Who's This? A faux-Golden Age hero.
The facts: Though set in 1939, Steel: The Indestructible Man was actually part of the DC Explosion, his introductory issue cover-dated March 1978. And then of the DC IMPLOSION, cancelled after only 5 issues, with a final issue being dumped in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade #2 and partially reprinted in All-Star Squadron #8 and 9, as Roy Thomas retroactively folded Gerry Conway and Don Heck's creation into the Golden Age/Earth-2. Hank Heywood Sr. would also be tagged as the grandfather of Justice League Detroit's Steel and that version of the JLA's secret financier. After Steel II's death, Hank Sr. puts the costume back on just in time to be killed by Eclipso.
How you could have heard of him: The costume may be familiar to fans of post-2000s JSA comics, that worn by CITIZEN Steel, another grandson and cousin to Steel II. On television, Legends of Tomorrow uses this last character (Nathaniel), but also features the original Commander Steel as a member of the Justice Society in the 1940s.
Example story: Steel #5 (November 1978) "A Scream in the Night!" by Gerry Conway, Don Heck, Al Milgrom and Frank Chiaramonte
One of Gerry Conway's interesting bits of flair on this series was making the narration come from Hank Heywood's journal, so we know this last published issue's story takes place in January of 1940, in Upstate New York, near the Canadian border. So Don Heck should have been drawing snow or at least no leaves in the trees, right? Research shows this was a particularly harsh winter for the area, with lower than normal temperatures and heavy snowfall. But then, it might have been hard to do a swamp monster story. Heck, Gerry! Why not set it in Louisiana instead!
Anyway... what we need to know is that Steel has hitched a ride on a truck transporting the only existing sample of the bio-retardant formula used in his own origin so he can help himself regenerate from injuries sustained in issue 4 (his days are numbered without it), as well as save his girlfriend's father, presently dying from a heart condition. And then a monster attacks the truck, kills the driver, and goes after scientist Olivia Brown. What's an Indestructible Man to do? Fight, obviously.
But Steel, weak from the previous issue's events, is thrown for a loop and lies unconscious in the swamp. Professor Brown, who once loved Hank, tries to make sure his formula is safe and gets waylaid by the creature. Described as entirely logical and reasonable, her mind snaps at the realization that she's in a comic book universe where weirdness happens and faints. Cue creature walking to some big creepy house with her in its arms. The typical Beauty & the Beast stuff. Meanwhile, Steel comes to and must extricate himself from quicksand. His only chance: His rifle modified to shoot mercy bullets and a climbing cable.
Turn the page and the 500-pound cyborg pulled himself out in the nick of time. What is this, a Republic serial? And note that his Who's Who entry has him at 378 lbs. How does one diet when the weight is all metal parts? Has he since become Aluminum, the Malleable Man? Maybe just chalk it up to exaggeration and massive rounding up, Siskoid. Steel collects his thoughts before tracking down Olivia and her kidnapper (flashback to how we got here, and I gotta say, we got all this from opening narration, so there are few surprises - like, when the flashback includes the first few panels of the very issue you're reading...). Pages 7-12 would be placed before page 1 in my edit. Finally back on track, Steel walks to "Hawk House" where he is received by a trusting butler who doesn't ask questions about the bright costume. But he also can't lead Steel to the master of the house because dude's a recluse. Steel pushes further into the house WITHOUT a guide, and...
Booby-trapping one's own house? Some recluses really mean it. After the guillotine, the automated machine gun.
And then a pit trap. But like it says on the cover, our boy's indestructible. Role-playing parenthesis: I once had a group of players who were impossible to hurt because of their armor, so I started resorting to alternate means of damage like poison and drowning to put a little fear in them. The master of the house had the same idea:
30-minute lung capacity? So much for that. But before you start making jokes about "jumping the shark" (justified in that this is to be the last issue), how about the much cooler THROWING the shark?
Beyond the aquarium is Gunnerson, the head of the Hawk Medical Research Center, who tells him the Hawk Brothers are both dead. As you've probably guessed, one was turned into that monster and then promptly killed the other. Why we need the whole backstory about one of them being a silent movie star who couldn't make it in the talkies is beyond me, perhaps just a bit of period color to remind you this takes place in the past. The creature is in fact in the next room, tying Olivia to a table, and Gunnerson is quite insane and siding with the monster. Loose lips sink ships, and Hank remembers one detail from Gunnerson's story: They put Hawk through an experimental healing process because he broke his spine in a car accident.
Hank makes "Gunnerson" admit the truth - he's the other Hawk brother who's been caring for the monster he inadvertently created, and their hope was that Hank's bio-retardant formula would change him back. After the water tank burst, it really did a number on the old house, and it's about to collapse like the House of Usher. Steel hightails it out of there with Olivia, but the Hawks, transfixed by their melodrama, stay behind to concerns no more.
Speaking of collapses... That origin of Baron Blitzkrieg (another fake Golden Age character) would not be published as DC suffered its infamous Implosion. Steel was just one of many casualties, arguably nothing personal, but based on this one story, was it a mercy killing? If Firestorm was Gerry Conway doing Spider-Man at DC, this was meant to be his take on Captain America, and while the action beats are good enough, the plotting is haphazard and full of clichés. Worse perhaps is that we need to be reminded several times that this is a period story because it could have taken place in 1978. Perhaps Commander Steel needed to be introduced during a different war to distance him a little bit from Cap, Vietnam maybe. Not that it would have rescued him from dreaded cancellation.
Who's Next? Neither Batman nor Superman.
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