the All New Atom #21 - DC

It appears that we have a new creative team on the book now. Rick Remender is the author and Pat Olliffe is the artist. I'm not familiar with Rick, but I loved Pat's work in the Four Horsemen mini-series. My only complaint about that particular series is that his worked seemed a little bit rushed. But from looking at this book, in my opinion, it looks much better. Ryan has decided to really try to get to the heart of the matter, on this whole "weird happenings in Ivy Town" thing. Last issue Chronos claimed that he was responsible for everything, but Chronos is a liar. There's as much magic as science in what's been happening in this town, and Chronos has no control over magic. Ryan's plan? "Ray Palmer's experiments inadvertently caused this situation. Experiments like my Atom Belt. If the Belt's matter altering has caused dimensional rifts externally, it would leave a roadmap of similar disruptions inside of the user . . only way to know is to shrink into a sample of my blood. If I find Tachyon residue then I'll know . . . the power of the Atom is the source of Ivy Town's sickness." The thing I really like about this particular story is that the whole thing seems very well thought out. The process by which Ryan is going to do this, and the precautions he's taken to protect himself, seem very plausible. It seems like Rick has decided to really try to break down the Atom's powers and find out what really makes them tick. "Back to basics" as it were. I think that's fantastic. And he does indeed find something . . a microbe that he's never seen or heard of before. He tries to tackle it, but it proves to powerful for him alone. So, he decides to include Panda, and instead of shrinking down, he's going to expand the blood-cell. But this proves equally as dangerous as, at the end of the issue, Panda is sucked right in to the giant-sized microbe. " . . I've made a terrible mistake." That's the understatement of the year. I think this book is taking an interesting turn, and I like the path that we seem to be traveling.