The Atom

The CW’s superhero series Arrow re-imagines Green Arrow for a TV audience as a tough, often ruthless vigilante bent on setting things right in his home of Starling City by punishing the wicked. ComicsAlliance’s Matt Wilson is back for the third season of the popular series in our recap feature we're officially dubbing Pointed Commentary. This week: Smoak and Oliver try going on a date (with explosive results), Dig becomes a dad, and Peter Stormare barely says one intelligible word.

We'll be focusing here on the second issue of the maxiseries, the unwieldily titled The Multiversity: The Society of Super-Heroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World, written by Grant Morrison with pencils by Tom Strong's Chris Sprouse, inks by Karl Story and Walden Wong, and gorgeous colors by Dave McCaig. I'll admit here from the beginning that while I can talk about this series' relationship to the DC Universe and Morrison's oeuvre, I'm close to clueless about the vagaries of early 20th century pulp fiction and would be incredibly interested in hearing from more learned readers whatever I've missed from that angle. That said, there's still a great deal of meat to dig into in this issue, which serves as a sort of conceptual counterpoint to Final Crisis's opening scene, showing us the end of Anthro and Vandal Savage's 40,000-year feud. So, with no further ado...

Once, he was the biggest superhero in the world, figuratively. Now, he's going to be the smallest. Literally. Brandon Routh, who was the Man of Steel in Superman Returns, will reportedly have a recurring role on the CW's hit series Arrow next season as Ray Palmer, known to comics fans as the Atom.

For the past week, a debate over a variant cover to IDW's Powerpuff Girls #6 has raged on the internet, seemingly dividing people into a "it's sexual and kids shouldn't see it" camp and "it's harmless and you're gross for thinking it's gross" camp. The chief spokesman for the former camp, Dennis Barger, Jr. of WonderWorld Comics in Michigan, said the cover sexualized young girl

While Ray Palmer didn't require reanimating during "Blackest Night," the size-changing hero is nonetheless finding new life during this summer's "Brightest Day" care of "Sweet Tooth" creator Jeff Lemire and "Dynamo 5" artist Mahmud Asrar (with a cover by Gary Frank)...