Manfred Mota

In the early years of the Cold War, nuclear engineer Manfred Mota developed an atomic-powered punch and embarked on a brief crime spree as the Atom Smasher, but was defeated on his first case by the original Flash, Jay Garrick.

While in prison, Mota plotted his revenge, noting the Flash’s disappearance. When a new Flash appeared, Barry Allen, Mota believed him to be the same Flash. Upon his release from prison, he became Professor Fallout, holding the city hostage with a neutron bomb hidden inside a giant sculpture of an atom. The somewhat confused Flash was able to defeat him, and returned him to prison.

Over the ensuing years, Mota’s sanity deteriorated as he became obsessed with revenge and with, ironically, safe nuclear power. Stealing material from a nuclear power plant, he developed a suit powered by nuclear fusion which allowed him to fire extremely destructive blasts, then feed on the energy produced. Calling himself Fusionn, he attacked the third Flash, Wally West, succeeding in briefly incapacitating him. The ultimate humiliation of unmasking his foe backfired, however, when the crowd watching the battle revealed that not only was this a new Flash, but that his identity had been publicly known for several years. Infuriated, Mota decided to take out his revenge on the city instead of his dead enemy, but was stopped when the Flash pierced a hole in his coolant tanks, producing a feedback loop that melted his suit into the ground and buried Mota in radioactive rock. (Flash 50th Anniversary Special, 1990)

Resurfacing

Long believed dead after his encounter with Wally West, Mota was actually transformed into an energy being. He has to concentrate constantly to maintain his form. This also makes him difficult to kill, as he can reconstitute himself. Seeking a way to restore his humanity, he tracked down his estranged daughter Valerie. Mota’s plan was to use her DNA and Inertia’s future technology to make himself human again...even though it would kill her. When Inertia betrayed him, he realized the mistake he had made, deciding that it was more important to reconcile with his daughter than to restore his physical being.

He still blames the Flashes (and Inertia) for all his problems, and Mota was finally captured by the fourth Flash, Bart Allen. Mota is currently held in a magnetic cell in Iron Heights. (Flash: TFMA #4–8, 2006–2007)

Radioactive Future

In the year 2645, a gigantic radioactive creature menaced Central City. Scientists believed the creature was Mota, somehow alive and transformed into living plutonium. Tachyon physicist John Fox was sent back in time to recruit the aid of the three Flashes* who had defeated Mota before. He failed to make contact, but his unstable return trip through time imbued him with super-speed. Fox combined several costumes from the Flash Museum, took on the name of Flash, and defeated Mota by launching him, unprotected, into the timestream, to a distant future in which all his plutonium had decayed into inert lead. (Flash 50th Anniversary Special, 1990)

• Primary Sources
• Art Credits
• Legacy-Era Appearances
• One Year Later Appearances
• Further Notes

Primary Sources

• Flash 50th Anniversary Special (1990), Mark Waid, Len Strazewski, Gerard Jones, William Messner-Loebs

Art

• Energy Being - Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #7 (on sale December 2006) - Daniel Acuña
• Atom Smasher - Flash 50th Anniversary Special (1990) - Irv Novick and Dick Giordano
• Professor Fallout - Flash 50th Anniversary Special (1990) - Carmine Infantino and Josef Rubinstein
• Fusionn - Flash 50th Anniversary Special (1990) - Grant Miehm and Tim Dzon (?)
• Plutonium Creature - Flash 50th Anniversary Special (1990) - Mike Parobek and José Marzan, Jr.

Significant Legacy-Era Flash Appearances

• Flash 50th Anniversary Special (1990), Mark Waid, Len Strazewski, Gerard Jones, William Messner-Loebs

Significant One-Year-Later Flash Appearances

• The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #3 (October 2006): “Lightning in a Bottle Part 3: Night of the Griffin,” Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo (flashback)
• The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #4–6 (November 2006–January 2007): “Lightning in a Bottle Parts 4–6” Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo
• The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #7–8 (February–March 2007): “Speedquest,” Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo

Notes

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