The Atom is capable of reducing his size to at least subatomic level, with no known limit on how far he can shrink. This is achieved by means of white-dwarf star matter from which his costume and belt were made.&emps;Originally the size-changing was controlled by a mechanism in his belt buckle, but he frequently became stopped from reaching the buckle, so he created a remote control for it in his gloves. At this time his costume would disappear when he was at his full height.

At the beginning of the Power of the Atom series, his original costume had been destroyed, it’s remnants absorbed into his body. Creating a new one, he managed, with help, to merge the new costume with the remnants of the old one, and discovered that he could now control the size change mentally. He could also manifest his costume or not, at will, so it didn’t automatically appear whenever he shrunk.

The weight decrease when shrinking isn’t automatic, and must be activated independently of the size-changing. So he may retain his full weight and strength at six inches. Conversely, he can, since the Power of the Atom, reduce his weight while still at full height, to allow him to glide about as he does when shrunk.

His mass seems to disappear to an extra-dimensional location, and since the Power of the Atom he’s been able to access additional mass from this location allowing him brief bursts of strength while at full size.

He’s able to transport himself along phone lines by shrinking himself small enough to ride the signals, and has adapted to travelling on photon signals along fiber optic cable. Mobile phones did take some getting used to once he returned from the jungle, but they no longer explode when he arrives through them. Recent changes to his technology allow him to take others with him when travelling in this manner, also allowing him to shrink other willing individuals (he’s done these things before, but they usually required some extra device to be built, or involved a degree of risk).

He’s developed a fighting style against regular sized opponents which involves jumping about, shifting from feather light to glide around, to his full weight for striking and manipulating his opponent’s moves, and shifting his size to evade attacks and move through obstacles. He often uses his opponent’s movements against them, using judo to throw far larger people around. His fighting skills have developed over the years, especially following his time in the Amazon, where he became proficient with the sword.

Ray was the leading scientist of the JLA, and remained as scientific advisor even when a reservist. He’s built a number of devices on and beyond the bleeding edge of current terrestrial technology, and has two Ph.D.’s (one, presumably, in physics, but it isn’t stated what the other is in).

History

From a young age Ray was fascinated with the way things worked, and developed an interest in science early on, which has never left him. His father died of cancer while he was still young, and his mother died before he became the Atom.

A graduate student and fellowship research physicist at Ivy University, after recovering a fragment of a white dwarf star which fell to Earth Ray Palmer became obsessed with finding a way to compress matter, to make farming more efficient, and enable larger loads to be transported using less energy. Fashioning a lens from the white dwarf star matter, he discovered that ultra-violet rays shone through them temporarily shrunk inanimate objects, but that the objects would blow up when they returned to their original size.

While leading a nature club hike, a cave-in stuck him and his students in a remote cave. Having brought a lens with him, he managed to secretly use it on himself, and made a hole big enough for them to escape through. Expecting to explode any moment, he was surprised to find himself simply returning to normal size without a problem. Further experimentation found nothing to explain the difference, so he decided it must be due to some odd factor of his genetic makeup.

Fabricating a suit out of the white dwarf star matter (which would be invisible and intangible at his normal size) he assumed the identity of the Atom.

His first case was helping his girlfriend Jean Loring win her first case as a lawyer, since she’d refused his repeated marriage proposals until she was successful enough in her career.

He grew to enjoy the super-heroing beyond its utility of getting Jean established, and soon clashed with super-villains such as Chronos, Jason Woodrue (the Floronic Man), and the Bug-Eyed Bandit. His aid was also often requested by the CIA and FBI for dealing with communist spies, and he’d often be transported into Eastern Europe via a phone call.

His mentor Professor Alpheus V. Hyatt had developed a Time Pool, which created a small hole in time and space through which he’d drop a magnet to see what he could pick up, and the Atom would often secretly tag along to go sight-seeing (and usually foiling some crime) in the past.

Offered membership in the Justice League of America, Atom accepted, and served on and off with most iterations of the team. He also developed a friendship with team mate Hawkman, and they often worked together.

Eventually revealing his identity to Jean, they were married.

Sword of the Atom

The time he spent in costume, along with that devoted to his job, and the time Jean spent on her growing practice, eventually drove the pair apart, but Ray didn’t notice until he stumbled upon Jean kissing her law partner, Paul Hoben. Deciding to spend some time apart, Ray went to investigate signs of white dwarf star matter in the Amazon jungle.

His plane crashed, but Ray survived, although he was stuck at a height of six inches. He soon discovered the source of the energies came from the disused technology of a civilisation of Katarthans, six inch tall yellow skinned humanoid aliens (their home planet wasn’t named at the time, and they were initially called Morlaidhans, after their main city on Earth, Morlaidh). Over the centuries on Earth, with no support from home, they’d lost most of their knowledge of how their technology worked, and had become barbaric.

Joining, and eventually leading, a rebellion against the oppressive ruler, Atom fell in love with the Morlaidhan Princess, Laethwen. They overthrew the oppressor, but he’d sabotaged the white dwarf star matter engines to destroy Morlaidh, and Atom could only give its inhabitants time to escape by absorbing the energy himself to delay the explosion. This left him growing back to his natural size, but also thrown unconscious from the site.

He was eventually found by Jean, who, despite his being declared legally dead after being missing for so many months, had come searching for him, and he returned to the outer world. He found it unfulfilling after his time in the Amazon, though, and couldn’t forget Laethwen.

Coming to accept they no longer loved each other as they had, Ray and Jean divorced, and worked with their friend Norman Brawler to write a biography revealing Atom’s identity, since he had no intention of returning from the Amazon, to which he returned. By this time the stresses of size changing meant his body could no longer carry on doing so. He chose to permanently live at six inches high. Finding the Morlaidhans, he was reunited with Laethwen, and they married.

Power of the Atom

His happy life in the Amazon came to an end when a logging operation threatened the Morlaidhans. He tried to stop the loggers, but failed, and the entire area was razed in a fire, so he didn’t even have any bodies to find. Distraught, but with his powers resurfacing (possibly due in part to absorbing the white dwarf star matter in the earlier destruction of Morlaidh), he returned to Ivy Town.

Having trouble adapting to life now his identity was public, he tried adopting a couple of others, but they didn’t last long, and he felt as though he was endangering his friends by hanging around them, so he nearly accepted a job offer from the CIA. Until he learned they’d been responsible for killing the Morlaidhans, as a way to regain his services.

Hunting down those responsible, he permanently shrunk them to six inches tall, leaving them to continue serving the CIA, and he dropped out of sight.

He was soon approached by Amanda Waller and Sarge Steel, who believed the action against him had been part of a larger campaign by a group called the Cabal, to gain control of all super-heroes, and that he’d been wanted as much for his knowledge of others’ secret identities as for his powers.

They faked his death in an explosion, using one of the shrunken CIA agents they’d somehow acquired, leaving only enough remains to test that the body had experienced size changing. They set up a new Atom, Adam Clay, as a member of the Suicide Squad, while making a deal with one of the shrunken agents, Sting, whereby he gave a full confession, was restored to his full size, and went to prison, while Ray infiltrated the Micro Force disguised as him.

He hadn’t uncovered much information about the Cabal by the time the Micro Force clashed with the Suicide Squad, and he was unable to stop Blacksnake killing Cray and the other members of Micro Force, but did capture him. Blacksnake was assassinated before he could give any evidence.

[Waller and Steel did learn a bit more than they revealed to him, and threatened the President with releasing it to the super-hero community should any further such actions be taken.]

Teen Atom

While fighting Monarch during Zero Hour, Ray was de-aged to a teenager, and his memories of the intervening years became hazy. Returning to Ivy to try working out what to do with his life, he became involved when teenager Isaiah Crockett was kidnapped by aliens. Isaiah and three other teens were half-alien, created as part of a breeding experiment. With Ray’s help they broke free, and returned to Earth where they became the new Teen Titans, with Ray joining as a mentor, and developing a friendship with Isaiah.

During the Genesis wave his powers were altered so that he could grow as well as shrink, but this didn’t last long, as he soon suffered spurts of weird aging, which was cured when Waverider returned him to Zero Hour, where he took a scan of Ray before Monarch attacked him, imposing that on his current body. Restored to his adult state, he was reunited with the Titans as they confronted the aliens who created them, and the team disbanded soon after.

Identity Crisis

With Jean having divorced Paul, Ray became worried about her safety after the murder of Sue Dibny (wife of the Elongated Man), and they began growing closer again, especially after Jean survived an apparent attempt on her life.

The reconciliation collapsed when he learned that Jean had killed Sue, intending only to harm her in an attempt to draw Ray back to her out of concern. She’d used his old size changing belt, but misjudged the damage, then panicked and tried to cover her tracks. Her sanity deteriorating by that point, she’d faked an attack on herself to draw Ray closer, and hired Captain Boomerang to murder Jack Drake (Tim (Robin) Drake’s father) to make it seem the work of a serial killer.

Having her committed to Arkham Asylum, Ray walked away from his life, shrinking to microscopic size and disappearing.

New Worlds

Exploring a number of sub-atomic worlds, Ray eventually discovered the Multiverse, and travelled to alternate worlds similar to his own. Most seemed even worse than his, but he eventually arrived on Earth-51, which was nicer, although still a decade or two behind his (but where time moved faster). Locating his counterpart in that dimension, he arrived just in time to see himself die in a lab accident.

Learning his counterpart had built a machine to travel to other Earths, to inoculate them against a dangerous, and sentient, virus which threatened the Multiverse, he decided to replace his counterpart, carrying on his mission. He also built a new life for himself, meeting and marrying the Jean Loring of this new world (he arrived just before Earth-51 Ray’s blind date with Jean, so they’d never met), and he became part of the Justice League of America. The League’s activities proved more successful on Earth-51, and within five years they disbanded, having created a peaceful world.

Countdown

His peaceful world was shattered when the Challengers from Beyond (Jason Todd, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, and ’Bob‘ the Monitor) arrived searching for him. He revealed his history to Jean, Barry and Iris, and Ralph and Sue. Before the shock could clear, however, ’Bob‘ turned on his team mates, since the purpose of his search had been so he could kill Palmer, whose actions threatened the plans of a sect of the Monitors. He failed, but killed Jean before Ray’s eyes.

Earth-51 was soon destroyed during an invasion by Monarch’s forces, but Ray fled with the Challengers, and helped them prevent the Great Disaster, but not before seeing yet another world depopulated, this time by the virus.

Returning to his home Earth, learning that Jean had become Eclipso and recently died, and he discovered his Atom identity had been assumed by Ryan Choi, who believed he’d been corresponding with Ray for years. It turned out to be a ploy by Chronos and Lady Chronos, which the Atoms took care of, and Ray gave Ryan his blessing to continue with the identity.

He then joined Donna, Kyle and Forager as border guards of the Multiverse, keeping an eye on the Monitors. He returned to Earth during the Final Crisis, however, working alongside Choi to access the other Earth’s to help save them.

Blackest Night

When the dead were animated by Nekron, Atom arrived at Hawkman and Hawkgirl’s place just after they’ve been killed and revived, and he only survived by hiding in the Black Lantern Ring his friend now wore. Leaping out of it when the Black Lanterns attacked Flash (the recently returned Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (the less-recently returned Hal Jordan), he helped them fight off the undead, facing the reanimated Ralph and Sue Dibny.

Shoring up Earth’s defenders, Ray and Mera went to the aid of the JSA, where Ray helped Damage against his reanimated father (the original Atom), only to see Damage killed by the reanimated Jean. With the vast army of Black Lanterns threatening to overwhelm their forces, Ganthet forced the Power Rings of the gathered representatives of each corps to produce temporary duplicates which scattered in search of appropriate hosts. The Indigo Ring selected Ray because of his compassion.

Protecting Indigo-1, leader of the Indigo Tribe, while she called the rest of the tribe to Earth, Ray again faced Jean, who took him inside Indigo-1’s Power Ring, where he had to again face the losses he’d suffered in recent years. He made peace with what had happened, accepting Jean’s death and moving on, and then destroyed her Black Lantern form.

The allied Lantern forces defeated the Black Lanterns, and the temporary Ring Ray wore disappeared. With the revelation of the White Lanterns, Hawkman and Hawkwoman were resurrected.

Personality

Usually even-tempered and curious, Ray was always one of the more approachable members of the League, although events in the last few years have made him more reserved and pessimistic, and he developed a hard edge while in the jungle. He nevertheless retains a compassion for everyone which drew the Indigo Ring to him.

From a young age he had an interest in understanding how things worked, which developed as he became a scientist into a dedication to whatever scientific investigation he was currently occupied with, and he’d focus all his energies on finding the answers. This drive carried over to his costumed activities (which were initially adopted to get his girlfriend to marry him, since Jean insisted on becoming a successful lawyer before she’d accept one of his numerous proposals), and he embraced the challenges it provided with as much determination as his research, to the eventual detriment of his first marriage.

It seems that after he married Jean (the first time) the challenge (which had primarily been in getting her to accept a proposal) was no longer there, so he spent too much time on other challenges. When he met the Jean Loring of Earth-51 he consciously made an effort to counter this side of his personality. When he does suffer trouble with personal relationships, though, his tendency is to run away.

Writeup completed on the 27th of January, 2011.