Ray Palmer

The Atom

Ray Palmer

## Biography

### Early Life

Ray Palmer was born on April 7th, 1975 to David and Susan Palmer in Ivy Town, Connecticut. Susan was a neurologist and David an esteemed biologist. David and Susan had a difficult marriage, and when Ray was eight, they separated, however both were committed to giving Ray and his brother Sidney a good life and put aside their personal differences to raise their children.

Ray was not popular in school, and so he dove into fantasy books and films, while also developing an interest in his parents’ science careers. He explored medical journals and did his own independent studies into neurology and biology. When he was thirteen, his mother started dating archaeologist Theodore Ralston, who gave her a necklace with the fragment of a white dwarf star that had fallen to Earth in a meteor shower. The relationship was fast and furious and ended with Susan gifting the necklace to Ray.

Ray theorized that ultraviolet light combined with the star fragment could allow him to shrink and grow objects. He tested this, accidentally exploding one of Sidney’s car tires. While Sidney was angry, David and Susan were both impressed, and decided to get him a top dollar tutor in the form of Professor Al Pratt from the local university.

Al was impressed by Ray’s knack for inventing and more struck by his interest in matter manipulation. He pulled some strings and even got possession of the Matter Master’s wand for Ray to experiment on, which made him more than giddy. Pratt arranged a meeting with Ray’s parents and high school advisors and suggested they fast track him through high school so he could train directly under him at Ivy University.

At age sixteen, Ray graduated high school, and attended Ivy University on a full-ride scholarship. However, being the youngest in the dorm hall made him an outcast, so Ray spent nearly all of his time studying in the biology and physics departments. Pratt also began letting Ray have special office hours, where they began developing the first Bio-Belt together.

In his final year of college, Ray discovered that Pratt was a member of the Justice Society of America, and both were troubled by Adrian Veidt’s recent attacks and sought to calm the existential fears that accompanied the attacks. They were not alone in this endeavor, and soon, Ray was recruited to the Coast City branch of STAR Labs.

Ray bid farewell to Pratt and the professors and students he had come to regard as friends. He took the Bio-Belt to STAR Labs, where he spent a few years fine-tuning the design and attempting to stabilize the dwarf star fragment, and allowed himself to begin growing and shrinking. Unfortunately for him, during one of the preliminary tests, he blew up part of a city block.

To assist with the ensuing lawsuit from Coast City’s government, lawyer Jean Loring was hired to represent the labs. While taking a deposition from Palmer, things got a little bit heated, and the two ended up having dinner and a glass of wine together. A whirlwind romance ensued and the two were wed in 1997, just as the world was experiencing the metahuman population boom.

### The Atom

Unfortunately for Ray and Jean, life would pull them in opposite directions. Jean was offered a lucrative position as head of LuthorCorp’s legal team in Metropolis, while Ray was offered the director position of a new STAR Labs branch right next to his hometown in Happy Harbor. Both had to take the jobs, and they tried the long distance thing (Ray even discovered a way to travel through phone lines to see her using the Bio-Belt), but it ultimately fell apart when Jean met another attorney, Paul Hoben, and fell for him.

Ray was obviously dejected by this, so he made the Bio-Belt his pet project, focusing all his energy on that, which led him to discover a micro dimension he nicknamed “the Palmerverse”. He recruited Al Pratt to help him design a suit that would allow him to travel into the universe. Somehow, corporate saboteurs found out about this, and attacked the lab, taking both Al Pratt and his sons hostage. Palmer donned the experimental suit and used his size-altering abilities to fight them off and save the Pratts’ lives.

Al inspired Ray to take up the suit and his new abilities and fight crime with it. He was branded as “the Atom” and became the first modern hero of Happy Harbor and Ivy Town (but not the last). It didn’t take long for the Justice League to notice him, and Atom was in the second wave of membership for the team.

In the League, he became very close with his fellow inductees. He would often be invited to dinner parties with the Hawks, Elongated Man, and his wife. He proved himself as a valuable asset. When the Key attempted to break into the League’s base in Happy Harbor, Ray was first on scene and shrunk down to short-circuit his lock-picking device from the inside out.

With help from STAR Labs and his alma mater, Ray started the Fast Track Program, which would allow gifted high school students to take dual-credit classes at Ivy University that he and Al Pratt would co-teach, and gave them competitive internships at STAR Labs. The first to come through that award program was Karen Beecher.

One night, while coming back from patrol, in which he had endured a particularly rough battle and was in dire need of a patch-up, Ray snuck into the lab and found Karen studying late, who was shocked to see her mentor was Ivy Town’s own hero, the Atom, of whom she was a massive fan. Karen helped patch him up and then demanded the schematics for his suit so she could craft her own - and thus Bumblebee was born. Ray was hesitant to take on a protege, though most of the League already had, and only agreed to train her if she joined the Titans. Karen agreed.

Ray was a busy guy, splitting his time as a superhero, mentor, professor, and inventor. He didn’t lighten his load when he took on a second protege in the form of Ryan Choi in 2009, who would go on to become Micron and join the Titans. Soon after, Oliver Queen asked him for some help in Star City, so Ray jetted out for a few months to give his friend some assistance, where he fell in love with Team Arrow’s resident hacker Felicity Smoak. Felicity ended up tendering a resignation to Oliver at the end of Ray’s stay with them and returned to Happy Harbor to begin working at Ivy University as a comm professor. Within a few years, they were married.

Following the Justice League’s shutdown, Ray found himself with a lot more time on his hands, as did his assorted proteges, who found themselves back in Ivy Town with little to do. In between helping STAR Labs make medical advancements in meta-gene research, Ray re-opened his exploration of the Palmerverse, where he constructed a device to explore it. Al, Karen, and Ryan accompanied him on the journey, while Al’s kids were left to guard the lab.

While exploring this microverse, the team was divided amongst two colonies crumbling to a battalion of conquerors called the Extremists, commanded by a masked being known only as Lord Havok. While trapped in the colony of Angor, Ray befriended a council of scientists, humans who had been trapped there years prior.

The council, Ray, his team, and the other colony of Morlaidh teamed up to overthrow the Extremists, although the plot inadvertently brought Lord Havok (briefly) to Ivy Town, which caused Grant and AJ to get size-altering abilities, as well as giving Ray the same abilities, no longer requiring him to use the Bio-Belt. Al would give his life in the ensuing battle, asking Ray to carry on the legacy he began.

The Fast Track program has since been renamed the Pratt Program, and Ray’s Ivy Town based team has collectively become known as the Challengers, and they’ve expanded their ranks to include people like Doris Zuel, Mal Duncan, and LeTonya Charles, people united by the exploration of the unknown. As far as Ray is concerned, that is Pratt’s legacy.

## Trivia

* When Ray was sick as a child, his mother would often stay home and watch musicals with him, like *Singin' in the Rain* and *the Sound of Music*. Even now, when he's under the weather, those same movies never fail to raise his spirits.

## Notes

* His brother Sidney and his love of musicals are from the *Legends of Tomorrow* TV Show.
* In the comics, Rhonda Palmer was Ray's Earth-3 counterpart and the villain Atomica.