Cloud-Man
Cloud-Man
Cloud-Man was a hero of the first wave of superheroes.
Origin
Fogarty "Foggy" Ellison was a police scientist. One night he was working late in the lab when a freak storm caused his lab equipment to explode and throw his body into the Chemical Dimension. There he met the Element Races, beings composed of each element alone. The Elder Elements Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, and Nitrogen trained him in the mystic arts of the Chemical Dimension. When Ellison returned to our world, he had been presumed dead for months. Ellison decided to use his powers for good and adopted the name Cloud-Man. His headquarters was the hazardous waste dump outside of Wheeler-Nicholson Hospital.
Personality
Ellison has a quiet sense of humor and prefers to defeat villains with the minimum of fisticuffs. He often forms his own opening splash page.
Powers
Whenever Ellison says the formula known only to himself and the Elder Elements, he becomes Cloud-Man. As Cloud-Man, he can access all the elemental powers of the Chemical Dimension to form compounds. Whether he is solid, liquid, or coherent gas depends on the ambient temperature of his surroundings. This is also his greatest weakness, a fact of which his regular foes are well aware.
Enemies
Cloud-Man's arch-nemesis is the Sorrounding, the Veil of Sorrow, a femme fatale (real name Sara Round) with similar powers to Cloud-Man. The Sorrounding, however, prefers to specialize in manipulating the emotions.
Revival
Millenium Comics, who had bought the rights to Cloud-Man, eventually revived the long-dormant hero. Ellison, as it turns out, had been frozen solid by the Sorrounding's device.Doc Gabriel found the solid hero and de-iced him. Cloud-Man became a mentor and inspiration to the more prominent younger heroes.
The Ele-Men: From Sidekicks to Main Show
Unfortunately for Cloud-Man, his sales began to slip. In an effort to boost them, he acquired sidekicks in the Ele-Men, teenage avatars of the four principal Elder Elements. Hydrogen Lad was volatile but multi-talented. Carbon Boy was the strongman and leader of the junior group; Oxygen Lass was a ditzy blonde; Nitrogen Kid was an earthy Difer. Soon the Ele-Men gained more members such as the inflatable Helium Lad, arrogant Boron-5, crystalline Lithium Lass and Lad, and began to crowd Cloud-Man out of his own book.
Cloud-Man was sent to a highly polluted possible future in his new book, The Savage Cry of Cloud-Man, while the Ele-Men were featured in the re-named Ensemble of Ele-Men. The ever-expanding team of Ele-Men covered much adventure, constant romantic swaps, and a much higher death rate than the average superhero comic book.
