Serendipity

I don't read the Titans series - Teen Titans, sure, but not the parent title.

However, this week (as sometimes happens) I didn't get chance to head in and pick up my comics. Thankfully, my lovely wife volunteered to pick them up for me.

Terry, my comic shop dealer, has a standing order for me so knows what I'm getting but whether it's me or my wife, he often hands over the Titans to me. I simply tell him it's not for me, he slaps his head and says "It's Teen Titans you get, not this one," and we go about our day.

When my wife brought in my comics this week, I noticed he'd managed to slip in Titans: Villains For Hire Special which I simply put to one side thinking I'd get round to it at some point. Reading through a couple of blogs today, though, I find out that The Atom, Ryan Choi, gets killed in this one-shot and I can't help feeling more than a little sad and disappointed.

The All New Atom was one of my favourite series over the last few years, particularly when Gail Simone was writing it and it seems such a waste to throw the character away like this. Sure, Ray Palmer's back but why can't we have two Atoms in the DCU?

For all the love I have for DC, this seems like just another example (Jason Rusch, Wally West spring to mind) of them pushing aside the newer characters in favour of the old ones, those that the guys in charge now were reading when they were just comics fans like you and I.

Characters carrying on a legacy are apparently only safe if they're in the JSA.