Green Lantern Week: Magnetic Malevolent Marauders

Neal Emerson was a prominent physicist of Earth-One with a traumatic past. Born Baxter Timmons, he was exposed to severe physical and emotional abuse by his father, which left vast emotional scars on his psyche that would manifest years later. Renaming himself Neal Emerson and scrubbing his past history from the public record, his attained a doctorate as a research scientist. Doctor Emerson sought to incorporate his cutting edge research of magnetism as being a cure-all for health ailments. However, prolonged exposure to this radation left his mind fractured, forming a Jekyll and Hyde split personality. This led to his third identity as the sinister Doctor Polaris. 

Percival Playboy (Plazchek) was an amateur physicist who developed and exposed himself to similar  magnetic currents, which likewise effected his mind. This transformed Playboy into the armored antagonist known as Nuclear the Magnetic Marauder. Initially being drawn into conflict with first Wonder Woman and her beau, Steve Trevor, and then the All-Star Squadron in separate encounters

Doctor Polaris began a long-running emnity with Hal "Green Lantern" Jordan, who repeatedly defeated the magnetic menace throughout the years. At one point, Polaris was cloned and used a a pawn versus Lantern and his Justice League allies. This version of Polaris resumed the civilian identity of Baxter Timmons, who would later quarrel with Black Lightning. This version of the Doctor had a counterpart on Earth-Two known as Knodar*.

Nuclear was eventually defeated in the bowels of his ocean side mansion when the Amazing Amazon teamed up alongside the All-Stars to vanquish the villain, seemingly once and for all as Playboy seemingly perished. However, Nuclear returned years later, once more seeking profit from a sea going vessel as he had in one of his initial appearances, and was one last time defeated by the Wonder Woman, 

Just as Nuclear’s last adversary before his death was Wonder Woman, so too Polaris’ final foe was the Wonder Woman of his Earth. However, soon after this the devious Doctor made final appearance pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths, this time aiding the  Monitor’s forces in saving the Multiverse from the Anti-Monitor.

* Knodar was potentially a descendant of Percy Playboy, and definitely an inheritor of the magnetic-manipulation mechanism developed by Playboy which he used as Nuclear.