Doctors Palmer and Choi are tasked with finding the lost powers of the DCU. But what do they intend to do with them? Your Major Spoilers review of Justice League: The Atom Project #1 from DC Comics awaits!

JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE ATOM PROJECT #1

Writer: Ryan Parrott and John Ridley
Artist: Mike Perkins
Colorist: Adriano Lucas
Letterer: Wes Abbott
Editor: Matthew Levine and Paul Kaminski
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 1, 2024

Previously in Justice League: The Atom Project: The super powers of planet Earth are in chaos… and it’s up to the newly reformed Justice League to restore order to that chaos. Enter Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi, together as the heroes called The Atom. These brilliant minds get to work crafting the world’s first superpower reallocation and backup system, code named the Atom Project.

But not everyone wants their powers back, and Captain Atom is hell-bent on preventing his missing atomic abilities from ever being found.

LIFE ON THE RUN

As Justice League: The Atom Project #1 opens, we join Nathanial Adam on the run, having boarded a train. As unseen narrators discuss his dilemma, we find that the former Captain Atom hasn’t eaten in three days, and that he’s being trailed by armed members of the military. He leaps out of a moving train, falling into a lake below, only to be confronted by the original Atom, Ray Palmer. Cut back to the events that led to his exile, as we find Ray and his fellow Atom, Ryan Choi, trying to help a ten-year-old boy who has suddenly bonded with an undesignated electrical power set. His inability to control his new metahuman powers leads to utter chaos, including a near-death experience for his parents, but the Atoms save him, bringing him to the orbiting Watchtower, where he can be kept until they fix his powers.

That is, by the way, assuming that they can, something that Ryan Choi is still uncertain of.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN LOW-EARTH ORBIT

The surprising reveal is that Captain Atom is NOT on the run trying to avoid getting his nuclear powers back, as the solicitation implies. He’s actually got them back, as well as dozens of other powers, all of which he intends to keep out of the hands of the League. The reasons for this are still unclear, but Ray Palmer’s own words in this issue imply that they’re trying to access the powers not just to return them but to control who they return them to. It’s a really interesting premise, although having The Atom as the face of government overreach grinds my gears the wrong way, as I would have expected him to be on the side of Captain Atom in this conflict. The biggest fault with the issue is the art, which is VERY indistinct throughout, so much so that a conversation between the unmasked Ray and Ryan makes it hard to tell who is who. Both Atoms are sporting new costumes here, with Ryan in an armored suit that reminds me of the CW TV Atom, but again, the art is so indistinct that it’s hard to really tell if I like them or not.

BOTTOM LINE: THIS ONE HAS POTENTIAL

Despite those artistic issues (and the use of Ray Palmer as a metahuman crypto-fascist), Justice League: The Atom Project #1 is an exciting comic book that follows up on the most interesting thread coming out of Absolute Power, leading me to want to give it a chance despite earning 2.5 out of 5 stars overall. I will say that it’s good to have Captain Atom not being the “not to reason why” tough-guy soldier type that he so often ends up being portrayed as in recent years, and I am still wondering who the mysterious narrators are.

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