distracted by the inexplicably horrific new costumes.
The colours of Adriana Lucas are rich and add to the art, while the letters of Wes Abbott are just great
Overall, though, I can’t recommend forking out for this series. Even if you’re invested in the JLU’s stolen super powers subplot I’d say this is entirely skippable. Be like Captain Atom at the end of this issue and decide not to waste time with things you don’t need.
Too Dangerous For a Girl 2 
The script could have been clearer but with JSA to compare it to, it’s a shining success. I agree that the imposter syndrome take on Ray is ludicrous but otherwise he acted like he should have considering how off the rails he’d gone previously. Ryan got to be as much fun to read as Morrison and Simone originally portrayed him. Nathaniel’s realization was actually moving too. Kudos to the writers from stepping back from the ‘smart people are insensitive, unemotional assholes’ trope so popular now and portraying Terrific and Ray as closer to their usual characterizations. A thought: Are we seeing a permanent change in how smart heroes are now portrayed similar to how characters like Professor X have been viewed differently as the zeitgeist concerning that sort of man has changed as well?
I disagree on the art and the coloring though. I think it was the muddiest, worst of the series.
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That’s a great point about Ryan, he had such a fun series – I’ve even bought a trade collection. Still, I don’t want to see either Atom again until they get out of those hideous suits. Does anyone like them?
I hope messed-up boffins isn’t the permanent thing now. Mind, it’s been going on a while, what with Brainiac 5, the Chief, Hank Pym, Mr Fantastic in that Illuminati period…
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The amazing part of Simone’s Ryan run was that I can’t think of any other writer who has picked up a Morrison creation and written it so well. Usually something about Morrison’s weird mental bent seems to stimy successors.
And I think geniuses acting like we’re seeing is something along the lines of heroic mentors like the Chief and Professor X being looked at more suspiciously by the general public affecting how they’ve been written.
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Some of us geniuses are very level headed!
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I’d really love a good Captain Atom series or a good Atom(s) series, but this doesn’t seem like it was it.
And just a pet peeve, but I’ve always disliked the trend for having a special typeface for the Joker’s speech balloons because I don’t understand what it’s implying about his voice. Does it not sound human? I can get behind the Black Manta having a special balloon because he’d be mechanically adjusted, and Bizarro because I can imagine him having a weird gravelly voice, but the Joker is just a human being and doesn’t have a different kind of voice, so unless everyone gets a special typeface based on having an individual voice, he should have the same as normal humans. But that’s the graphic designer in me talking. (I also find it highly unlikely that anyone would team up with this version of the Joker because he consistently proves how untrustworthy is, but that’s another issue…)
Stu
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You’re spot on about the Joker’s daft typeface I’m not font of it HAHA I KILL ME!
Sorry. I don’t think it’s even a consistent thing…did it start with the Arkham Asylum book?
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Part of me wants to embrace the missing powers subplot because it’s such a DC/Silver Age concept. Like 20 years ago when all the members of the JLA were turned into apes!!!! But because it’s from that simpler era it makes it hard to take how deadly serious we’re supposed to take the lost powers/power swaps in the current 2025 DCU. Also does no one have a problem with the fact we just did this a couple years ago in the fallout to “Lazarus Planet”? Having the Legion of Doom show up was a nice tie-in to JLU. But it does leave me kinda confused over their motivations. Why did Grodd bring them into the future again? And why did they masquerade as Inferno? Something about confusing/wearing down the JLU, world domination and also getting hold of Darkseid’s residual power, right? It kinda feels like any villains/villainous team could be substituted for the Legion at this point. It makes me wonder if the Inferno story started as its own thing – maybe a group of brand new bad guys – then someone said, “Let’s make them the Legion of Doom!” and shoehorned that idea in.
-Brian
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Well, Grodd brought the LoDers into their future/his present because the later versions are unavailable/reformed, and the older version would catch the modern day Leaguers off guard… why that would be, I haven’t the foggiest.
And they masqueraded as Inferno because there was a sale on at Destiny’s Shop o’Robes. Maybe.
I think I did point out the Lazarus Planet similarity in some review or other, it is too soon to do something so similar. And yes, the power swapping is a kind of Silver Age plot, but back then we’d get it all in a nice focused one or two-parter. I’d be enjoying this a bit more were we to have one-to-one swaps, but here it’s all so nebulous – powers have gone, but who has them rarely comes up.
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I’d already forgotten about the rubbish Black Lightning book.
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