DC’s TV shows have introduced the character of Ray Palmer as the Atom, but as far as I can tell, there’s no connection to the comic book character apart from the name. The comic book Atom devised a belt that allows him to shrink himself, even down to subatomic proportions, if you go back to the Silver Age books. This new TV Atom has a metal suit, flies and shoots power beams. It’s as if they said, “We can’t do the traditional Atom because he’s too close to Marvel’s Ant-Man.” So they made him into a clone of Iron Man instead. What’s up with that, anyway?
He shrinks too.
He’s the traditional Atom in Legends of Tomorrow, which starts in January.
I read somewhere that he was supposed to be Ted Kord/Blue Beetle but DC pulled the rights to Blue Beetle at the last minute and they had to scramble for someone/something else.
I thought I’d read once that they did that because they really had wanted it to be Ted Kord, and not Ray Palmer, but that they couldn’t get the rights to the Blue Beetle at the time.
EDIT - Ninja’d!
I thought it was interesting that they broke into Kord Industries to get the tech needed to embiggen Ray.
I’ll confess that I’ve not yet seen the new season of *Arrow *and Flash. I don’t see any shrinking in the newly released trailer for Legends of Tomorrow, which will also feature the Atom. But even if they have now included shrinking as one of his powers, it seems to me that the whole character was mis-conceived. Shrinking is the essence of the Atom’s power - it’s what he does, not an add-on ability. If they were going to offer a character in a battle suit, they really should have called him something else.
“The new and improve Atom.”
I thought it was neat how they made the character tall.
The Isotope.
Are you talking about the trailer that included this little sequence?
In it, the Green Arrow urges Ray to “start growing”. Then we see Atom flying over an integrated circuit board before bursting out at full size to take out some bad guys.
The first trailer (at least the first one I saw), showed ATOM actually shrinking:
Hmmm, good catch. I had seen the first trailer you linked, but Arrow saying “it’s time to start growing” had slipped by me. The second link doesn’t work for me; it says it hasn’t been approved for viewing in my country (which is the USA).
He’ll be a positive presence on the series.
Once he loses an electron.
As long as he doesn’t split.
What matters is, he’s in his element.
Dem ol’ critics are always tryin’ to grind him down…
That first released trailer from Comic Con seems to have mostly disappeared off the net for some reason. I can’t even find it on the CW Youtube channel. Try this one:
So we’re getting both Hawkgirl and Hawkman?
Poor Cisco.
Yeah, she’s outta his league.
I think it’s interesting that Legends has three heroes who “died” on Arrow and The Flash. Which actually doesn’t look good for Hawkgirl…
He hasn’t started shrinking on purpose yet on Arrow, just one time as an accident which lead everyone to believe he was dead. Like a typical comic character he of course didn’t stay dead, and instead got captured by this year’s supervillain, and team arrow had to rescue and resize him.
Perfect! Now that’s more of what I expect to see from The Atom!