Action Comics No. 525, marking Neutron's first appearance. Art by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano.
A nuclear-charged super-villain who was once Nathaniel "Nat" Tryon, a common criminal henchman. Along with his fellow crooks Ted Grand and Tim Moore, Nat Tryon was once part of a team of hoods called the TNT Trio under the employ of
Lex Luthor. While performing a job for the criminal mastermind that involved sabotaging a nuclear power plant, Tryon became trapped by falling lead shielding, which nearly crushed him to death. The reactor's meltdown was halted by
Superman, who also apprehended Grand and Moore. The two hoods insisted that they operated alone, and as Superman's X-ray vision cannot penetrate lead, the Man of Steel inadvertantly missed the imperiled Tryon. Managing to free himself, Tryon made his way to one of Luthor's many hidden lairs, where the arch-villain discovered that Tryon had contracted radiation poisoning. Luthor placed his ex-accomplice under a special ray device that he claimed would cure Tryon of his radiation sickness. In reality, Luthor's plan was to transform the crook into a super-powered pawn for his future use. As fate would have it, Superman captured Luthor within a week, leaving the comatose Tryon under the device's rays for a year until he was revived by vibrations from the Man of Tomorrow's fight with a villain called the Mole. Tryon found that he had been transformed into a living mass of nuclear energy, a walking atomic bomb capable of releasing enough power to present a serious threat to even Superman himself. Seeing his altered state as a means of exacting revenge on the three men he held responsible for his plight ... Grand, Moore and Superman ... Tryon donned a special radiaion suit to contain his energy form and renamed himself Neutron, the Living Bomb (ACT No. 525/1, Nov. 1981: "Neutron Nightmare!"). Neutron actually succeeded in killing Grand, but Superman intervened in time to prevent the atomic villain from murdering Moore. As part of his attempt on Superman's life, Neutron altered the structure of the
Daily Planet globe atop the
Galaxy Communications Building so that it would react adversely with solar radiation and explode like a nuclear weapon, annihilating all of
Metropolis in the process. Neutron and Superman clashed in a fierce battle, but the Action Ace managed to defeat his atomic foe and save the city, after which Neutron was sent to a special prison designed to contain his vast power (ACT No. 526/1, Dec. 1981: "The Man Who Murdered Metropolis!").
Two years later, a highly talented lawyer managed to convince a parole board to release Neutron as part of a plot devised by Vandal Savage to discredit Superman. The plan involved Neutron appearing in Metropolis and destroying a chosen building in order to draw the Metropolis Marvel into battle. Although Neutron actually struck first in the fight that followed, the combat was staged in such a way so that Superman would be blamed. Although Superman managed to regain his good name, Neutron managed to clear himself of wrongdoing by proving that he was actually demolishing the building in question at the request of Savage, the edifice's rightful owner, making the demolition perfectly legal (ACT No. 543, May 1983: "Within These Hands -- Power!"). Still, Neutron's radioactivity was deemed a clear danger to the population of Metropolis. As a result, the criminal was placed in suspended animation within a special life-support coffin at S.T.A.R. Labs until he was freed by the fiend called Psimon to join the group of super-villains called the Fearsome Five.
