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Titanium Man
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Titanium Man is the name of two fictional characters in the Marvel Comics universe. The original Titanium Man first appeared in Tales of Suspense #69 (September 1965). He was created by Stan Lee and Don Heck.
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An ambitious Communist Party official, Boris Bullski was demoted after displeasing his superiors. While working as an administrator of a Siberian work camp, he discovered that Anton Vanko, the creator of the original Crimson Dynamo armor, among the imprisoned scientists. Seeking to win back the Party's favor, Bullski conceived the idea of winning a propaganda victory against the West by defeating the American superhero Iron Man. He assigned the scientists to create a powerful suit of titanium armor based on the Iron Man technology, though the inferior resources available to the scientists meant that the armor was twice the size of Iron Man's. Bullski received permission to issue his challenge and Iron Man accepted, defeating Titanium Man in a battle before a worldwide television audience.
Undaunted, Bullski prepared for a rematch by having the suit redesigned and undergoing medical treatments that increased both his size and strength. Traveling to the United States, Bullski fought Iron Man in the skies above Washington, D.C. but was defeated once more. Withdrawing for retrieval by a Soviet submarine, he discovered that he had been abandoned on orders from Moscow. After working for the Vietnamese Communist scientist Half-Face for a while, he returned to the service of the Soviet government and joined the third Crimson Dynamo in yet another unsuccessful battle against Iron Man.
After the defeat, the two disgraced Soviet agents fled to Communist-controlled Vietnam, where they joined with Radioactive Man to form the Titanic Three. Though Bullski enjoyed working as a sanctioned agent once again, he longed to return to the Soviet Union, and devised a new plan to win his superiors' favor. Adopting the alias of "The Other," he dispatched another former Soviet agent, the Unicorn, to destroy Iron Man. When the Unicorn failed, the Titanium Man went to destroy Iron Man himself, only to fail once more.
Despite his failures, Bullski was in favor with the Soviet government once more, and returned to the United States on a mission for the KGB. By threatening the parents of a Soviet defector named Sergei, he forced the man to design technologically advanced armored suits that could be transformed into small card-like objects. Posing as "the Commander," Bullski used the suits to equip members of the Green Liberation Front (G.L.F.), an organization of disaffected Vietnam War veterans who felt ignored by their country. With the suits, the G.L.F. robbed a New York bank and the New York branch of the Federal Reserve; though the members believed that they were simply acting as thieves, Bullski used the robberies as a cover for implanting a computer virus that would destroy American financial records, causing chaos in the American economy. Beta Ray Bill and Sif opposed the G.L.F. and the Commander, but when Sergei discovered that his parents were dead he exposed Bullski's true identity and the angry members of the G.L.F. turned on the Titanium Man. Teleporting away, he rematerialized in card form, which Sergei then simply tore and threw away.
Some time later, the new Crimson Dynamo was sent to America by the Soviet government to retrieve the remnants for reintegration. The G.L.F. discovered the Crimson Dynamo's mission and attacked him, forcing him seek assistance by reactivating the Titanium Man, who due to the incomplete nature of his reassembly was still missing body parts. Enraged, Bullski slaughtered the members of the G.L.F., and was only stopped when the Dynamo lured him over the Atlantic and returned him to card form. Bullski was later restored and continued to serve as Titanium Man, but during a subsequent attack on a Stark Enterprises factory in Russia he was believed killed while battling Tony Stark, who was wearing Crimson Dynamo armor that was being controlled by Colonel-General Valentin Shatalov, an enemy of Bullski's.
Yet Bullski returned as Titanium Man in an attack on Stark's space station; after his defeat yet again at the hands of Iron Man he was left in orbit. Shortly after Tony Stark was appointed as the Secretary of Defense, Bullski attempted to disrupt a mission by Stark to destroy a comet heading for North America, but was defeated during his attempt and thrown off the ship. Most recently, he seemingly attempted to assassinate Stark, while the industrialist was in Washington, D.C. to speak to legislators in against a possible superhuman registration bill. Though defeated by Spider-Man, it was revealed that he had been hired by Tony Stark to stage in attack in order to demonstrate the continuing need for superheroes.
The second Titanium Man was the mutant formerly known as the Gremlin, and served with the Soviet-era superhero group, the Soviet Super-Soldiers. The Gremlin was killed in combat with Iron Man during the first "Armor War" when the titanium in the suit exceeded its combustible temperature.
The Titanium Men used green or grey armor similar to that used by Iron Man and to that used by their sometime compatriot, the Crimson Dynamo. Neither suit of armor was as sophisticated as that used by Anthony Stark as Iron Man. In fact, the armor was rather unstable, directly resulting in the death of the second Titanium Man.
The suit of armor increases the wearer's physical strength to superhuman levels. It also enabled them to fly at subsonic speeds, shoot concussive force blasts from the hands, and the armor was resistant to conventional artillery.
Boris Bullski, the original Titanium Man, also possessed enhanced strength due to treatments given to him by the Soviet government to augment his physiology. The Gremlin, being a dwarf who seldom exercised, was weaker than most people, but he possessed super-human intelligence, was capable of creating advanced devices and weapons, and was an accomplished genetic engineer.
Titanium Man, along with fellow Marvel villain Magneto, is the subject of the song "Magneto and Titanium Man" by Wings on their Venus and Mars album. The Crimson Dynamo is also mentioned by name. In the song, the three super villains try to convince the singer/narrator that a woman police officer trying to halt a bank robbery (which he is apparently in love with) is in fact the bank robber herself.
Titanium Man also appears in the Iron Man animated series, played by Gerard Maguire. In the series' first episode, he's shown as a powerful minion of the Mandarin. Titanium Man doesn't make more appearances during the first season. In one chapter of the second season, Titanium Man makes an alliance with Dark Aegis, but at the end he helps Iron Man and War Machine, sacrificing himself in order to stop Dark Aegis.
- Gremlin (Titanium Man II's entry at Marvel Directory.com
- Extensive RPG profile including a complete history