Frank SimpsonNuke

Don’t worry, Frank Simpson will protect America. He was made to destroy the enemy with secret and manipulative organizations. Give him a red. He remembers the war. He won’t let God’s Country down. Give him a white. He’ll fight to the end, massacring every last foe. Give him a blue.

A Highly Trained and Merciless Killer <?h4>

Frank Charles Simpson is a savage fighter from Dayton, Ohio. He is the child of an abusive, alcoholic mother who came from a wealthy family, and a father, Charles Simpson, who was a decent man, but broken by his hateful wife.

Frank’s problematic behavior in school caught the interest of a secret organization led by the ancient and manipulative Romulus. Sending an agent named Betsy to work for the Simpsons as Frank’s babysitter, the organization hoped to mold him in their image. Through Betsy’s kindness, she became a mother figure for Frank. Gaining his trust and love, she suggested to him that everyone would be better off without his mother.

One night in 1953, Frank’s mother came home drunk again, and while Charles drove Betsy home, Frank killed his mother, unaware that at roughly the same moment, another of Romulus’ agents, Logan (James Howlett, later Wolverine) murdered Betsy and convinced Charles to commit suicide. Shortly thereafter, Logan delivered the unresisting Frank to his employers.

As an adult, Simpson joined the U.S. Marines, rising to the rank of Major while fighting in the Vietnam War. In 1968, the Viet Cong captured him in South Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province. Among his captors was Logan, sent in by Romulus supporters in the U.S. government to pose as a Russian advisor to the Viet Cong. Logan’s true mission, however, was to push Simpson a step further towards becoming a merciless killing machine. He succeeded through electroshock torture and brainwashing techniques, triggering him with a phrase that causes him to commit violent acts and war crimes.

These incidents left Simpson mentally unstable. Even after the war, the xenophobic and psychotically nationalistic Simpson still believed the battle was being fought and that American soldiers were being held hostage by the Viet Cong.

Codename Nuke & “Betsy”

Simpson is skilled in hand-to-hand combat and has extensive military training having served in the Marines. Nuke’s primary weapon is “Betsy,” a highly customized assault rifle loaded with conventional ammunition as well as rockets and incendiary napalm bombs. A digital display on Betsy’s side can keep a running tally of Nuke’s casualty count.

Nuke is physically enhanced thanks to the Weapons Plus project. His bones and muscles are largely metal, while his skin is bonded to several kinds of plastics making it more durable and fire-resistant. These enhancements also render him almost completely impervious to pain. The state-of-the-art cybernetic implants also include a remote-controlled hydraulic pump that introduces chemical control agents directly into his bloodstream to calm him during non-combatant situations.

Nuclear Opposition

Daredevil, AKA Matt Murdock, fights Nuke after he assaults civilians in Hell’s Kitchen and launches a rocket that injures Karen Page, Matt’s girlfriend.

The U.S. government has had a rocky past with Nuke. While they have close ties with the villain, they have mainly butted heads whenever they fear that he may expose their sanctioning of Super Soldiers.

Logan, AKA Wolverine, has ventured on a long and difficult personal journey, leading him to many dark places—including the torture and brainwashing of Nuke. This treatment helped create the killer that Logan would later fight across the world.

Comrades in Arms

Romulus is a secret organization that employed agents to influence Frank towards becoming a vicious killer.

A project sanctioned by the U.S. government to create Super Soldiers, Weapon Plus, helped create Nuke and often sends him on questionable missions. Weapon Plus also includes a line of experiments on psychopaths and criminals that uses chemicals and medication to enhance their physical attributes, amplifying their violent tendencies.

From Frank to Nuke

Frank caught the eye of the secret organization known as Romulus, which coaxed him into killing his mother through his babysitter Betsy. Frank became one of their employees shortly afterward.

After he joined the U.S. Marines, while fighting in Vietnam, he was captured by Logan, who was himself sent there by Romulus to turn Frank into a killer. He did so through torture and carving the American flag into Simpson’s face while repeating “No VC” repeatedly until it became a trigger for the next step in his brainwashing plan. After continued electroshocks, Simpson killed his guards and escaped. He encountered scared villagers who screamed “No Vee-See” to inform Simpson that they were not Viet Cong members, unwittingly triggering Logan’s conditioning and sending Simpson into an uncontrollable rage. After the encounter, Logan picked up Simpson by helicopter.

Sometime later, he was among 20 men, including James McPherson, Michael Labash, Andrew Perlmutter and John Walsh, who were chosen by the American government to become Super Soldiers—a program known as the Weapon Plus project. In Weapon Plus, he was part of a line of experiments with psychopaths and criminals that used chemicals and medication in hopes of re-creating a warrior as powerful as Wolverine.

They enhanced Frank physically and armed him with a customized gun which he named after his long-dead babysitter Betsy. Simpson received the codename Nuke, and given a system of red, white, and blue pills to control his moods. Nuke was sent on various questionable missions, and eventually deployed to the Central American Republic of Tierra Verde, where drug trafficker Generalissimo Felix Guillermo Caridad had ascended to power through a combination of military success and anti-communist politics. Caridad’s pro-capitalist stance made him a natural ally of the U.S. government in the region, and Nuke was sent to destroy what Caridad informed the Americans was a rebel stronghold, but was actually a rival drug processing factory.

Nuke was soon sent to infiltrate and attack other hostile governments in the region. He was deployed in Nicaragua to exterminate hostile forces when the U.S. Defense Department’s General, Lewis Haywerth, was contacted by businessman Wilson Fisk (secretly New York City’s Kingpin of Crime) and offered favors in exchange for Nuke’s services. Haywerth immediately had Nuke flown to New York City where he met with the Kingpin, who exploited Nuke’s warped sense of nationalism and convinced him that the crime-fighter Daredevil was an ally of the media who sought to destroy the alliance of state, military, and business institutions that protected the true American way of life. Directed towards Hell’s Kitchen by the Kingpin, Nuke was instructed to cause property damage to attract Daredevil, but Nuke snapped as soon as he hit the ground and began inflicting civilian and police casualties. Daredevil intervened and, after a grueling battle, got the upper hand by breaking the butt of Nuke’s gun on his face.

At that moment, the Avengers arrived and insisted that Nuke be handed over to them under federal authority. The Department of Defense, which publicly denied any knowledge of Nuke, regained custody of him and secretly prepared for his redeployment overseas, but Nuke wanted to remain in America to fight the nation’s enemies at home and broke free from his constraints. Meanwhile, Captain America, who had learned about the top-secret program that created Nuke, felt responsible because he believed Simpson’s transformation was an attempt to re-create him, and he defeated the rogue Nuke. Soon after a military helicopter shot Nuke as he was being carried away by Captain America, Daredevil took the fading Nuke to the Daily Bugle building where his link to the government and the Kingpin was revealed to the public.

Around the time of Nuke’s apparent death, a project devised by the British government that based its work on Nuke’s alterations was cancelled. The program devised by the scientists Dr. Jahved Khan, Dr. Richard Brown, Dr. Bruce McDonald, Dr. Simon Ogilvey, and Dr. Arnold Stratton created a line of Super Soldiers including Challenger (Oscar Black), Revenge (Lee Childs), Dauntless (Alec Dalton), Invincible (Joseph Hauer), Dreadnaught (Paul Turner), and Victory (Kenneth Wright). Cancellation occurred after most of their Super Soldiers, who had been implanted with genetically altered organs that produced the same drugs used to control Nuke, were presumably killed in action by one of their own—Revenge. Dalton and Hauer survived, and the latter has become one of the first supporters of the British Superhuman Registration Act.

The US government regained custody of Nuke after the Daily Bugle debacle and his presumed death. Seeking a replacement for Rogers as Captain America, the Commission on Superhuman Activities sponsored new Super Soldier programs. General Haywerth immediately shot down the idea of using Nuke due to his unstable psyche. Despite the problems Nuke’s first public outing on American soil had caused, the government kept the still-living Nuke in a cement bunker beneath the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile for a period of years. There, he was given updated versions of his cybernetic implants and an internal replacement for the pill system.

After Wolverine attacked the White House in a fit of rage, the government released Nuke to destroy him. In a vicious plan to lure Wolverine to Nuke, a presidential advisor had Nuke flown back to the South Vietnamese village Lai Chi, the site of Nuke’s 1968 incident. Once again, Nuke wrought chaos on the village, and the event made news across the world. Immediately realizing who the killer in Vietnam was, Wolverine flew to Lai Chi and confronted Nuke. Wolverine avoided Nuke’s gunfire until he was out of ammo, but Nuke knocked Wolverine down by hitting him in the face with “Betsy” and tried to crush Wolverine beneath his boot. Wolverine’s adamantium claws cut off Nuke’s cybernetic legs right below the knees, but Nuke continued to fight despite this injury. He changed “Betsy” to rocket launcher mode, but a second before pulling the trigger, Wolverine kicked Nuke’s arm to redirect the missile into the ground only inches away. The detonation not only destroyed “Betsy,” but also burnt large parts of Nuke’s skin and hair, revealing his metallic muscles and bones. Wolverine was about to end Nuke’s suffering with the magical Muramasa sword, but was stopped by Captain America. He had been personally sent in by the U.S. President to clean up the mess in Lai Chi and capture both Wolverine and Nuke. Viewing the new arrival as a traitor, Nuke tried to take the fallen sword, but Captain America got to it first and stunned Nuke with a kick to the head.

Captain America and Wolverine’s battle ended with the arrival of Wolverine’s X-Men teammates, who took Nuke into their custody. Wolverine asked his telepathic teammate Emma Frost to rebuild Nuke’s heavily damaged mind.