How about Firestorm Team-Up?

@DrNobody – I gotta assume someone will take up Ray Palmer sooner or later in the New 52. His character has lots of potential. It just needs a good writer.

@Frank – Combo titles? BLACK & BLUE, Frank! Get on board! In all seriousness, I was envisioning Ray and Ronnie being merged quite often. The going solo adventures of the Atom would be the more rare occurrences. Either way, this whole thing is the pipe-dream of one deranged fanboy.

@Keith – If memory serves, during Joe Kelly’s JLA run, Ronnie was caught talking to himself and even saying “we”. I’ve always wondered if Joe planned to reveal that Ronnie was already merged with someone and we just didn’t know it.

Thanks again!

Firestorm is a tough character to partner up with, and the Atom kind of works in that respect. I think Ray joining the Firestorm Matrix might be a cool trick as a one-off event in a team book, but I don’t feel like it would hold interest in a long form team-up. It’s like when shrinking heroes ride on a fired arrow toward a target. The first time Hawkeye and Ant Man did it, or that one time Connor Hawke fired Atom at Darkseid– very cool. If the same thing occurred within six months, folks would forget the first cool event and just groan from the repetition.

I do wish, especially in light of the New 52 First Wave cancellation, that DC tried more combo titles. That said, The Atom & Hawkman died pretty quick, and the only example I can think of that really panned out was Power Man & Iron Fist. Christopher Priest once proposed combining Steel with Guy Gardner: Warrior, which would have been awesome, but DC didn’t bite.

What I think DC really needs, and has for decades, is a second Justice League type team for popular, compatible former members. They keep trying to do that with JLI, but they work best funny and under Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire. I mean mainstays like the Atom and Firestorm, who can hold up to creative team changes and engage in more straightforwards heroics.

Finally, when I look at how Geoff Johns has handled Aquaman especially, it makes me wish that he’d worked on the Atom instead of farming him out to Jeff Lemire. Unlike Captain Marvel, you can go dark and violent with Ray Palmer, preferably aided by Gary Frank. Unfortunately, that’s not how things shook out, and now it looks like we’ll have an All-New, Y-Chromosomeless Atom in “Trinity War.”