The New Justice League Atom is...

[The Toyroom]

Ryan Choi....Uh, didn't DC just kill Ryan Choi last year in a "Brightest Day" one-shot? And yet they're bringing him back as part of the DCnU. Unbelievable...the character doesn't click with the fans like Ray Palmer did so they kill him off and give Palmer a push again ONLY to take it back a year later and revive Choi from the dead.

Only at DC folks...only at DC

[samurainoir]

Did they ever even resolve that plotline where he was killed by Deathstroke?

It was pretty bizarre to kill him in the first place while he was hanging from pegs at Toys R Us, and even appeared in recent episodes of Brave and Bold.

[thunderbolt]

I bet diversity is rearing its head again at DC.

[bobws]

really this is gonna be like an earth 4 or 5 before all is said and done.

[johnnystorm]

What a goofy situation! Clearly, nobody has a clue what's going on here- I can't believe Warners still employs Didio, he's pathetic!

[Earth 2 Chris]

I think someone at a DC panel at SDCC joked that they just made this stuff up as they went along, referring to the fact that comic fans everywhere actually think that (I think it was Winnick). THIS is why we think that!!!

Chris

[The Toyroom]

What bugs me is how they are constantly shoving certain characters down our throats, even after fans have shown they have no interest in the character.

Like the Ryan Choi Atom...the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle....the Jason Rausch Firestorm...etc. They keep tweaking and realunching them in new titles but they
still don't sell like DC wants them too.

Similarly the way they are replacing J'onn J'onnz in the JLA with Cyborg....

And ALL in the name of "diversity"....

[boynightwing]

J'onn is very diverse. He's Green! Or did he not test well with the green population?

They could have just made Ray Palmer an Asian this time around. Not every Asian has to have an Asian sounding last name. My future kids wont...

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

Dunno if it's diversity or not. It kinda looks to me like somebody's been trying really hard to completely reform the DC universe so's to squeeze out the older versions of the characters. Kinda like they did back in the 60's. They can't mess with the biggies so much, but they can completely redo the b-listers. Some sort of corporate rebranding.... except the redos never seem to take off, so every year there's another round.

Don C.

[samurainoir]

To be fair, as much love as I have for Ted Kord Blue Beetle for example, he's never really had the sales behind him. His original series was a handful of issues and his dc series lasted about as long as Jaime's back in the eighties. It really does make sense for DC to go with Jaime... Appearances in Brave and Bold, Smallville, and a potential series in the works. Not to mention a really cool costume and action figures at Toys R Us and Walmart.

[thunderbolt]

when are they going to roll out Apache Chief, Samurai and El Dorado?

[madmarva]

I don't mind Atom being Ryan Choi so much, but I hope Ray Palmer is still a part of the DCU. He could kind of be a Dr. Pym character.

I prefer Jaime Reyes to Ted Kord and thought Kord's death to set up Infinite Crisis was shocking and well played. It showed he wasn't a lightweight mentally, but also that the super hero game is a tough one. DC also used Kord's death to push Booster Gold into being a better character. Under Johns and Jurgens, his book was one of my favorites. The Giffen-DeMattis stuff was unreadable to me.

While I don't like change for the sake of change — costumes on major characters for instance — I'm willing to give DC the benefit of the doubt until I read what they are doing.

But again, other than Superman and Wonder Woman's costumes, DC hasn't made a huge change to a character that I really like, either.

[Megazord Mike]

It's such a shame about some characters. Len Wein wrote Ted Kord for 2 years straight and no one else ever got a shot for 20 years and then they blew his head off. Same with Ray. Roger Stern for 15 issues, 3 filler issues, cancellation. Nothing ever again. Ronnie Raymond? Gerry Conway did great, Ostrander not so much. Now he's lucky to share a title with Jason. But nothing on his own since 1989. Even Barry Allen, part of the reason I think he has the difficulties he does now is because Cary Bates used the title as a regular paycheck for 15 years straight. Killing Iris was a sign it was time to go, but nope he rode that title into the ground, and utter trial idiocy for 7 more years.

More often than not, you can blame 1 writer, but the character suffers. Yet in Choi's case, neither Byrne and Simone or Remender could make him work. While ignoring the single most heat Ray Palmer ever had on him. Yet Simone calls Ray Palmer boring. Ray...who got written...ONCE in the modern era...if you can call barely post-crisis "modern". I argue they didn't know what the hell they were doing til the early 90s. Jaime? Explain to me how a redux of a failed 2006 series is gonna go over? I mean a re-run from 4 years ago? I can see reinventing Barry Allen for today's audience...but wasn't Jaime already that?

[samurainoir]

Arguably, the best time to relaunch a Ted Kord series would babe been Blue and Gold following the success of JLI, where Kord became a fan favourite. Although I'm sure that it probably would have been as short lived as most of the other JLI spinoffs at the time like Dr Fate or Mr Miracle (which were actually written by JLI scripted dematties).

And it's not like Kord really was in limbo given that he rode the Justic League title through the Jurgans Death of Superman, into Extreme Justice, over to Living Attack Weapons, with a pitstop in Birds of Prey befor the Giffen revival JLI minis, and finally a bullet in the head which actually made him (and Booster) much more popular than before his death... So much so that he's been practically co-starring in Booster's title.

I'm saying this as a Ted Kord fan. They are doing the same thing with Jaime... Building him up with a presence in Teen Titans, the new JLI, and outside media to see what happens. I think he's become a fan favourite.

Who is the creative team on Jaime's book anyways?