History

In 1894, the scientist Abednego Danner injected his pregnant wife with an experimental serum. Their son Hugo was born with super-human strength, speed, and nigh-invulnerability. Hugo lived with his parents throughout his teen years and fell in love with his high school sweetheart, Anna Blake. The two quarreled often and Hugo decided to leave after graduation to attend college and played football for Webster University. He also travel the world where he dove for pearls in the South Pacific and joined the French Foreign Legion during World War I. Anna wrote Hugo shortly after revealing she married John Munro, a man she met only three weeks before.

In the years that followed, Hugo's special powers led him through a number of adventures, but his unique stature among mortal men forever brought him grief. Hugo would later return to his home town of Indian Creek, Colorado to be with his father before he died. Eventually, Hugo staged his own death in the ???? and went into hiding.

Hugo returned home to once more and encountered Anna Blake putting flowers on his pretend grave. The two had a one night affair before Hugo disappeared for good. Anna found herself pregnant afterwards. Arnold Munro was born and began exhibiting superhuman powers of strength and invulnerability at the age of ten. Remembering Hugo's troubles, Anna made her son promise to keep his abilities a secret until he turned eighteen.

A high school senior in 1942, Munro saved the superheroes T.N.T. and Dan the Dyna-Mite from a burning car crash. T.N.T. died but Munro managed to bring Dyna-Mite to a nearby hospital. Subsequently, Munro and other new teen heroes aided the All-Star Squadron in defeating Axis Amerika. President Roosevelt asked Munro and the others to join the Squadron on a cross-country War Bond promotion. Munro was reluctant at first, but joined the other teens as they became known as the “Young All-Stars”.

Soon thereafter, Munro received a mysterious diary written by Hugo Danner, his father. He learned about his father's troubled life as one of the 20th century's first metahumans. This led the young hero on a quest to learn of his father's fate.

After having read his father’s diary, Munro turned to the government's secret Project M, demanding to know the location of the “” mentioned in his father's diary. There he met Georgia Challenger, who led him instead to in. Surprisingly they found his father, Hugo Danner, who had spawned a new band of "offspring," the Sons of Dawn. Danner used his father's formula to bestow powers on these Sons of Dawn and mentioned that the creators of the villain Übermensch had also stolen that formula.

Munro was forced to oppose his father when Danner ordered the Sons of Dawn to attack a Brazilian city. The combined might of the All-Star Squadron defeated the Sons of Dawn and Danner was killed.

The Legacy Factor

During the War, Iron Munro also met his future wife, the All-Star Squadron member known as the Phantom Lady (Sandra Knight). Before the two of them were married, Sandra conceived a child (which she never revealed to him). She confided only in the Atom (Al Pratt), who helped her give the child up for adoption. The hospital mistakenly listed Al as the father on the child's birth certificate. The child was named Walter Pratt and later became the father of Kate Spencer (the current vigilante Manhunter).

After the war, both Arn and Sandra started working for the U.S. Government as members of the O.S.S. off-shoot called Argent. Arn took the code name "Gladiator One." The couple eventually married and on numerous missions came up against his WWII Nazi nemesis, Baron Blitzkrieg (calling himself simply The Baron and working for the Soviets). When the couple bore a second child, it was kidnapped by the Baron when Sandra was on a mission in Communist Poland. The child was (and still is) assumed killed at the time. The couple gradually grew apart and sometime in the 1960s, Phantom Lady disappeared while on a cover mission for Argent. Though Munro later discovered she was alive, the two were never reunited.

Munro settled in with his friend, Roy Lincoln (the Human Bomb). There he eventually met the young hero Damage (Grant Emerson). Munro helped Emerson search for the identity of his biological parents. For a time, it appeared that Grant might be Arn and Sandra's lost child. Eventually they learned that Damage was actually the son of the Atom, Al Pratt, and his wife.

Iron Munro continues to serve as an adventurer and apparently benefits from extended youth. During the massive war between Imperiex and Brianiac 13, the Justice Society’s Sand recruited an army of All-Stars, including members of a new Freedom Fighters team that Munro was a part of. This Freedom Fighters team would meet a terrible fate at the hands of the villainous group called the Society. Members were lost including Munro’s close friend Roy Lincoln.

Recently, Sandra Knight also learned the fate of the child she gave up for adoption, Walter Pratt. Pratt became a homicidal maniac. His daughter, Katherine Spencer, had become the latest Manhunter. Pratt ended up dying when he was cut in half midstream in teleporation. Sandra met Kate Spencer, and months later brought Arn to Kate's house for an introduction.

When Clark Kent was living on his adopted parents farm, he was inspired by the war stories of Iron Munro. Iron Munro (through a book) taught Clark truth, justice, and the American Way.

Skills and Abilities

Munro is gifted with super-human strength, the ability to leap over great distances, and a vast degree of invulnerability.

Trivia

Iron Munro was inspired by Aarn Munro, a character in the novel The Mightiest Machine by John W. Campbell, Jr., the character was recreated as Iron Munro in Shadow Comics (1940s). In DC comics, Munro was adapted as the son of Hugo Danner, protagonist of the novel Gladitator (1930) by Philip Wylie.