Supergirl’s Arch-Enemy: Reactron

I’m not positive when I came to this conclusion, but for a while now I have held the belief that much like Superman has Lex Luthor and Batman has the Joker, Supergirl’s predominate villain is Reactron. As I’ve done a bit more research leading up to this post, it seems that this place is somewhat unearned and he’s a character that really only has a couple dozen stories and not even all of them are Supergirl stories. My main reasoning for his placement in my mind is that he’s present in a wide range of Supergirl stories. First appearing in the Daring New Adventures of Supergirl series (Issue 8) he would have a handful of appearances in this title, and he would then play a large part in the Supergirl side of things in the New Krypton Saga, before making his way into the Supergirl CBS show in a fairly pivotal episode of Season 1.

As mentioned above, Reactron first appears in Supergirl (Vol. 2) #8 written by Paul Kupperberg, Carmine Infantino and Bob Oksner on art, with Tom Ziuko colors and Ben Oda letters. This story “Stand-Ins for Supergirl” does serve as the first appearance of Reactron but it seems that the New Doom Patrol (the aforementioned Stand-Ins) are already familiar with this radioactive foe. This origin for the character would be seen in the next issue where we learn that Ben Krullen (Reactron) served in Vietnam as a commanding officer to Josh Clay (Tempest). Krullen gained his powers from being exposed at close range to atomic blast tests in the 1950s, and then his powers were activated by a blast from Clay after Krullen decided to fire on a village of civilians. After fighting both the New Doom Patrol and Supergirl, Reactron is defeated and explodes in the upper atmosphere.

Surprisingly, exploding in the upper atmosphere didn’t kill Reactron. It is revealed a few years later that after this happened, he was taken to Belle Reve during the pages of Doom Patrol (Vol. 2) #10 and #11. However by this time Crisis on Infinite Earths had occured and Supergirl was no longer existing so when flashing back to Reactron’s origin (in this story as well as Secret Origin Annual #1) Power Girl has been inserted where Supergirl had been before. Along with booting Supergirl out of the origin, this story features Reactron working alongside Larry “Negative Man” Trainor to return the negative energy form back to him from Negative Woman. He does accomplish this but seems to die afterwards. Also, inexplicably, his name has changed to Martin Krull, although he is clearly meant to be the same character as before.

After this it would be almost 15 years before he would show up again but this time it would be alongside fellow Daring New Adventures alum Blackstarr in Suicide Squad (Vol. 2) issues 6-8. Reactron seems to serve little purpose in this story aside from getting frozen by Killer Frost and later dying. He isn’t named, aside from “Reactron” in this story and mostly serves to just be cannon fodder so its hard to say if he’s Ben or Martin Krull at this point.

He would next show up in Battle for Bludhaven #1. He seems to serve little purpose aside from on again being cannon-fodder alongside the rest of the “Nuclear Legion”. He is presented here in what I can safely call his worst look and once again dies after bringing almost nothing to the table. Before I jump to the real meat and potatoes of Reactron in comics, I’m going to take a quick look at his role in the CBS Supergirl television series.

Reactron (as Ben Krull) only appears in a single episode of Supergirl however this 4th episode of the series is a fairly significant point in Supergirl’s heroic career. Reactron is presented here as an adversary of Superman and he is going after Supergirl because of her relation to the Man of Steel as a way to get him back for what he supposedly did to his family. Ben Krull was an employee of the Bakerline Nuclear Power Station when he was caught in a meltdown that caused the death of his wife. This meltdown, that should’ve killed him, instead gave him immense powers that let him go toe-to-toe with Superman without ever being able to be defeated. His first clash with Supergirl ends with the Maid of Might lying helpless and Superman (called in via Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch) being the one to save the day. Supergirl would later (with the help of Winn and Alex) be able to face Reactron and with a combination of talking him down and using lead to block the radiation, she is eventually able to take him down on her own.

This episode helps set Supergirl aside from Superman and place her on equal status. Superman himself even tells her (via text) that defeating Reactron was something even he couldn’t do. This appearance of Reactron is, somehow, the only version where he doesn’t die by the end of it and is instead taken to prison. Weirdly enough, in his initial story (DNAoS #9) it is revealed that lead is not a way to defeat him and leads to a devastating chemical reaction so Supergirl using lead to incapacitate him in this episode directly opposes his first comic appearance, but makes for better television.

Supergirl (Vol. 5) is, in my opinion, the series that best places Reactron into Arch-Enemy status. Kelley Pucket first re-introduces Reactron in issue 25 of his run and here we’re met with yet another version of Reactron. This Reactron projects his consciousness across the cosmos and uses the power of stars he extinguishes to convert into radioactive blasts. At least this is what he tells Supergirl during their fight. Later, after Sterling Gates takes over the book (specifically in issue #40) we get the real story of his origin. It turns out Ben Krull was just a normal man dying of radiation poisoning and the power source he was using in his initial tussle with Supergirl was healing him. After he was taken away, General Lane got his hands on him and outfitted him with a Gold Kryptonite heart.

This is where the real meat of Reactron’s stories happen, and as such I won’t be covering every single appearance because the New Krypton Saga is immense and Reactron plays a major role in a lot of the Supergirl side of things. Reactron’s first big move in the New Krypton storyline is faking getting captured by the Krptonians, going to the Artic where the bottle city of Kandor had recently been enlarged, and killing Zor-El, Supergirl’s father and the leader of Kandor. This act pushed Alura into a leadership role making her colder and more agressive and she would task her daughter with tracking down Reactron and returning him to New Krypton.

Most of this first arc of the New Krypton saga has Superwoman and Reactron working together against Supergirl under orders from Sam Lane. The Who Is Superwoman arc ends with Reactron having a near fatal injury although he doesnt die here and is taken into Science Police custody where he doesn’t last long before Codename: Assassin (another of Lane’s lackies) breaks him out and gives him his Reactron gear back. This kicks off the Hunt for Reactron story, I’ll probably cover this in full at some point along with all the other storylines but its more of General Lane telling Reactron what to do and that doing is fighting and or killing Supergirl.

The Hunt for Reactron story also deals heavily with the Nightwing and Flamebird storyline happening parallel and the Nightwing/Flamebird/Supergirl trio of heroes has a nice dynamic and they seem to work effectively against Reactron and are able to capture him so that Kara can take him back to New Krypton to face justice. Unfortunately the trial is cut short by an angry mob of Kryptonians that only wish to kill Krull and while the council tries to escort the prisoner safely away he is supposedly vaporized leaving just a scorch mark. It’s soon revealed that Gor of the military guild has taken him personally into custody without the approval or knowledge of the council.

It is later revealed that Gor was acting under direct orders from Alura to weed out any and all information Reactron had about General Lane and his various anti-Kryptonian plans. Unfortunately, Reactron once again used the same tactic employed at the beginning of the New Krypton saga where he purposfully got captured by the Kryptonians to get safely behind enemy lines. This time however he came much more prepared, as a living bomb. This bomb would obviously be a suicide run for Krull, but it also successfully took out nearly all 100,000 Kryptonians in the process. Supergirl only made it out because Alura in her last act pushed her into a radiation deck and sealed it shut.

So what have we learned about Reactron? I think the craziest part to me was how often the character seemed to die. I think in the stories I went through (which was nearly all of them to the best of my ability) he died 4 or 5 times and had at least 3 names. It’s hard to say exactly how all of this falls into continuity because it really seems like he’s meant to be the same character throughout. The version of the character that exists in the Supergirl (vol 5) comic does seem to have the most consistent through line in the 2ish years he was showing up so it seems reasonable that this is a single distinct reactron and any character before this point is a seprate character. The earlier versions do seem to mostly use the “Atom Bomb Tests in the 50s” origin when telling his origin and the later version has a distinctly different origin. Potentially the Battle for Bludhaven story could also be a part of this 2nd Reactron, although he does die on panel.

It seems that between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis the character served little purpose other than to be a D-list character that could easily be used if you needed someone to die in a story and wouldn’t really come into prominence until writers like Kelley Puckett and Sterling Gates got a hold of him and positioned him firmly as a Supergirl rival. I do think the character has a lot of potential and him dying obviously hasn’t ever kept him down for long and I think he could really stand up as a great foil to the Girl of Steel.

Reactron has shown up in both the Who’s Who series (issue 19) as well as in the Secret Files series (Superman Secret Files 2009), although neither of which allotted him more than a half page which is particularly funny to me.

I covered a lot of stories here but didn’t go very in depth with any of them, if there’s any of these that you’d like to hear me dive deeper into, let me know. The Reactron episode of the Supergirl show (Reactron’s only story where he’s not dead by the end) was covered by a recently started podcast called Stronger Together (specifically this episode). Snowy and Nic are taking a retrospective look at the series and are currently about halfway through the first season and I urge anyone who enjoys this blog to also check them out.