Solar is an American fictional comic book superhero created by writer Paul S. Newman, editor Matt Murphy, and artist Bob Fujitani.

Solar was created in 1962 by writer Paul S. Newman and editor Matt Murphy, with illustrations from artist Bob Fujitani,[1] for the Silver Age comic book publisher Gold Key, a new company formed by Western Publishing who, earlier that year, had ended its business arrangement with Dell Comics.

The original creative team of writer Paul S. Newman and artist Bob Fujitani lasted until issue #5 when Frank Bolle took over the art work.

[2] For this purpose, Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom was restarted at #28 (cover date April 1981) with Roger McKenzie writing and Dan Spiegle drawing.

[1] With Valiant's video game and wrestling comics experiencing limited success, they launched the new line in 1991 with Magnus, Robot Fighter, followed by Solar, Man of the Atom a couple of months later.

The new Solar series began with three multi-part stories all written by Jim Shooter: "Alpha and Omega" with artwork by Barry Windsor-Smith and Bob Layton, spanned the first ten issues and told of the origin story of how the protagonist, Phil Seleski, became Solar, until the time he accidentally destroys the world; "Second Death", with artwork by Don Perlin, Bob Layton and Thomas Ryder, spanned the first four issues and tells of Seleski's attempt to prevent another version of himself from destroying the world; "First Strike", with artwork by Don Perlin and Stan Drake, spanned issues #5 to #8 and follows Solar as he fights spider aliens.

These first year stories included first appearances by Eternal Warrior, the Harbinger Foundation, Geomancers, and the X-O Manowar armor - all of which would be spun off into their own series.

With its US$1.75 cover price, and benefiting from Valiant's heavy promotion of its superhero line and its combined direct and newsstand distribution network, Solar was returning a small profit with print runs of approximately 60,000 copies of each issue in the first year.

During that time Solar appeared in other Valiant titles, such as Archer & Armstrong,[7] Rai,[8] Secret Weapons,[9] X-O Manowar,[10][11] and Harbinger Files,[12] as well as Deathmate,[13] and The Chaos Effect.

[14] After Acclaim Entertainment took over ownership of Valiant in Summer 1994, VanHook continued as writer but the penciller job was divided between Andrew Wendell and Louis Small until issue #41 at the end of the year.

Acclaim launched a publicity strategy dubbed "Birthquake" which attracted high profile comic book writers and artists to work on their titles.

As sales continued to fall, Tony Bedard took over as writer from #52, with Aaron Lopresti, Mike Manley and Jeff Johnson dividing the penciller job, until the series was cancelled with issue #60 in 1996.

Acclaim cancelled the remainder of the Valiant titles in 1996 and restarted a select few under a new creative direction with Fabian Nicieza as editor-in-chief.

They published the one-shot Solar, Man of the Atom with a May 1997 cover date, written by Warren Ellis, and penciled by Darick Robertson.

It was followed by a second one-shot Solar, Man of the Atom: Revelations (cover date November 1997) by Jim Krueger, Patrick Zircher and Jimmy Palmiotti.

In 2008, Dark Horse Comics announced that the company intended to publish an original Solar series, as well as other Gold Key characters.

[18] A year later, at San Diego Comic-Con, Dark Horse announced Jim Shooter would be the new series' writer.

In 2013, Dynamite Entertainment acquired the publishing rights to Solar, Turok, Magnus: Robot Fighter and Doctor Spektor.

In the process, they discovered that Seleski's fusion reactor was actually a "wish machine" that allowed anyone in close proximity to change the universe in any way they saw fit.

In one case, he absorbed energy from a pile of nuclear waste that his arch-enemy, Nuro, was using to power a gold accumulator in the Pacific Ocean.

In one instance, Solar was able to change a huge iron meteorite into titanium through a form of neutron bombardment called "transmutation", although his nuclear reserves were almost fatally depleted in the process (he was able to restore his energy by flying a small satellite rocket into the Van Allen radiation belt).

In addition, in his secret identity of "The Man of the Atom", Solar is always ready to use his powers to aid the public when the need arises.