Moving from Hong Kong to the United
States, Ryan Choi becomes the new nuclear physics professor at Ivy University. He
takes up residence in the former home of Ray Palmer, otherwise known as the
superhero Atom. When he discovers the Atom’s size-changing belt, Ryan dons the
familiar red and blue costume and becomes the newest Atom. Not long after this,
Ivy Town goes topsy-turvy as science and magic duke it out for possession over
the town and its inhabitants.
The
All-New Atom: My Life in Miniature collects issues #1-6 of The All-New Atom and Brave New World #1, written by Gail
Simone and illustrated by John Byrne and Eddy Barrows.
Following his disappearance at the end of
the controversial Identity Crisis,
Ray Palmer left the world without an Atom. As one of DC Comics’ most prominent
Silver Age characters, the Ray Palmer iteration of the Atom was a member of the
Justice League and helped to inspire a number of size-shrinking heroes. When it
came time to create a new character to fill his boots, Gail Simone, Grant
Morrison and John Byrne teamed up to create Ryan Choi. Positioned as a former
pen pal of the missing Ray Palmer, Ryan moves to Ray’s old stomping grounds and
replaces him as a professor at Ivy University. What follows is a series of
events wherein Ryan becomes the new Atom and must deal with the consequences of
his predecessor’s size-altering on the powerful nexus beneath Ivy Town.
Gail Simone, with the help of John Byrne
and Eddy Barrows, channels the Buffyverse in her quest to legitimize Ryan Choi
as the new Atom and redefine Ivy Town for modern audiences. My Life in Miniature is quirky and
darkly funny, utilizing a sleepy university town as a setting for its B-movie
style horror monster conflicts. In addition to our shrinking protagonist,
Simone introduces a scientifically-advanced miniature society (that lives on a
dog) and a Lovecraftian mystical creature as the antagonists for this arc. It’s
silly, but playfully so. Humour and horror are two consistent trademarks in
Simone’s work and she utilizes both fairly well here. Though it’s not nearly as
pitch-perfect as her opening arcs on Batgirl
or Secret Six, the tone she
selects does what it needs to in order to set-up our hero and his surroundings.
Even still, the supporting cast (composed almost entirely of fellow male
scientists) isn’t particularly memorable and the overall execution of the
conflict is muddied. Despite this, Simone gets bonus points for her creative
usage of a civilian Giganta and the admirable creation of the extremely
unhinged villain Dwarfstar.
The issues collected from The All-New Atom in this trade are
illustrated by John Byrne (issues 1-3) and Eddy Barrows (issues 4-6). Though Simone
and Byrne had previously worked together on Action
Comics, I can’t say I enjoy his art with her words. Much of this has to do
with the decrease in the quality of his work since the 1990s. Byrne makes Ryan look
pubescent, while everything else seems to have a sketchy and rough quality. Of
course, I may be especially hard on Byrne given his astonishingly bad run on Wonder Woman. When Barrows takes over
the art chores for the remainder of the issues collected here, there’s a marked
improvement in the dynamics of the book. His characters are more distinct,
particularly Atom and Dwarfstar. The action is bolder and seems to match the
tone of Simone’s writing.
My
Life in Miniature does an adequate job of laying down the groundwork for
what could very well be a great series. Simone has more hits than misses under
her belt and, in these first six issues, has managed to make me far more
interested in Ryan Choi than his predecessors (of course that may also be
because of the gratuitous butt shot in issue 1). Though I’m not particularly impressed
with the supporting cast and would have preferred more of a focus on Dwarfstar,
I dig a lot of the choices made in My
Life in Miniature and it leaves me invested in Ryan Choi as a character.
RATING:
B-
No comments:
Post a Comment