General Wade Eiling

Captain Atom

Wade Eiling is a military tactician who blackmails the accused Nathaniel Adam into participating in the atomic experiment that turns Nathaniel into the nuclear being Captain Atom, and causes Adam to disappear for 18 years.^[1] This is considered a failure by Eiling and Heinrich Megala, the project's main scientist. They would attempt the experiment again, which ends up with the creation of Major Force.

During the 18 years in which Adam is gone, Eiling marries Adam's wife and acts as father to his two children.^[1] Eiling also manipulates Captain Atom into serving the military. His first attempts, a chance for Adam to view his children in exchange for retrieving a lost submarine, falls apart in issue #3 of the 1980s Captain Atom series. This embarrasses Eiling in front of his superiors. The same issue details the cover story for Captain Atom that Eiling helps create, one that is, in his words, "a scenario just far-fetched and hokey enough to sound authentic". His continuing conflicts with the title character were a major focus of the 1980s Captain Atom series. Eiling would also form an intensely adversarial relationship with Megala.

Hacker Files

General Wade Eiling makes a cameo appearance in SoftWar, the very first story arc of 1993 maxi-series The Hacker Files.

JLA

In JLA #24 after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, Eiling sends a military team to salvage the indestructible body of the second Shaggy Man from the Pacific Ocean where he has its body shaved. Green Lantern and Aquaman attempt to stop the Corps from retrieving the body, but their efforts are thwarted.^[2]

The General returns to his base of operations, Threshold. From there he orchestrates a military assault on the JLA. Answering a call for help in Phoenix, Arizona, the Justice League are attacked by American military forces. Spearheading the offensive is a new superhero team called the Ultramarine Corps.^[1] Recruited and genetically enhanced by Eiling's lab team, The Ultramarines already exhibit signs of terminal illness. Meanwhile, Batman, the Huntress and Plastic Man track Eiling to Threshold, where they discover that the General transferred his brain patterns into the indestructible body of the Shaggy Man.

The JLA battle the military and the Corps until JLA #26 (Feb. 1999). Eiling's forces consider mutiny as doubts against attacking the League come to a head. Superman, whose super-senses have diagnosed the Ultramarine's disease, persuades the Ultramarine Corps that Eiling has used and betrayed them. The Corps members, who volunteered for service in good faith, switch sides and speed with the JLA toward Threshold.^[3]

Even against the combined might of the JLA and the Ultramarines, the General is unstoppable. Batman notices that Eiling's tactical edge and focus are diminished in his new artificial form. Working together, the team fights the monster onto a bulk-matter teleport platform. Eiling is transported to 433 Eros, a 'rocky needle', six miles in length, at the heart of the Sol system's asteroid belt.^[1]

General Eiling has also appeared in issue #5 of the Justice League Unlimited spin-off comic book.

The Injustice Gang

He stays there for several months until Queen Bee recruits him into Lex Luthor's new Injustice Gang. Eiling battles against the Justice League a second time as part of a coordinated attack, this time utilizing a large-scale machine gun. He declares that the League was wrong to banish him to the asteroid with no trial. The battle moves to one of the White Martian warships that is currently inside the Phantom Zone. There, Eiling states his plan to utilize the weapons of mass destruction on Earth itself. Orion's war dog Sturmer participates in a trick against Eiling. The canine tackles the man through a ship's airlock, into the Phantom Zone. This naturally distresses Superman but Orion assures him that Sturmer has willingly made this choice.^[4]

Back as a threat

Having somehow escaped, he has since appeared in the JSA comics fighting Hal Jordan. He is one of the hundreds of villains recruited into the Society.^[1][5] He is a participant in the Battle of Metropolis, the first step of the Society's war on the heroes. This effort fails. Later, he is recruited into the Suicide Squad, where his regenerative powers are significantly diminished. He betrays the team to their intended target. Rick Flag detonates a bomb implanted in Eiling's head, ending the threat. His head and brain eventually regenerate, but results in some amnesia. Eiling continues to serve as a Squad member through Salvation Run. This is the name for a program that exiles supervillains to a distant, Earth-like planet without a trial.^[6]

The New 52

In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, the character of Captain Atom has a new origin, with General Wade Eiling first appearing in a radiation suit while flanking Captain Atom.^[7] General Eiling tells Captain Atom to fall in line as he is a super-weapon that will keep America on the top. When Captain Atom tells them that he will be just another atomic bomb for them, General Eiling attempts to quarantine Captain Atom. While stating that he cannot eat or drink, Captain Atom counters everything that the military throws at him.^[8]

JLA/Avengers

• The General is among the mind-controlled villains defending Krona's stronghold when the heroes assault it in #4. He is defeated by Iron Man and Vision.

Television

General Eiling from Justice League Unlimited.

General Eiling (as The General) in Justice League Unlimited.

• General Wade Eiling appears in Justice League Unlimited, voiced by J.K. Simmons. Introduced in "Dark Heart", he is a U.S. Air Force General fighting the nanomechanical constructs. After the Dark Heart was shut down by the Atom, Eiling and his soldiers confiscated the device, making ominous comments about the Justice League's satellite laser that had been used to hold off the nanomachines. General Eiling was subsequently shown to be a member of Project Cadmus. In "The Doomsday Sanction", he went so far as to send a nuclear warhead just to kill Doomsday, being willing to kill innocent people and Superman to do it. Later, he compelled Captain Atom to decide on loyalty: to the USAF or to the League. When Batman confronts Waller, Batman easily beat Eiling without even trying. After Cadmus disbanded, Eiling was relegated to a position he described as that of a pencil-pusher. Unhappy with this situation and still regarding superpowered beings as a threat to humanity as seen in "Patriot Act", he injected himself with the supersoldier Captain Nazi serum, turning himself into a large, disfigured super-strong humanoid similar in appearance to his General days in the comic books, except having four fingers and toes. Unable to find Superman, he instead fights several of the League's non-superpowered members: Green Arrow, Speedy, Shining Knight, Crimson Avenger, Vigilante, Stargirl, and S.T.R.I.P.E.. He badly beat the group before being persuaded to back down by a group of civilians and an elderly woman (voiced by C.C.H. Pounder, who also voiced Amanda Waller in the show). Before leaving, he still stubbornly insisted that he was "right" and told them that he'll be back if the Justice League became a major threat.
• General Wade Eiling appears in the Young Justice cartoon series, voiced by Jeff Bennett. In "Failsafe", a mind-training exercise conducted by Martian Manhunter features Eiling was leading the U.S. Army in defending Washington DC from an alien invasion when the entire Justice League was apparently vanquished. In "Cornered", Eiling leads the military when Despero and L-Ron surround the Hall of Justice with a massive forcefield and the military is trying to disable it until the Reach Ambassador successfully deactivates it. Eiling is present alongside Tseng when Captain Atom reveals the Watchtower's existence.
• General Wade Eiling appears in The Flash, portrayed by Clancy Brown.^[9] A two-star U.S. Army general, he had been working with S.T.A.R. Labs five years prior to develop a means to create psychic interrogators until it is revealed to have been abusive towards his program's test subject. Eiling makes his debut in "Plastique", leading a task force to capture Bette Sans Souci for the metahuman's abilities. Though forced to fatally shoot Bette as the Flash took Bette to the sea to detonate, learning of the Flash's identity in the process, Eiling covered up Souci's death by claiming that the military was performing an underwater explosives experiment. Eiling later reappears in "The Nuclear Man" and "Fallout", capturing Martin Stein to utilize Firestorm's abilities by having revealed his knowledge of Barry Allen being the Flash to Eobard Thawne. But Eiling fails to capture Firestorm and finds himself abducted by the Reverse-Flash into the sewers where he is dragged away by Grodd. Eiling later returns in "Grodd Lives" where he is now under Grodd's mind control as he poses as a masked man robbing armored cars at gunpoint; Joe West also nicknames him Goldfinger. After capturing and unmasking him while learning that he is not acting on his own will, Team Flash placed Eiling in the metahuman vault until Grodd's defeat. Eiling expresses a willingness to help Flash due to having a common enemy in Reverse-Flash.

Video games

• General Wade Eiling (as The General) appears in the Nintendo DS version of Justice League Heroes.