A.T.O.M. Exosuit

"Well, I used my personal fortune to create an advanced exo-skeleton, which is powered by dwarf star alloy."

The A.T.O.M. Exosuit (Advanced Technology Operating Mechanism),^[1] officially designated O.M.A.C. by Queen Consolidated, is an exosuit designed by Ray Palmer. It was used by Ray in his exploits as a vigilante around Starling City^[1] as the Atom.^[2] Components of the suit are made out of dwarf star alloy, a rare substance that Ray had acquired during his final year as the CEO of Palmer Technologies.

The suit was later destroyed in the year 1641 by time traveler Nate Heywood after it was stolen by shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, when Nate and Ray became stranded in feudal Japan.^[3] However, after finding a large amount of dwarf star ore in 1874, Ray began working on recreating the A.T.O.M. suit, and finished it in time to fight the Dominators.

History[]

Ray Palmer had virtual blueprints for the A.T.O.M. Exosuit, which he holographically projected and observed.^[4] He later showed Felicity Smoak the blueprints after she suspected something was up, and he revealed to her his plans, asking that she help him.^[1] Felicity eventually agreed. After spending over a week with little rest and food, Ray Palmer had completed the exosuit and gave it a test through Starling City.^[5]

After Ra's al Ghul had the League of Assassins begin impersonating The Arrow, Ray made it his mission to bring him to justice. He used the suit at the scene of a crime that the Arrow had seemingly committed, with eight dead bodies surrounding him. He used the x-ray and facial recognition software built in to the suit to identify him as Oliver Queen. They later fought, with Ray easily overpowering the Arrow. However, he realized the suit's power source was located in the leg and so threw a flechette at it, reducing Ray to his knees, before he assured of their being on the same side.^[2]

Ray, along with Felicity, traveled to Central City to seek advice from Barry Allen's team, especially hoping for Cisco Ramon's help on fixing and improving the previously damaged power source. He later used the suit to save Tina McGee from Brie Larvan's swarm of robotic bees. With Cisco's giving him advice from the S.T.A.R. Labs truck, Ray lured the bees into a nearby lake, where the water fried their electronics, at the cost of frying his suit as well. With his jets malfunctioning, Ray managed to land inside the truck. He and Cisco then fist-pumped, the latter soon regretting it due Ray's glove being metallic. Afterwards, Ray confiscated one of the robotic bees, getting the idea to make the power source for his suit smaller.^[6]

After The Arrow was seemingly locked up in prison, Oliver Queen was forced to go to Ray for help to take on a meta-human, Jake Simmons. Ray tried to incapacitate him, but the plasma shots fired from his suit were simply absorbed by the man. Allowing Oliver to help, he controlled the suit remotely, using simple hand-to-hand combat to try and knock him out. However, Simmons used a shock of plasma to damage the suit and cut the link between them, meaning that Ray had to take over from Oliver. In the end, he beat him and flew him to Central City, to be locked in S.T.A.R. Labs' particle accelerator prison.^[7]

Sometime later, trying to prevent Ra's al Ghul and Oliver from destroying Starling City via bioweapon, Ray accompanied a team to Nanda Parbat. Though they couldn't stop the plane in time, their plan B, Ray, flew straight through it, seemingly stopping the attack. However, Ra's had kept the vial from the plane.^[8]

Finally returning home, Ray began to work on fixing his suit, hoping to spread a vaccine to the Alpha-Omega virus across Starling. However, as Oliver was in trouble, Ray stayed at Palmer Technologies while Felicity donned the exosuit, only just knowing how to fly. After the defeat of Ra's al Ghul, Ray attempted to test the suit's possible shrinking abilities. However, something went horribly wrong, and the suit generated an explosion, destroying several top floors of Palmer Technologies, though both it and Ray were unharmed and shrunken down.^[9] He remained trapped like this for several months and became Damien Darhk's prisoner. Darhk desired the suit for his own plans but couldn't use it while it was small. Ray managed to contact Felicity, revealing that he was alive, and provided her with a list of items to create a device that would restore him to full size. With Curtis Holt's aid, the device was created and Team Arrow rescued and restored Ray and the suit.^[10]

Ray avoided revealing his re-appearance, staying "dead" in the eyes of the public. At some point, he was recruited by Rip Hunter to become a part of his time-traveling team, bent on saving the world of 2166 from the tyrannical rule of Vandal Savage. After Ray left 2016, his brother Sydney Palmer has acquired the A.T.O.M. technology, claiming it as his own. Ray speculated that Sydney sold his research to the military, while his descendant Dr. Bryce claimed that Sydney was the one to create the company that would produce a line of autonomous robotic versions of the exosuit for the Kasnia Conglomerate.^[11]

In 2166, Ray enlisted Jackson's help in order to utilize the power of the Waverider's time drive to reverse the polarity of the suit's dwarf star matrix, thus also reversing its primary function, where instead of shrinking him, he was able to temporarily increase in size exponentially to fight the Leviathan.^[12]

After getting stranded in feudal Japan while attempting to rescue Nate Heywood, who had been sucked out of the Waverider's open door, Ray is knocked unconscious and held captive by the Shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, and his men. Tokugawa claims the suit for himself, despite Ray's bluff that the suit could kill him as it was designed for his body type. Ray is rescued by Mick Rory, Sara Lance and Amaya Jiwe as Tokugawa attacked them while wearing the suit. The Legends conclude that the only way to stop Tokugawa is to help Nate learn to "Steel on" as he was the only member impervious to the suit's weaponry but later told Nate the plan was to destroy the suit with Tokugawa still wearing it and ranted about how he had to destroy something that took weeks to create and that made him a hero. During a fight between Ray, Masako, the now-Steeled version of Nate and Tokugawa, Nate managed to cause the suit to explode while Tokugawa was busy preparing to attack Masako, killing Tokugawa in the process.^[3]

When the team traveled to the Old West in the year 1874, the Legends discovered a large amount of dwarf star ore, which Ray then said he could use to recreate his Exosuit.^[13] He completed it sometime before the Legends were called back to 2016 by Barry Allen to help Team Flash and Team Arrow fight off an alien invasion. This new suit was identical to the original but included a black visor to better conceal his identity. He showed it to Cisco, who said that he would help Ray update the suit as soon as the Dominators were defeated.^[14]

Capabilities[]

Functions[]

"Last year, Ray's fiancée was killed by Mirakuru men. And now he wants to protect the city, so he built a suit out of military-grade technology and he wants to put you in jail, so he used my software to track you down, and he scanned you with his X-rays and now he knows that you're the Arrow and he's going to tell the cops."

—Felicity Smoak to Oliver Queen^[src]

Flight: The suit contains high powered propulsion jets on the back, shoulders, upper arms, and in the legs, allowing the wearer to fly with great speed. The wearer can also perform aerodynamic feats with ease, as well as simply hover.^[5]
Enhanced durability: The suit can resist several forms of damage, such as bullets or arrows. It can be caught in explosions and not have a scratch on it, such as when he got hit with a missile while facing off against a jet, and being able to stand back up after crash landing.^[8]However, the facemask appears to be a weak point, as Deathbolt was able to crack it, and injure Ray's face.^[7]The other weak point is the main power source on the left hip of the suit, as it an be easily damaged and destroyed with a simple blade, causing the suit to lose all power and almost trap the user under the weight of the suit without the internal mechanisms holding it for the user. This can leave the user defenseless to outside attacks.^[2] Another flaw is the alpha-stabilizer under the left thruster, which if destroyed, causes the photons that stream from suit's weapons systems to overheat, leading to the suit experiencing somatic overload and exploding. This method allowed Nate Heywood to destroy the suit when Tokugawa Iemitsu used it, killing him.^[3]
Enhanced strength: The A.T.O.M. can somewhat increase its user's strength. When in motion, especially when it land hard after flight, it exerts great physical force, as much as a bullet, allowing it to give great damage to something as strong as concrete, easily creating large craters in concrete grounding when landing on it too hard. Its metallic composition can allow the physical force it generates to be as much as an object as hard as stone or metal, meaning a strike from the suit equals a strike from a metal or stone object with human strength or similar strength. The mechanism in the suit allows the wearer to exert great strength and force with inhuman ease. Ray was able to hurl Deathbolt across a room and into a wall, leaving a dent.^[7] When Felicity wore the suit, she was strong enough to catch and lift Oliver while flying with enough momentum.^[9] Strength is unaffected by the suit's shrinking, allowing Ray to physically overpower multiple opponents while shrunken and in flight. While small, Ray even used his flight to pierce clean through one of The Hunters like a bullet. Ray has even shown that he can use the energy weapons on his forearms while he is punching an opponent to further enhance his attacks. However, Vandal Savage managed to overpower Ray while the latter wore this suit, using Ray's own momentum against him.

"And by help, you mean money and counsel, and not a suit powered by... dwarf star alloy that fires lasers at people?"

"Well, they aren't lasers. That would be ridiculous. They're compressed hard light beams."

—Felicity Smoak and Ray Palmer^[src]

Energy blasts: The suit's primary offensive function is a direct energy weapon on each forearm that creates blasts of focused blue energy. These energy blasts are powerful enough to crack stone, dent metal and physically repel a target, while they also are capable of knocking a target unconscious, and causes small explosion on impact with a harder and thicker surface. The weapons and their computerized targeting system are both manually activated by the wearer. The suit builds up charge on the right arm to fire the weapon's charge, meaning that it is not exactly instantaneous.^[2] With some upgrades, the suit can fire its energy noticeably faster and can recharge far faster than originally. Only the size of the blasts, not their capabilities or power, are reduced by the suit's shrinking. As seen in a fight with Vandal Savage's men, the blasters can be knocked off if hit hard enough. In addition, it is revealed that the blasts can reduced and condensed into blowtorch or laser like welding beam, which he used to repair damage on the exterior of the Waverider. Once, Ray punched Chronos while firing a blast, combining his strength and energy weapons to enhance his attacks further.^[15]
- Electricity projection: The suit is equipped with gloves that project arcs of high voltage electricity via the fingertips. The electricity is capable of sending a target backwards and is not lethal, though it may be able to harness higher voltage for lethal attacks. In addition, this weapon can fire in a millisecond whereas the primary solid light weapon takes a few seconds or less to charge up and build energy to fire, making the electric weapon slightly faster in functionality than the primary weapon.
High-spectrum portable radiograph: The suit has an in-built high-spectrum radiograph, essentially allowing Ray x-ray vision through objects or scan objects at all angles, even the most obscure or microscopic.^[2]
Advanced computer system: The suit's computer systems are capable of scanning objects and identifying in seconds, even if the object is obscured. These systems can create a near three dimensional image of whatever it sees and can uses to this to render a scanned object and other information surrounding it within its advanced heads-up-display (HUD). The HUD is capable of processing several images at once. It also has a targeting system and projects targeting reticles on the HUD. The suits targeting systems are in since with its weapons and can activate and use a selected weapon milliseconds after selecting a target.
- Voice recognition: The A.TO.M. suit can recognize and execute Ray's commands, like activation of the suit, projecting energy blasts, reducing the power of said energy blasts and calculating the target. However, in order to do this, Ray's voice needs to be clear and cannot be muffled.^[16]
Advanced facial recognition software: Felicity Smoak built the suit to make use of facial recognition, regardless of how vague or hidden it is, meaning it is capable of scanning any target and making a nearly instantaneous match to the subject.^[2]
Neural link: A new addition to Ray's suit allows anyone wearing a special headset to control the A.T.O.M. suit. This can be used by Palmer in the A.T.O.M. suit, for ease of use, or from an external source to control the suit from afar.
Size alteration:
- Size changing beam: It is revealed that Ray has designed a red energy beam on his arm that can shift an object's mass, such as when he shrank down an Nth metal meteorite primed to detonate and reduce its subsequent explosion to a tiny and harmless burst.^[17] This was also demonstrated when he restored the Waverider back to its proper size after it was shrunk into a model figurine when the Legion of Doom altered reality.^[18] This function can also temporary shrink a living creature for some time, but they'll eventually return to its original size.^[19]
- Growing: By properly charging the A.T.O.M suit with enough advanced energy, such as from the Waverider's auxiliary time drive, it can reverse the polarity of the dwarf star matrix, allowing the wearer to grow to gigantic sizes while proportionately increasing their strength as well.^[12] The weaponry of the suit, which remains intact and usable, likewise become much stronger. Later, Ray developed a way to not only increase his size at will with the suit alone, but also be able to increase the size of only parts of his body, such as a single arm, with no loss of balance and control.^[20]
- Shrinking: By utilizing nanites similar to those used to shrink Palmer's blood clot in his brain,^[21] the suit is able to shrink the space between atoms, even keeping the subject shrunken down after removing the suit.^[22] This ability does not effect strength or the suit's hard light blasts. In addition it can be made portable by shrinking it, leaving it with the appearance with a small figurine that can be carried around in Ray's pocket until he makes it enlarge and causes it to automatically open for him to put on and use.
Space survival: The A.T.O.M. suit contains an oxygen supply to allow the wearer to survive in the vacuum of space. The suit's visor also extends to completely cover the wearer's face, keeping the oxygen contained.
Ionic energy focusing: It is revealed that Ray can focus the ionic energy of the suit into objects, such as a sword.^[23]

Appearances[]

Arrow[]

Season 3

Season 4

"Lost Souls"

Season 5

"Invasion!" (flashbacks)

The Flash[]

DC's Legends of Tomorrow[]

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

"The Virgin Gary"
"Witch Hunt"
"Dancing Queen"
"Tender is the Nate"
"Legends of To-Meow-Meow" (gauntlet; puppet)
"Terms of Service" (mentioned)
"Hey, World!" (gauntlet)

Season 7

"wvrdr_error_100 not found" (memory)

Supergirl[]

Season 5[]

"Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part One"

Vixen[]

Season 2[]

The Chronicles of Cisco[]

Post 8 "Chapter Six: Brie Larvan" (mentioned)

Comics[]

Crisis on Infinite Earths Giant[]

"Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part 1"

Gallery[]

Concept artwork[]