It’s always been a mystery to me why groups in the Marvel Universe were always working to recreate the super-soldier serum that created Captain America, but nobody, not even AIM, seriously tried to recreate the Ionic Ray treatment used by Baron Zemo to create Wonder Man (and later, Goliath/Atlas and Count Nefaria).
I mean, look at the advantages:
It makes you as strong as the Hulk or Thor and makes you an energy being who can’t die because you can just be “re-energized.”
It was made with modern-day technology accessible to everyone. Baron Zemo didn’t have unique access to alien science or super-technology, he just built it himself. And it’s not like Baron Zemo is a unique Tesla-esque visionary where no one could ever achieve his lofty mental heights, either. In fact, I doubt he’d crack the list of the top 10 or even top 20 of Marvel Comics’s best scientists or engineers. Heck most of his inventions were hand-me-downs from Daddy like the Death Ray and Adhesive X. In fact, it’s kind of amazing the Ionic Ray treatment wasn’t invented independently by some engineer who wasn’t even trying to recreate it.
Most importantly of all for all the wannabe masterminds trying to create a race of atomic supermen to do your bidding, it gives you absolute control of anyone you give superpowers to, because, as Simon Williams was painfully aware, you can set it so they require a treatment to live, or they die.
We also know that Ionic Energy isn’t some breakthrough that would remain undiscovered if not for a single accident, because other civilizations in Marvel wield it, notably the alien conquerors known as the Quists (the X-Men enemy Lucifer’s race).
Incidentally, it always seemed weird to me that Professor X was paralyzed as a result of the actions of Lucifer, such a minor villain who was so ultimately unimportant to the X-Universe (although Steve Englehart did use the Quists in interesting ways in Avengers West Coast). In fact, here’s a headcanon of mine: Professor X was actually paralyzed by a mob of hate-filled homo sapiens at a time he didn’t have full control of his telepathy, and he keeps the truth of that hidden because he forgave the humans for this, and did not want the founding of the X-Men to be about “eye for an eye” hate or revenge.
