Dr. Never, Atomiknight, and the Future
 

Not bothering with spoiler tags as this doesn't really "ruin" anything for folks. It's just a convenient one stop spot for people to get the LD on Dr. Never and what implications he has on the future (i.e. Atomik Age).

There seems to be some confusion about the future of the Nuklearverse. This confusion arises from a story Atomik Lad tells Rachel about a trip to the future forced upon Nuklear Man by Dr. Never several years previous. Try graphing that timeline.

Anyway, due to the trip through time, Nuklear Man was effectively taken out of the universe for thirteen years. Without his influence on the world, certain things came to pass (while others did not) and in the end Dr. Never was king of it all.

When Nuklear Man was re-introduced to the time line in the future, he found a grown up Sparky who was calling himself Atomiknight. It is presumed/implied that this Atomiknight had been fighting against Dr. Never's regime but hadn't managed to overthrow his rule. He teams up with Nuke for one last battle with Dr. Never and the outcome is a bit vague. I'll explore entirely what happened during Nuke's trip to that potential future in a short story though. Anyway, we do know that in the tussle Nuklear Man was transported from the future back to just a few moments after he'd been sent there in the first place.

Since Nuklear Man was put "back" into the universe in the past, he was then made to be not absent for thirteen years and the future ruled by Dr. Never with Atomiknight fighting against him never comes to pass.

So speculation to the tune of Atomik Age revolving around defeating Dr. Never is faulty. Ain't gonna happen.

I have no specific plans for Dr. Never at the moment, but he is a time travelling villain who can be anywhen so I'd be a moron to say absolutely that he won't be in Atomik Age.

I think most people were assuming that the future glimpsed by Nuke *MAJOR SPOILERS*could still occur since Nuke left Earth at the end. If Dr. Never were to reappear right after Nuke left, the already devestated planet would have trouble fighting him off. But thanks for clearing that up. No more debate.

Thanks for clearing that up a bit...I'm still curious as to how Arel appeared at the site of teh Dragon's Strike, though.

It's covered by Nuke's flashback when he's rocketing back from the sun after Nihel tosses him into it. Short version: Arel left the other side of the galaxy because it was too noisy (he absorbs all electromagnetic energy and this includes telecommunication broadcasts). He traveled across the galaxy and found a piercing babble of signals coming from one planet -- Earth. He decided to destroy it, zeroed in on Metroville's reactor, and just happened to land right as the Dragon made it go boom. One explosion later, Arel gets amnesia.

Thanks a lot, that clears things up a lot for me.

That brings up another question I never thought of before. We know from reading the book that Nuklear cannot stand the temperatures found at the center of a sun. So how did he survive the exploding reactor? Also, was it ever written what happened to the Dragon after that?

Well, we can assume that the intense temperatures of the nuclear explosion weakened him enough that it screwed with his head. It hurt him to absorb that energy, so much that it knocked him out, and when he woke up he'd forgotten everything that happened.

As for what happened to the Dragon after that, no one goes into much detail, but you can piece together what happens from a few lines that different characters drop through the story. The short version is that Nuklear Man was given custody of young Sparky, they became heroes, they met Mighty Metallic Magno Man, they team up to hunt down the Dragon, find his corporate headquarters, confront him superhero style, have a big fight. During this fight Sparky thinks that Nuke has been killed/very hurt. His reaction is along the lines of what he did to Nihel immediatley after Rachel's death, the Dragon's skyscraper crashes around them, and the heroes walk out but the Dragon does not.

Question 1: How does one pronounce Atomiknight? With or without the 'k'? I kinda think without sounds cooler, myself...

Question 2: The Nega bomb that Doctors Menace and Genius worked on to destroy Nuke and Nihel went off-target and super-obliterated a hundred-foot area. Due to the nature of KI fields and planetary movements, will that gap be in that one spot forever relative to the earth, or will Earth move away from it in its, and the galaxy's, rotations and revolutions? And if it stays put relative to the earth, will the superhole be relevant in Atomik Age?

One quick question:

The Dragon is referred to in the book as an international evil gangster. However, at one point, someone(i forget who at this point) says something along the lines of "having fought an interdimensional Dragon" Am I crazy or what's going on here?

Everyone is interdimensional. We all break the second and third plane, some say the fourth is time so we exist in that plane too. Alternate dimensions should be better described as alternate universes. As to what Brian meant, I don't know.