Son of Vulcan #1

History

Scott Beatty, fresh from his critically praised Batgirl: Year One collaboration with Chuck Dixon, was tapped to revamp the Charlton Comics character for DC; artist Keron Grant, who had worked on Marvel's New Mutants and Iron Man, handled both pencils and inks throughout the run. The book was edited by Tom Palmer Jr. with Jeanine Schaefer as assistant editor, and published under the standard DC 'swirl' brand. Rather than attempt a straight adaptation of the mythological Johnny Mann premise, Beatty constructed a wholly original science-fiction underpinning — the powers of the Vulcan lineage derive from an ancient White Martian-created metagene passed host-to-host by touch — grafting DC's existing Martian mythology onto the Charlton name.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Miguel 'Mikey' Devante, the new Son of Vulcan, a 14-year-old orphan who becomes the reluctant heir to the Vulcan mantle.
• First appearance and death of Erich Thonius, the previous Vulcan, who recruits Mikey in the same issue before being killed — leaving the protagonist without a mentor before his training even begins.
• First appearances of supporting cast members Pandora (Vulcan's android assistant), Praetor (the AI running the Vulcan's Forge headquarters), Sienna, and the villain A'Monn A'Mokk disguised as the Floronic Man.
• First appearance of the Forge, Vulcan's high-tech headquarters, which becomes a central location throughout the six-issue miniseries.
• The issue's setting — a town called Charlton's Point — is a deliberate in-universe tribute to Charlton Comics, the publisher from which DC acquired the original Son of Vulcan character in 1983.
• The 2005 character is entirely unrelated to the original Johnny Mann version of Son of Vulcan; where Johnny Mann received his powers from the Roman god Vulcan via divine mandate, Miguel Devante's abilities derive from a White Martian-created metavirus transferable by touch.
• Written by Scott Beatty (Batgirl: Year One) with art by Keron Grant; edited by Tom Palmer Jr. and assistant editor Jeanine Schaefer. Published on-sale June 1, 2005, with a cover date of August 2005.
• Miguel subsequently appeared in DC's Infinite Crisis #6 and later joined Titans East, before being left comatose at the end of the Titans East Special — his last notable DCU appearance.

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