History: (Steel #1)-In college Hank Heywood was a talented biology student working with Dr. Gilbert Giles to develop a bioretardant formula. His research was cut short when he joined the Marines after Hitler invaded Poland in 1938. Defending his military base against saboteurs, he was caught in an explosion that left him near death and ravaged his body. He offered himself Dr. Giles as a human guinea pig in order to survive. Over the next several weeks Dr. Giles rebuilt him from the skeleton up, using steel alloy to replace damaged muscle, bone and skin. Micro-joints enabled the steel to move like normal human organs. Discovering that the surgery had given him fantastic powers, he developed a matching steel alloy suit and named himself Steel, the Indestructible Man.

Over the next several months he battled Nazis at home and abroad, and in 1940 he was sent to kidnap Adolph Hitler. Steel was captured by Baron Blitzkrieg and put in a concentration camp. He was brainwashed and sent to England to assassinate Winston Churchill, but the All-Star Squadron intervened and snapped him out of it. President Roosevelt rechristened him Commander Steel, and he joined the All-Star Squadron. He would stay with the team until 1941, when he again went behind enemy lines to rescue the prisoner of war husband of his ex-fiancée. The result of this mission is unknown.