SOLARR

BIOGRAPHY

Silas King was a latent mutant born in Carson City, Nevada. His abilities became active as the result of a cross country drive from New York to California. When his van broke down, Silas wandered out into the desert, searching for aid. Exhaustion, dehydration and heat stroke would have done in a normal man, but Silas’s mutant power to absorb and convert energy from sunlight saved his life. Once he stumbled back into civilization, Silas was brought to a hospital for recuperation. He awakened with fire at his fingertips and decided to become a professional criminal. Silas realized his only major weakness was the need for sunlight to constantly replenish his powers, and he planned his crimes accordingly.

Styling himself as Solarr, spawn of the sun, Silas made his debut robbing the New York Stock Exchange. He used his powers to intimidate the tellers and cruelly murdered security guards who attempted to stand in his path. After burning his way into and out of the vaults, Solarr demonstrated just how sadistic and psychotic he was. Instead of making a getaway with his money, Solarr started murdering people in the streets just for the fun of displaying his powers. He was assaulted by Captain America and turned his hatred against the sentinel of liberty. Cap recognized the limitations of Solarr’s powers and tried to keep him inside, but Solarr kept returning to the open skies to recharge his power. Finally, Captain America had the opportunity to coat Solarr with weather-resistant paint, cutting off his contact with sunlight and allowing the authorities to take him into custody. [Captain America (1st series) #160]

Solarr resurfaced as a partner for Klaw, the murderous master of sound. Klaw was recently tortured by the racist regime of Rudyarda, neighbors of his arch-nemesis Black Panther and Wakanda. Klaw had an insane plan to force T’Challa to abdicate his throne to him, so he could wield diplomatic immunity in seeking revenge on Rudyarda. Klaw and Solarr ambushed the Avengers outside their mansion, trapping Black Panther and four other Avengers inside a sound bubble with Solarr shielded inside a separate chamber. Solarr threatened to kill one of the hostages every hour until T’Challa surrendered. In order to maintain the bubble, Klaw was secretly among the Avengers, disguised as the Rudyardan ambassador who first brought the threat to their attention. He was also Solarr’s first victim, to make the threat seem more real. The Black Panther soon realized the truth, however, forcing Klaw to reveal himself and leading to the defeat of both villains. [Avengers (1st series) #126]

Solarr was teleported free from prison by the criminal scientist Egghead, and recruited to join his Emissaries of Evil. Egghead addressed Solarr’s weakness by designing a solar amplifier to rest in the jewel of his costume, allowing Silas to store energy during the day and continue using his powers at night. Solarr assisted Egghead in an attempt to blackmail the United States by launching a nuclear warhead from Canada, and later helped him search for the mystical jewel known as the Star of Capistan. Solarr and his partner, the Rhino, found Egghead to be overbearing, but their master’s technology made him too dangerous to disobey.

Egghead’s analysis concluded the Star would be in the hands of Doctor Strange and the Defenders, so Solarr and Rhino attacked the Sanctum Sanctorum. Solarr tried to intimidate his opponents by setting Nighthawk on fire and conjuring a gigantic heat image of himself so he appeared as a flaming giant. The Emissaries allowed themselves to be driven off once they realized the Defenders had no idea what they were talking about and didn’t possess the Star of Capistan. It wasn’t until the next day that Strange’s friend Omar Karindu reached out to him about keeping the Star safe. The jewel contained the essence of its protector, the Red Rajah, which possessed Stephen Strange as its new host. The Red Rajah overpowered Solarr and Rhino when they stormed Karindu’s hotel, leaving them unconscious and ready for pick up by the authorities. [Alpha Flight Special #1, Defenders (1st series) #42-44]

Upon conviction, Solarr was transported to his new home for the foreseeable future, Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S. (Potential Energy Group, Alternate Sources United States). P.E.G.A.S.U.S. had research scientists studying various forms of exotic energy emission, and federal authorities transferred several super-criminals and powered beings into their care, such as Solarr, Electro, Nuklo and Wundarr. The former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Quasar acted as security chief for P.E.G.A.S.U.S., and he recruited other security operatives like Thing and Giant-Man II to help watch over the super-villains detained at P.E.G.A.S.U.S. in their holding facility, the Compound. [Marvel Two-In-One #53]

Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was infiltrated by several parties on behalf of RoXXon’s Nth Command project, leading to a series of security incidents and power failures. The alien man-child Wundarr had been affected by contact with the Cosmic Cube and lay comatose for weeks. When he finally awakened, Wundarr left his cell in a trance-like state as his body’s null-field shut down all power emissions in his vicinity. His passing walk disabled Solarr’s cell as well when he sauntered by, letting the villain escape. Solarr viciously tried to murder Wundarr from behind to avoid witnesses when he fled, but he soon realized his solar blasts and even the momentum of a physical charge dispersed before reaching the oblivious alien youth.

Seeking aid, Solarr examined the nearby cells until he found one labeled Klaw, for his old partner. When he got inside, Solarr was surprised to find only Klaw’s sonic claw attachment in a vacuum case. Angry and frustrated, Solarr threw the claw into a wall, believing that P.E.G.A.S.U.S. had killed his friend and kept his attachment as a trophy. Instead, Klaw’s body miraculously emerged from within his sonic claw. A being of pure sonic energy, Klaw’s body had dispersed fighting the Black Panther, but his mind remained inside the claw until Solarr exposed the device to enough vibrational energy for him to reconstitute his physical form. Solarr helped the weakened Klaw to P.E.G.A.S.U.S.’s high-speed tram system, the Loop, as they attempted to make their escape.

Unfortunately for them, the security team had just learned the identity of RoXXon’s mole, Thomas Lightener, and was in the process of searching for him when they found Solarr and Klaw. Quasar was surprised to see the criminals when he stopped the tram, but was ready to escort them back to their cells when Solarr blinded him with a solar flash of light. The Thing and Giant-Man tried to pursue the duo in a second tram, but Solarr’s heat blasts blew out the tracks behind them. By this point, though, Benjamin J. Grimm was feeling ornery. Once he recovered from the tram wreckage, the Thing grabbed the metal tracks and cracked them like a whip, sending a ripple of force and steel after the villains and knocking them for a loop. Without the element of surprise hindering his performance, Quasar was ready to absorb Solarr’s solar blasts, and his own quasi-stellar force was significantly more powerful than the mutant criminal could handle, knocking him out. [Marvel Two-In-One #57-58]

Solarr remained at Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S. for some time and was seen when Alison Blaire toured the Compound with Quasar. [Dazzler #9] He was eventually released and returned to crime as an assassin-for-hire. A hit man named “Peepers” Scanlon wanted to turn state’s evidence against the mob, and his former cronies hired Solarr to make sure Scanlon didn’t sing. To Solarr’s misfortune, however, he chose to assault Scanlon in a hospital when both Spider-Man and Daredevil were on the premises. Solarr was happy for the interruption at first, thinking the murder of a famous super-hero would improve his fading reputation even further. Still, a combination of fire extinguishers, water towers and the setting sun eventually lowered Solarr’s powers enough for Spider-Man to knock him senseless. [Marvel Team-Up (1st series) #123]

Back at Project: P.E.G.A.S.U.S., Solarr was caught up in a series of murders perpetrated by Bres of the Fomor. A magical creature from Otherworld captured by the Avengers, Bres had powers that P.E.G.A.S.U.S. didn’t fully understand. A power failure allowed Bres to regain his abilities in secret, and he took pleasure in tormenting the guards and other prisoners with his supernatural abilities over a period of days. The sadistic Bres sometimes used the corpse of his last victim to claim the next, animating them from afar. Solarr was released from his cell for Bres’ amusement and was confronted by a dead guard named Harry. Solarr charred Harry’s body with a thermal blast, but the smoldering corpse was undeterred. Harry’s burning body chased a panicked Solarr down until it finally strangled the mutant to death while staring with its empty eyes. [Power Man and Iron Fist (1st series) #113]

Although dead, Solarr wasn’t completely absent over the next few years. A macabre mutant called Dead-Ringer had the power to duplicate the form and abilities of any corpse he touched. He kept a ghoulish collection of fingers gathered through grave robbing and used Solarr’s powers alongside his partner Super-Patriot against Captain America. [Captain America (1st series) #427] The extra-dimensional god-like madman named Krona summoned a cornucopia of villains from across time to serve him against the united forces of the Avengers and the Justice League. Lex Luthor personally directed Solarr on how to project red sun radiation to depower Superman, just as Radioactive Man was schooled in producing the unique radioactive wavelengths of Kryptonite. The Vision exhausted his own solar batteries to recharge the Last Son of Krypton, who quickly disposed of his new foes. [Avengers/JLA #4]

Time passed, and Solarr was eventually resurrected by the Five on Krakoa. Silas King seemed somewhat less psychotic than before, or at least more self-aware. He recognized his power came with a particular degree of pyromania, and living on an island where one of the three laws was “Respect This Sacred Land” was a recipe for disaster. When the opportunity arose, Solarr went through the formal application process to emigrate to Krakoa’s ally, Limbo. The time-lost demon dimension was now ruled by the Goblin Queen, with an embassy in New York officially recognized as a foreign land. Solarr found himself more comfortable surrounded by flames and joined a number of potentially “troublesome” mutants in this new home. [Dark X-Men (2nd series) #1]

The new home didn't last long as Orchis recruited a Goblin Queen from another reality to lay siege to the embassy. Solarr learned the hard way not to use flame against a demon as the sorceress absorbed his blast and turned her own magical fire against Silas King, burning him down to his skeleton. Given the current state of Krakoan resurrection, Solarr's time in the sun may have been permanently cut short again. [Dark X-Men (2nd series) #4]