Cyclotron
71 years ago - Terry Rothstein is born.
54 years ago - 17-year-old Terry goes to college.
50 years ago - 21-year-old Terry attends grad school.
47 years ago - 24-year-old Terry begins his doctoral research in atomic theory.
44 years ago - 27-year-old Terry earns his doctorate.
43 years ago - 28-year-old Terry helps Dannette Reily to study and understand her powers. They begin an intense love affair.
41 years ago - 30-year-old Terry & Dannette Reily's relationship ends, because he can't accept that she will continue to endanger herself.
39 years ago - 32-year-old Terry meets Corrine Curtis.
37 years ago - 34-year-old Terry and Corrine Curtis are married.
34 years ago - 37-year-old Terry's wife Corrine is exposed to an experimental radiation, leaving her comatose. Desperate, Terry begins working for Vandal Savage who promises to help cure her. He subjects himself to controlled doses of the same experimental radiation, becoming Cyclotron. He fights the All-Star Squadron, hiding his identity from Dannette Reily
33 years ago - 38-year-old Terry becomes part of Vandal Savage's Injustice Society. He ultimately turns on them, helping the All-Star Squadron defeat them, and turns himself in.
31 years ago - 40-year-old Terry is permitted observed labratory access, and uses it to cure his wife Corrine.
30 years ago - 41-year-old Terry is released from prison thanks to the testimony of Dannette Reily, He is able to return to his wife Corrine.
27 years ago - 44-year-old Terry's wife Corrine, while carrying their child, relapses, her body producing dangerous level of experimental radiation. Terry endeavors to save them both, absorbing lethal levels of toxic radiation himself, but in the end is only able to save the life of their son Albert. Dannette Reily becomes the child's foster mother.
It is really hard to overstate just how much worldbuilding Roy Thomas did in the world of Earth-2 in the pages of All-Star Squadron, infinity Inc, and Young All-Stars. In a lot of ways, you could actually compare all of his work to what we're doing here. He had the bare bones of an extensive Golden Age content, but the freedom to just scramble it all and connect the dots in new ways to build his own extensive continuity.
Most of what he built didn't make it past the Crisis, but one notably exception is Atom-Smasher, and to get his backstory right we need to make sure we include this very neat little Roy Thomas creation. We're making some changes so he fits our timeline, but I think this is one case where our efforts to simplify a character are totally in keeping with their original design, because he was built by someone doing the same thing we are!
Most of what he built didn't make it past the Crisis, but one notably exception is Atom-Smasher, and to get his backstory right we need to make sure we include this very neat little Roy Thomas creation. We're making some changes so he fits our timeline, but I think this is one case where our efforts to simplify a character are totally in keeping with their original design, because he was built by someone doing the same thing we are!
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Cyclotron's Comic HistoryTechnically Cyclotron's first appearance is in All-Star Squadron #21 from 1983, but to properly tell his history we actually have to go back a full forty years, all the way to Action Comics # 21 from 1940. This was one of the stories to feature the Ultra-Humanite after he'd put his brain into the body of actress Dolores Winters. In this story, Clark Kent meets Terry Curtis, an atomic scientist who has developed new atomic weapons that could destroy the world, so Ultra kidnaps him and forces him to use his technology against Superman, creating quite a few death-defying scenerios before he's finally able to free the scientist. Ultra-Humanite would dissapear from continuity for decades shortly after this, so of course it was a safe bet we'd never see Curtis again.
Jumping back to the 80s, Roy Thomas was writing the All-Star Squadron, using references to different Golden Age stories and characters to flesh out the backstory of Earth-2. When looking to create an explanation for the Atom adopting new atomic powers and an updated costume, he grabbed Terry Curtis from that single issue of Action Comics and expanded his story, making him a reluctant ally to the Ultra- Humanite working to save the life of his infant daughter, and also giving him a romantic history with Thomas' redesigned version of Firebrand. Curtis would ultimately sacrifice himself to save the day, which would eventually lead to the Atom adopting his costume and powers. Even after his death, Curtis's presense would still have a lasting effect on the comics when his Grandson Albert Rothstein would be introduced a few years later as part of Infinity Inc. |
Other Cyclotrons?I don't know if anyone else but me finds this sort of thing interesting, but there are actually quite a few other Cyclotrons thart have cropped up in strange places across DC's history, the first only a few short years after Terry Curtis. In the final season of the Super Powers cartoon, we met an original character; an "android built by Superman to be the Justice League's master tactician". He's one of those characters that was clearly built with an action figure's play feature first and any story second. He did actually appear in all four issues of the Super Powers comic tie-in in 1986, which technically makes him a comic character.
Years later in Grant Morrison's Multiversity there were certain universes called 'Otherworlds' that were clearly pastiches of Superhero Universes that DC didn't own, but might want to reference. Earth 39 featured the Agents of W.O.N.D.E.R, clearly a reference to Wally Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents, originally from Tower Comics in the 60s (DC had the rights to them briefly, but they've reverted to IDW Publishing). In Morrison's Earth 39, his take on the character Dynamo is renamed Cyclotron. And finally, a version of Cyclotron appeared in a single very forgettable 2017 issue of Suicide Squad. he's the weird little skinny guy. |
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Our Cyclotron StoryThe biggest change we're making here is that, in order for Terry's timeline to connect with Al's, we're making him a contemporary of our All-Star Squadron rather than operating during World War II. This vastly simplifies their relationship, so we can just make Terry Al Rothstein's father rather than grandfather. This does mean we need to change his last name, though.
Beyond that, we followed the basic beats of his story, making him work with Vandal Savage instead of the Ultra-Humanite so that he can be parts of the original Injustice Society. We're also making his connection to Danette Reily a major part of his story. Knowing that Danette was modeled after Roy Thomas's wife Danette Thomas who was also a co-writer on the series makes me think that Roy must have had a particular connection to Cyclotron, so we're glad we were able to bring a version of him into our timeline that feels like he's really being done justice. |