Story Time

Okay, I've been getting questions about Nuke, here and on my email account, so I guess it's time for a little story. I'm hesitant to tell it, since it's as much about my father's origins as it is my mentor's and Nuke's, but here goes.

Once upon a time, there was a scientist named Jonah Stevens. He worked in Arkady Industries' experimental lab in Vineyard, Illinois in the 70's and early 80's. His specialty was nuclear reactors, and he was instrumental in the synthesis an experimental isotope originally found in a crashed meteorite that produced much stronger fission energy than comparable amounts of the same material.

Now, in the same laboratory, a wretched little man named Doctor Niles Benton was beginning a process that would irradiate ceramic-coated steel in a way that would make it nearly unbreakable. Unbeknownst to his colleagues, Doctor Benton had stolen this technique from a former mentor and friend, whose face and body he had scarred heavily in an attempt to kill his mentor and take this procedure for his own. That friend was Doctor Calvin Lisme.

Doctor Lisme, once he had recovered from the botched assassination attempt, covered his face and body in duranium, the new steel, armor, and determined to ruin his former protege in revenge. First, he released data to the patent office and every major industrial company in America about duranium, effectively making it open source and ruining Benton's attempt to get rich off it himself. Then, Doctor Lisme, now calling himself "Doctor Cataclysm", locked Benton in the Arkady lab late at night, locked the area down, and set the experimental new reactor to overload, thus killing Benton and erasing any evidence he had ever invented Duranium.

However, two people were also trapped in the lab. One was Doctor Stevens. The other, Conner Ferrian. Conner was a security guard at the time, trying to support his teenaged delinquent son and younger twins. That teenaged delinquint, by the way, was me. Conner had seen Doctor Cataclysm in the duranium infusion room and had investigated, only to be locked in and the creation cycle put on automatic.

Doctor Stevens had been knocked unconcious by my predecessor at ground zero, the reactor chamber. He woke up with just enough time to selflessly seal himself into the reactor, in an attempt to also seal the inevitable explosion in with him. When he told the story, Nuke claimed his last thoughts were of his wife and his infant daughter.

When the fallout cleared and the duranium infusion cycle were finished, instead of two corpses, two super-humans were born.

By some twisted miracle, either of genetics or shear force of will, Conner Ferrian survived the infusion process--only he had become a man made of duranium. Super strong and nearly invulnerable, he praised Jesus (I'm so not kidding) for this second chance to do something with his life, and decided to become super-hero American Steel. Only two other people have survived this process, and I didn't even have the whole enchilada done on me. That other one's Red Steel, his Russian counterpart.

Jonah was far less lucky.

To say Jonah Stevens survived the explosion would be a stretch. You see, Jonah was a latent psychic, around 5.0, ten times the normal person. When faced with his mortality, Jonah focused his mind inward, even as radioactive fire burned away his flesh and bones and meat. In that split second after the bottled radioactive explosion faded, Dr. Stevens was no longer a man. "He" was a man-shaped pillar of radioactive fire, held together only by shear force of will.

Stevens tried to return home, but his family did not recognize him. They feared him, and in the frustration of his furiously strained mind, he detonated in a tiny atomic blast. His wife died instantly, but his daughter survived. She's the supervillain Fallout, by the way. She and I dated briefly. It didn't work out. She has hella daddy issues.

Anyway, American Steel's first act as a superhero was to stop the rampaging Stevens from burning Arkady to the ground. Then the newly christened Nuke built himself a containment suit and started his career of revenge and insanity. He was a regular villain for Steel after that, though he also tangled with Miss Atom and the Mississippi Grizzly regularly, the first due to overlapping themes and the second due to location. He was even in the Corrosive Company, that anti-Steel league that the Doc put together. This lasted until American Steel told Nuke that the first Doc was responsible for the explosion that had ended Nuke's life.

The fight after that was supposed death #5 for the Doc, as the CC's headquarters was nuked by Nuke at the climax. God bless emergency bomb shelters.

And here I am. Steel's son and the Doc's protege. More on what happened last week later.