Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Character Spotlight: Nuclear Man

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) is not a good movie.


The reasons for that are many and varied, but the end result is a nearly unwatchable film that feels like it was supposed to be straight-to-video and only wound up in theatres due to a freak accident or some kind of vengeful spirit. That being said, I believe the villain of the piece, Nuclear Man, gets more hate than he deserves.


He seems to be treated like Jar Jar Binks, the one thing in the movie that gets held up as a symbol of the entire production's badness. But I would argue that Nuclear Man is the best thing about the film. He's the closest we've gotten to a live action Bizarro, he's got a great look (very of it's time, but still great), and he's a credible threat.

With all that in mind, I was elated to discover that this month's Superman #2 (August 2018) brought him into the comics fold. He's presented here as a Phantom Zone prisoner discovered by Rogol Zaar, the villain of the current story (he claims to have destroyed Krypton).


To be fair, Nuclear Man is killed in this same appearance. But that doesn't mean we've seen the last of him. This iteration is shown to be a member of the House of El, so he may become important later.

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