2006 Atom: From Bruce Wayne's private files in the Batcomputer

Pencil art by Doug Braithwaite painted over by Alex Ross from the back pages of Justice #6 (August, 2006.) Text by Jim Krueger writing as Batman:

PROFESSOR RAY PALMER is a genius, a physicist who stumbled upon the remains of a white dwarf star. Palmer used fragments of the star to further his experiments in matter reduction. His experiments failed time and time again, but necessity and his belief that he could not fail forever forced Palmer to experiment upon himself, with success.

Palmer graduated from college and married Jean Loring. He became the Atom and used his life as a hero to fight crime and establish his wife's career as one of the predominant criminal lawyers in the state. Palmer became a hero for love. It is this notion that separates him from so many of the other members of the League. But I wonder, what would happen if Loring were not a part of the equation? I cannot believe the cavalier basis on which he fights crime. We cannot have relationships.

Palmer is capable of reducing himself to tiny, even subatomic, size. He can ride electronic impulses through phone lines. Despite all his discoveries, and all he experience battling crime, he has yet to find anything at a subatomic level that suggests a propensity for crime.

Crime is a choice, a matter of will. Modern sociology is the crime of suggesting that it is not.

Besides getting the Tiny Titan's origin wrong (he shrank to save himself and some students trapped in a cave-in) and expanding an aspect of his motivation into the whole of it, the Dark Knight just started rambling nonsensically like Alfred had slipped him a mickey. A devil in the details of a criminal's molecular make-up? The hell, Caped Crusader? Either you're madly overrated or your present writer is dumb as a bag of hammers.

The Batcomputer Files

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• Gorilla Grodd @ The Idol-Head of Diabolu
• Martian Manhunter @ The Idol-Head of Diabolu
• Wonder Woman @ Diana Prince is the New Wonder Woman
• Zatanna @ Justice League Detroit