Cobalt Man was created by writer Roy Thomas and penciller Werner Roth in X-Men #31. The character subsequently appeared in X-Men #34 and #79, Hulk vol. 2, #173-175, The Defenders #42-43, Hulk: Nightmerica #1, Avengers/Thunderbolts #1, and Civil War #1, in which he died. He appeared posthumously in Marvel Spotlight Civil War: Aftermath #1. A Skrull version of Cobalt Man appears in the “Secret Invasion” storyline in Captain Marvel #2-3. Cobalt Man received an entry in the Marvel Legacy: The 1970s Handbook #1.
Fictional character biography
Ralph Roberts
Ralph Roberts was an inventor studying the effects of nuclear radiation involving cobalt. Seeking to weaponize this, he built a cobalt suit of armor in imitation of Iron Man's, and called himself Cobalt Man. At the time, Ralph's younger brotherTed Roberts was dating Jean Grey, secretly of the mutant superhero group the X-Men. Ralph took Ted, Jean, and Scott Summers on a tour of his lab. He showed Ted his armor and became unstable and destructive. The X-Men defeated him, and he realized the armor was too dangerous to use. However, the subterranean despot Tyrannus soon kidnapped him to force him to build a giant cobalt robot. The X-Men fought Tyrannus and rescued Roberts and returned him to the surface world. He later achieved superhuman size and power due to radiation that slowly begins killing him; addled, he attempts to show the worldthe dangers of nuclear power by destroying himself and the city of Sydney, Australia. In a confrontation with the Hulk, he seemingly dies, safely away from the Earth. Later, while on a mission with Egghead's Emissaries of Evil, he appears to have been killed in a nuclear explosion, but in actuality survived. During the 2004 Avengers/Thunderbolts six issue mini-series, Tony Stark infiltrated the Thunderbolts as Cobalt Man to learn their intentions and agenda, eventually revealing the facade and tossed the Cobalt Man armor away. . Cobalt Man was one of the many supervillains who escaped from the prison The Raft. The superhero team the New Warriors, stars of a reality-TV show, located Cobalt Man hiding in Stamford, Connecticut with other escaped convicts. A powerful explosion during the ensuing conflict killed hundreds of people, apparently including most of the New Warriors and Cobalt Man. Ralph Roberts seemingly returned from the dead in the 2007-08 Captain Marvel miniseries, this proved to be a Skrull impostor. During the “Dark Reign” storyline, Hercules travels to the Underworld and finds Cobalt Man among the dead in Erebus. There Cobalt Man and the others have a chance of returning to life by winning at gambling. Cobalt Man somehow reappears alive and retired in Deadpool & the Mercs for Money, which has the eponymous characters capture him at the behest of a company called Umbral Dynamics.
Cobalt Men
A group of men in Cobalt Man armor attacked the superhero Speedball and a group of trainee Avengers when they visited Stamford, Connecticut. A local police officer revealed the group was pro-Norman Osborn fanatics who had fabricated copies of the Cobalt Man armor with plans to make the heroes look bad in public.
Powers and abilities
Initially, Ralph Roberts wore the Cobalt Man armor to gain Iron Man-like abilities, including flight, superhuman strength and durability, recoil beams, etc. The armor also had oxygen tanks and could protect its wearer from the vacuum of space.
In other media
Television
A version of Cobalt Man appears in Avengers: Ultron Revolution. This iteration is a robot with the ability to teleport, and presumably created by Ultron. In the episode "A Friend in Need", he fights the Avengers by teleporting away from attacks until the Vision arrives. Vision is able to disable Cobalt Man's teleportation device enough for the Avengers to defeat the robot.
