Human Bomb
1919 - Roy Lincoln is born the son of a celebrated munitions chemist.
1931 - 12-year-old Roy starts working as a lab assistant for his father.
1934 - 15-year-old Roy becomes a star baseball player.
1936 - 17-year-old Roy becomes a junior golden gloves boxer.
1940 - 21-year-old Roy is bathed in an experimental explosive compound, 27-QRZ, when Nazi spied raid his father's lab. He develops a fibro-wax suit to contain his powers & becomes the Human Bomb. He is recruited by Uncle Sam into the Freedom Fighters.
1944 - 25-year-old Roy's biological sample is used by Delores Winters to create 100 superhuman embryos.
Roy Lincoln was among the Quality Comics characters that were acquired by DC and combined into a wartime team dubbed the Freedom Fighters. While they all have their fans, they were never hugely popular, although they all have a certain coolness to them. While a lot of characters from that era are notably a little cookie-cutter, the Freedom Fighters are all decidedly original ideas.
The Human Bomb, for his part, seems to be a character built from the name backward. It's a VERY cool name, almost sounding more like a punk band than a superhero, but it creates a real challenge of a character. Roy has always had a severe element of tragedy to him; not being able to touch ANYTHING without making it explode. Obviously, the logistics of trying to live with such a condition are pretty ridiculous, and the character has never exactly stood up under any sort of introspection. It's a fairly simple fix, however, to suggest that he has some sort of control over the effects of his power... at least enough to eat and whatnot. Meanwhile, in an effort to try to define the character beyond the inherent tragedy in his powers is to focus on how young and heroic the character is. It's mentioned here and there that before he was an assistant in his father's lab Roy was either a star baseball player or boxer, we decided to use both ideas. It makes him seem vigorous and heroic of his own accord, giving him a sense of positivity that suggests that he would EMBRACE the chance to use his abilities to fight for what's right. |
While Roy Lincoln's costume has been largely unchanged for as long as he's existed, there have been a few other versions of the character that has pretty wildly different versions of the costume. The first was Andy Franklin, a character in Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray's Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven. The series created an entirely new version of the Freedom Fighters, and Andy was a completely different scientist effected by a different explosive compound to have exactly the same powers as the original Human Bomb. while there isn't much noteworthy about the character, he had a much more sinister-looking costume that really fit the style of the series.
There's also an entirely different take on the character from the new 52, this time named Michael Taylor. It's a much brighter costume with a mask that makes his face visible. He also has a chest logo for the first time, which makes him look much more like a Superhero. This might be the best of the available costumes, although a case could definitely be made for the incredibly badass, almost Darth Vaderish costume of Andy Franklin. Other than their costumes, there isn't much of a reason to incorporate either Andy Franklin or Michael Taylor into our timeline; the Human Bomb and the rest of the Freedom Fighters make a wonderful little timecapsule of Wartime heroism. While the team name will live on in future incarnations, this is a character that is at his best in the time that most suits him. |