Origin

Frank Simpson was targeted by the Weapon Plus program at an early age. Using the killer and mercenary, Logan (pre-Weapon X), they instigated events that mimicked Logan's. Frank was manipulated into killing one of his parents, and his other parent was manipulated into committing suicide. From there, Frank was brought into Project: Homegrown. As an adult, he was enlisted into the military for training and sent to the Vietnam War for conditioning. At one point during the war, he was captured and tortured by the Viet Cong, which included Logan among their ranks. He was undercover posing as a Russian operative and tortured Frank as part of his conditioning. This included carving the American flag on his face, which he would later tattoo over. After the war, Frank underwent experimental procedures to make him a super-soldier, like Captain America, who would answer to the government. While the experiments were successful, Nuke's mental condition only got worse with him constantly believing he was still fighting in the Vietnam War. His mental problems meant he wasn't the ideal candidate to replace Captain America and instead was saved for black ops work for the government and contractors.

Creation

Nuke was created by Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli and first appeared in Daredevil #232.

Character Evolution

Nuke largely disappeared following his apparent death in Daredevil #233, although his origin was explored and touched upon in issues of Captain America and Wolverine. It wasn't until Grant Morrison's New X-Men where it was revealed that Nuke was involved in the Weapon Plus program, that the character made a return in subsequent stories.

Major Story Arcs

Born Again

Kingpin gains access to Nuke via government officials he had blackmailed and manipulates the fragile soldier into believing Daredevil hates America and is his sworn enemy in a bid to have Nuke attack his nemesis. Nuke attacks Hell's Kitchen, causing massive damage and casualities as Daredevil battles him with help from the Avengers.

Later, learning that Nuke was an attempt to recreate the process which empowered him, Captain America and Daredevil join forces to try and protect Nuke from the government and US Army who are trying to kill him as his attack on Hell's Kitchen incriminates them. The heroes are unsuccessful, and Nuke is shot and appears to die as Daredevil rushes his body to the Daily Bugle so Ben Urich can expose the whole conspiracy.

Nuke survived however and was taken into government custody, kept hidden away, and deployed for black-ops missions. His survival was made known to Captain America and the X-Men when the government sent him after Wolverine.

Born in Blood

For a few decades, Nuke was being improved by military scientists with new cybernetics, including a new remote-controlled hydraulic pump that replaced his pills. Nuke was finally reactivated after a long dormancy when Wolverine started acting erratically. SHIELD received intel that Wolverine had recovered all his memories and was tying up loose ends. This including faking an attack at the White House so that he could corner the Secretary of State. This forced the U.S. military to take the drastic measure of using Nuke.

A presidential aide working for Romulus pushed a plan that to set Wolverine up. They would drop Nuke into the Vietnam village that he massacred during the war and plant a story in the news ahead of the violence to draw Wolverine there. During their confrontation, Nuke's legs were cut off by Logan's claws and much of his flesh was burned when his rocket launcher when he was shot by his own rocket launcher. Wolverine was about to use the Muramasa Blade on him, when Nuke was rescued by Captain America.

During their fight, Wolverine went berserker and nearly killed Cap, but he was rescued by the X-Men. Emma Frost was able to calm Wolverine's mind long enough for him to make sense. He explained the Nuke was a victim of Weapon Plus program and asked Emma to try and save his mind. After which, he was returned to the military's supervision.

Dark Reign

After the Secret Invasion of Skrulls was ended, Norman Osborn was named the new head of SHIELD, renaming it HAMMER. Osborn made sure that Nuke's severed limbs and burned skin were fixed, especially his face. Although, Nuke reacted to his new face badly and personally had returned to its original visage, much to Osbron's chagrin. He wanted Nuke for his new off-the-books wetworks Thunderbolts. Due to his face, he made Nuke wear a ballistic mask and changed his codename to "Scourge."

His first mission was to hunt down Songbird, former Thunderbolt, as well as Black Widow, who was previously imbedded on the team posing as her own sister. They were both working with Nick Fury, so when Scourge and the other Thunderbolts captured the trio, it caused a disagreement among the team. Headsman, Ghost, and Paladin refused to execute the two heroes. Instead, Headsman cut off Nuke's arm, and Paladin shot him full of bullets, revealing his cybernetic nature. Ghost then used his electroshock gloves on Nuke's unconscious mind to erase the memories of the last few minutes.

On a following mission, the Thunderbolts took on the Agents of Atlas and lost. The telepathic member of the Agents of Atlas, The Uranian, implanted a psychic suggestion in Nuke's mind that would cause him to shoot Osbron the next time he sees him. Lucky for Osborn, he sends them a holographic message. The hologram of his face is enough for the trigger, and Nuke pulls his pistol and shoots. The bullet passes through the hologram and takes out his own teammate, The Headsman. Nuke receives no repercussions for this.

Siege

For more information see: Siege

The Thunderbolts were sent to Asgard to secure Gungnir so Osborn could use it to slay Thor. The team encountered the Avengers and Nuke battled ferociously against U.S.Agent whom he grievously injured. Nuke managed to get his hands on Gungnir and was preparing to deliver it to Osborn when Paladin again refused to obey Nuke's orders and instead shot him in the face repeatedly at close range.

After Osborn was defeated, the Thunderbolts program was given to Luke Cage. He ran it out of The Raft as a prisoner reform project. As a member of the program, Nuke was put into a stasis tube and sent to The Raft, however, USAgent was named the new warden of the prison. He had no intention of letting Nuke recover, saving efforts for prisoners with a better chance of reforming.

Weapon Minus

After Nuke had recovered, he was manipulated by a mysterious new villain, named Iron Nail. The Iron Nail posed as a general to give Nuke new marching orders, specifically to enter the recently war-torn eastern European country of Nrosvekistan and take out the civilian population for embarrassing America and disrespecting its ideals.

SHIELD forced a media blackout until they could send Captain America into the country to stop him. They wanted the first images of Nuke in Nrosvekistan to be of Captain America single-handedly defeating. Unfortunately, Cap empathized with Nuke and tried to talk him down, resulting in an image of the two shaking hands and sharing the blame.

Disparaging America in the news media was only half of Iron Nail's plan. He had secretly implanted Nuke with a bomb that he was waiting to trigger until Nuke was back in SHIELD custody. The explosion would then free Iron Nail's ally, Dr. Mindbubble, another imprisoned super-soldier experiment also known as Weapon Minus.

Maria Hill had him pronounced dead.

Death of Wolverine

Having inexplicably survived his encounter with Iron Nail, Nuke becomes one of several mercenaries that attempt to collect the extremely high bounty on Wolverine, after tracking him down to a small Canadian town. However, the bounty is only paid out if Wolverine is brought in alive.

They fight on the docks that ends with Wolverine killing all of Nuke's men. Nuke manages to get in a strong blow, throwing Wolverine into a rock, but ultimately loses after Logan bashes in his face repeatedly, revealing the metal underneath.

Before showing any mercy, Logan manages to get Nuke to reveal the name of the person who started the bounty: Viper.

Santa Marco

Nuke eventually returned to government black-ops. He was sent to the country of Santa Marco with a platoon of soldiers to take out the dictator, Duarte. Unfortunately, they failed and were taken captive. While imprisoned, Duarte's scientists were able to reverse engineer Nuke's three pills and started mass producing them for Duarte's own forces.

The dictator deputized all of Nuke's platoon keeping them hooked on pills and even giving them all matching American flag tattoos. Nuke disapproved of the tattoos so much that he refused to give in to Duarte's demands and remained locked up. He was eventually freed when a mutant task force, calling itself Weapon X (with no relation to the Weapon Plus program), came down to investigate the Nuke Platoon.

Weapon X member, Sabretooth, found Nuke's prison cell and decided to let him out mistaking him to be an ally against Duarte, however, Nuke lashed out at the mutants as traitors as well. To give them an edge against Nuke, they raided Duarte's cache of red pills eventually subduing Nuke and dosing him with his own white pill to calm him down. With a relatively clearer head, Nuke returned to his original mission of killing Duarte and ignoring the mutants, for now.

Weapons of Armageddon

Nuke was hired by a private military outfit called Primewarrior. He was assigned overseas until their super soldier labs in America started getting attacked. One such attack led to the escape of their most recent test subject. Wolverine was also tipped off to escapee. Nuke tracked Wolverine, hoping to find the test subject, but Wolverine led him to the person targeting the labs, David Colton, the War on Terror era Captain America.

Powers and Abilities

Nuke has enhanced strength and is an expert in combat, both armed and unarmed. Nuke has heightened endurance provided by an endoskeleton under his skin.

Alternate Realities

Amalgam Universe

In the Amalgam universe, where Marvel and DC created hybrids of their characters, Nuke was combined with Bane to become Bane Simpson. The two characters had a dependency on super soldier serums in common.

Earth 1610 Ultimate Universe

In Marvel's Ultimate continuity, Nuke is an antagonist for Captain America. His origin is very similar to his 616 counterpart except for the fact that he hates the United States. He volunteered to be a part of Project Rebirth during the Vietnam War, but since the United States military no longer had the Super-Soldier Serum that they gave Steve Rogers, they gave Simpson a weaker model and added cybernetics. Simpson was then forced to go on deadly missions in Vietnam and brought in large casualty numbers. This made the brass at the Pentagon look past his incredibly troubling psyche report, ignoring the American Flag he got tattooed on his face.

Simpson later decided he was done committing atrocities for the United States and instead started working for a small village in Cambodia called Saloth. He started using his own blood to synthesize a version of the super-soldier serum that he gave to everyone living in Saloth. North Korea was also sold Simpson's blood to create their own super-soldiers, but this endeavor was discovered by S.H.I.E.L.D. who sent in a small team to destroy the facility. Steve Rogers was a part of this unit and fought Simpson one-on-one, but was easily dispatched. As Simpson was escaping he told Rogers to come and find him and he would show him what America really stands for.

Rogers would later take Simpson on his offer, and go to Saloth. He is easily dispatched by the towns native inhabitants of super-soldiers and thrown in a jail cell. Simpson then proceeds to torture Rogers for several days and show him propaganda of the evils committed by American forces in an effort to make Rogers admit that what he's fighting for is a lie. After presumably a week, Rogers has still refused to admit America is evil and Simpson, at the behest of his subordinates, decides to take Rogers out back and shoot him in the head.

Simpson prepares to shoot Rogers when he hears him start to pray. Frustrated that his captive still has hope, he decides to leave and come back in five minutes to see if God sent a miracle. When Simpson comes back to kill Rogers, he spits venom in his face that he had ripped from a snake's throat. Simpson is temporarily blinded and Rogers attacks him, dragging the fight into the center. Simpson orders his soldiers not to intervene and Rogers rips his ear off .e fight continues for a while and Simpson starts to gain the upper hand when Rogers smashes his genitals with a sledgehammer. Simpson begs for Rogers to kill him right there but he refuses. Instead, he punches him in the face so hard that his eyeball is knocked out of his skull.

S.H.I.E.L.D. arrives and arrests Simpson and while he is in the infirmary, Rogers comes and reads him the Bible to repay the favor.

Weapon America

The Steve Rogers from Earth-20504 became the subject of multiple super soldier programs. Presumably, these included at least Project: Rebirth (Cap's original program), Weapon X (evidenced by his adamantium claws), and Project: Homegrown (evidenced by his American flag face tattoo).

Other Media

Television

Jessica Jones

Nuke makes an appearance in the Netflix series Jessica Jones as one of Kilgrave's victims, played by Wil Traval. In this adaption, he is a police officer and his first name is changed to Will. Nuke makes his first appearance in episode 3, when under Kilgrave's control he is forced to try and murder Trish Walker. However, Jessica manages to stop him. In order to clear his guilty conscience over his attempt to attack them, he befriends Trish (and becomes her boyfriend) and uses his resources, connections and skills as an ex-spec-ops soldier to help Jessica catch Kilgrave. Unfortunately, she and Will constantly clash over their methods with dealing with him. While Jessica wants to capture him alive, Will believes he should be killed. Their working relationship ends when Will attempts to blow up the house Kilgrave is living in, while there are innocent people inside. Jessica alerts Kilgrave to the bomb's presence, and he, in turn, forces one of his neighbors to detonate it next to Will and his men. The explosion causes the death of Will's men and badly injures him. In desperation, he re-joins his old military unit in order to receive pills that provide the consumer with superpowers. Despite the warnings of his doctor, he overdoses and while he heals quickly, Will becomes very intense and violent, to the point of murdering several people. Simpson attempts to kill Jessica as well, however, he is knocked out due to the combined efforts of Jessica and Trish.

Merchandise

• Nuke was featured in the HeroClix figure game.
• Nuke was featured in Hasbro's Marvel Legends wave as part of the Giant-Man Build-a-Figure wave, which was released to coincide with Captain America: Civil War.