Doctor Solar Day!

Jim Shooter was born on tomorrow's date in 1951. Shooter was a teenager phenom of sorts, working professionally for DC when he was just fourteen on The Legion of Super-Heroes. He returned to comics after college and eventually found himself at Marvel after a turbulent time in the lates 70's. He brought stability to the outfit, but he bruised some toes and egos along the way. He went on to participate and found several new companies, the most successful of which was Valiant. 

With the demise of Gold Key comics and later still the Whitman imprint which had replaced it for a time, the Doctor Solar character lay dormant for many years. Then Jim Shooter and his associates wanted to start up a new comic book company after Shooter's dismissal from Marvel.

While at Marvel Shooter had tried to initiate a "New Universe", one apart from the more traditional superhero one and in which the laws of nature and science were more consistent with the real world we live in. There would be an attempt at verisimilitude which was largely impossible in the sprawling Marvel Universe, full as it had become with all manner of super-beings.  This New Universe was pretty much a failure save for a few titles like DP7 and Psi-Force both of which had more than a tiny similarity to Marvel's X-Men.

Shooter took this basic idea of a new universe though and used it as the template for his new company which was dubbed Valiant Comics. The core of Valiant was familiar names from the vintage Gold Key imprint of decades past such as Magnus, Turok, and Solar. 

The Doctor Solar we meet in this new rendition is much different. In an origin story which weirdly was serialized in the first ten issues of the series, while the main story itself started where the origin would eventually end, this saga was one filled with mystery from the get-go.

Like the Doctor Solar of the Gold Key comics this one was the product of a nuclear accident. Dr.Philip Seleski is a fan of the vintage comics and also a brilliant man who creates fusion technology which hopefully will give the world vast power. But it goes wrong and he is changed into a godlike being who slowly comes to terms with his new status while those around him such as love interest Gayle Nordheim and his boss Dr.Dobson grow to fear him. Added to the cast this time is a troubled woman named Erica Pierce who comes to be a critical part of Valiant's storytelling. Selesky, who sometimes jokingly refers to himself as "Solar, the Polish Sun God" grows to use his power more and more trying at times to remove what he sees as threatening nuclear power and consequently the authorities become wary. In a final move he takes Gayle with him and in an act of foolish bravado ends up destroying the world as we know it. The world then he recreates and this then is the Valiant universe, now changed in weird ways and full of super-powered possibilities not before possible. In that world he eventually finds a role which calls upon the unrealistic optimism of the vintage Doctor Solar of the classic Gold Key Comics.

It's complicated to say the least. But it is a full-blooded realization of what being a superhero might really be, a challenging and engaging take on the character. Eventually Shooter is ushered out of the company he helped create and Solar goes on to become a mainstay for the Valiant imprint.

Eventually though the end comes after many changes in title, direction and even ownership. The 90's were a heady time for comics with lots of money folks seeking to make bundles on the fan interest the funny books created. It made for some bad comics and for some greedy outcomes which eventually nearly killed off the industry.

But that wasn't the end of Doctor Solar Man of the Atom.

Jim Shooter made a compact with Dark Horse Comics and produced eight more Doctor Solar issues about a half decade ago. They featured some very refined art and were heavy on the science which like the Valiant stories of many years before played with the conceits of the superhero and applied them to a more realistic world. While interesting the comics were not especially exciting and the series was cancelled.

But that was still not the end of Doctor Solar Man of the Atom.

Eventually Dynamite Comics got the license and (as usual) produced some few issues but dozens of covers. 

And that wraps up Solar reflections for now. Doctor Solar has proven to be a durable character and vivid concept. The costume is so simple and memorable that it has helped certainly and it's ironic that is the case since Gold Key was so reluctant to create such a distinctive look.

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Solar Reflections Four!

In the fourth and final Dark Horse Doctor Solar Man of the Atom volume we find a delightful blend of vintage superhero yarns from across many many years as the series winds down and then gets revived a time or two.

Doctor Solar battles King Cybernoid in all the remaining Gold Key issues of the series, the android with the brain of Solar's longtime implacable foe Nuro. The series loses much of its distinctive science fictional flavor in attempting to achieve a purely superhero tone.

Dick Wood is the writer of record as the series tumbles along and Al McWilliams does one issue before giving way to Ernie Colon who gives the series a lighter touch and a bit more zip in terms of action. Jose Delbo steps in to handle the last issue of the 60's run.

Then in 1980 Whitman (formerly Gold Key) attempt to revive the series and publish for the first time the second part of the Wood-Delbo story which had begun a decade before. After that scribe Roger McKenzie is brought in to craft new stories with veteran Dan Spiegle handling the artwork. The tone of the McKenzie-Spiegle issues is completely different, very much in keeping with the slightly darker tone of comics of the late Bronze Age as Solar battles King Cybernoid for a final fatal time and a dour villain called the Sentinel.

The volume closes out with a blast to the Gold Key past with a singular issue of The Occult Files of Dr.Spektor in which Doctor Solar appears as a guest star to help rescue Spektor from a charge of murder. The story by Don Glut and the artwork by Jesse Santos is quite yummy.

And that's a wrap. Doctor Solar Man of the Atom was a product of the Cold War, when the glamour and effects of the atomic bomb were an all-consuming fascination for much of the world. Starting in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis and wrapping up in the early 80's when the Cold War was nearing its final years, the character seems to embody that phenomenon in many ways.

But Solar was not done, not yet. More on the valiant efforts to revive Doctor Solar after Western Publishing's Gold Key and Whitman brands were long gone next time.

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Solar Reflections Three!

In the third volume of Doctor Solar Man of the Atom from Dark Horse we find a fully-realized superhero. Gold Key had been reluctant to dive into the superhero pool, clearly showing a disdain for the underwear crowd which commanded so much attention in the field. But eventually they follow the patterns and give us a Doctor Solar who functions in many ways like a hero in the classic modes.

Paul S. Newman, the ubiquitous writer for Gold Key continued to handle the chores on that end and Frank Bolle had successfully taken over the art, if his style was somewhat less dynamic than what had come before. With this team we continue to get stories which are rock solid science fiction such as when Doctor Solar is forced to travel back in time to stop a deadly doomsday device by going to before it began, and later he confronts a sun spun out of control and threatening to destroy the Earth itself.

Then the stories begin to focus more on the machinations of Solar's arch enemy Nuro, an obscure behind-the-scenes villain akin to many masterminds from the Bond films and other such tales. Nuro employs a robot, one who'd battled Solar before and makes of him a steady henchman and persistant threat to Doctor Solar. We get a glimpse of Nuro's face after many years of shadows and see that he has a rather porcine countenance. Nothing much is made of this, but it suggests a slight change in the tone of the series.

Those changes continue when veteran Al McWilliams steps into do some art on the series and we meet Hamilton Mansfield Lamont, who is Gale's nephew. This brilliant young man joins the cast which had long been comprised of love interest Gale and Dr.Solar's longtime boss and confidant Doctor Clarkson and soon becomes a nerdish Snapper Carr/Rick Jones like figure. You can for sure say that the Man of the Atom becomes a bonafide superhero when he gets a teen sidekick.

We also get a new villain, sort of when King Cybernoid is birthed as Nuro's intellect becomes entrapped in the robotic form of his henchman. This new more physical opponent again creates a more pure supehero dynamic for the book and draws it away from its sci-fi roots, though of course those notions still function to supply threats.

Here are the covers of the issues included in this volume.

Next time Doctor Solar really goes through some changes and we chase the character through the decades of the 70's and the 80's.

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Solar Reflections Two!

With the second volume of Doctor Solar Man of the Atom we are getting a full-fledged superhero, a bright and shiny man in red who saves the day when it's needed. The adventures though in this volume also explore the unique nature of Doctor Solar, putting him through a wide range of transformations, not for Solar are the machinations of sundry super-villains but rather it is often  Solar battling against the peculiar side effects of his own awesome power.

Frank Bolle

All the stories here were drawn by Frank Bolle, an artist with a flair for the real but lacking the oomph often associated with superheroes. The writing on this series transitioned in the tenth issue with the ubiquitous Paul S. Newman giving way to Dick Wood.

In these stories Doctor Solar is pitted against Nuro time and again who fights most often by proxy and very often using machines. The first of these is a device which challenges the reality people see, but Solar is able to fend off these threats and save Blue Valley. Then it's a computerized robot named Transvac which is able to absorb energy including the energy which comprises Solar himself, but that energy is possessed of a min which uses strategy to escape. Then for a couple of issues Solar has to contend with an overabundance of energy which swells him to gigantic proportions. It is through the steady and reliable help of his best girl Gail he often found his way to return to some semblance of humanity, whether in scale or temporally.

For Gold Key, a company that clearly didn't get the whole superhero zeitgeist, Doctor Solar Man of the Atom is an anomaly. Other superheroes from the company were either parodies of the form (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Owl) or firmly rooted in science fiction like Solar (Magnus, Robot Fighter). It's Solar's magnificently resplendent red costume which has made him an iconic hero worthy of revival over the decades. Sure the nature of the hero, a many torn asunder by the power of the atom and reshaped into something akin to a god is fascinating, but without that costume it's all for naught.

More reflections next week.

Here are the covers in this collection, all by the great George Wilson.

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