Growing up in a college town – Evansville, IN – one might think Brian Reynolds would have had a positive influence in his life when, it came to academics and striving to do better. That, simply, was not the case. He was the youngest of eight kids. His father was a truck driver, and his mother collected unemployment and food stamps. They refused to marry, so she could get more money from the government, and she refused to place Brian’s father on child support for the same reason. Both kept with a pack of Marlboro unfiltered cigarettes in their pockets, and a Pabst beer in their hands. Brian’s father even drove semi-drunk most of the time. Neither graduated high school nor had a GED, and to top it off, both were angry at the world, which manifested itself in hateful racism, antisemitism and homophobia. Needless to say, Brian grew up a complete train wreck.
By the time he was seven years old he had already been arrested for breaking and entering. Only his older brother Jethro had been arrested younger. He would go on to be in and out of juvenile detention multiple times in his early teens. His parents’ solution for his behavior? Well, they figured since he was always getting in trouble whenever he showed up to school, they would simply ban him from going, to prevent incidents from occurring. This did not change anything, as one would guess, and Brian continued to get arrested time and time again. Finally, when he was 18, his parents kicked him out of the house for good, and told him to never come back.
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Volar has the ability to change his atomic mass, allowing him to hover and, temporarily, fly.
Brian ended up bouncing around from couch to couch all around southern Indiana for a while, until nobody would take him in anymore. With zero options, Brian decided to move to Platinum City. He knew some ex-convicts there, who said he could crash with them, so he broke into his parents’ house one night, stole his dad’s secret stash of cash, which was usually reserved for alcohol and trips to gentlemen’s clubs, and bought a one-way bus ticket.
When he arrived in Platinum City, he immediately began his new life… of crime. His buddies were real low level-henchmen for a local drug dealer and pimp named Richie Rich, and Brian started working for him right away. He made cash pickups from Richie’s workers every other day, would rough them up if Richie said so, and accompanied his boss on drug deals as a bodyguard. His penchant for brawling – really, his tolerance for pain, and ability to take a beating – made him a crew favorite. No matter how hard, or how many times Brian got hit, he never quit. Often his sheer persistence afforded him victories in fights, because the other guy would exhaust himself, or Brian was able to hang around long enough in the fight to land a lucky punch or two. Thus, Richie didn’t mind keeping Brian on the payroll, even when his other low-level buddies were eventually fired.
Over time, Brian and Richie actually became friends, which meant Brian got to tag along to boss-only parties Richie was invited to. The two would come with a harem of women, and were always a welcome sight. That was, until they were invited to a meeting of bosses where their top leader, Edgar Lockhart, arguably the most powerful man in the world, was present. In his normal “ladies’ man” fashion, Brian began parading around the women. Edgar was none pleased with the brash and classless display, though, and proceeded to berate Brian and Richie for bringing such low-budget racket into his presence, where he planned to conduct business.
Both were incredibly embarrassed. Richie attempted to apologize, but it was too late. Edgar asked Dezzie – former marine black ops specialist, and a member of Edgar’s elite team of personal bodyguards called the Lockhart Force – to escort them out. Brian was in no mood to apologize, and felt that it was he who was in fact being disrespected. He was further angered that Dezzie, a black man, was the one kicking him out. Soon, numerous racial slurs flew out of Brian’s mouth as he resisted. Everyone was shocked. Edgar, however, was enraged. Not because a low-level punk was causing a ruckus after he ordered him to leave, but because nobody disrespected him, or anyone closely associated with him.
With a simple nod, Edgar gave Dezzie – who, to this point, had exhibited an incredible amount of control and poise – the green light, and express permission to teach brash young man a lesson. When Brian realized that Dezzie was squaring up for a fist fight, he smiled with devious delight. What he didn’t know, however, was that Dezzie was not just a former marine, but also a hyper-human with enhanced strength, enhanced speed, and super-enhanced aggression. Over the next three minutes, Brian got the living daylights beat out of him, before being thrown out into the street a battered and bloody mess. Richie promptly fired Brian on the spot, and left him to bleed on the ground.
While laying there, Brian became infuriated. He had lost his job, the women, his income, and the privilege of being in one of Lockhart’s criminal factions. He staggered to his feet and kicked a dumpster in anger, thinking about what he was going to do with his life. That was when he ran into a man carrying a small case into the building. He obviously worked for Edgar. It was also obvious that this guy was just a courier. Brian decided that he would get a modicum of revenge; so he grab a bottle, smashed the courier over the head, took his case, and ran away as fast as his severely injured body could take him. When he finally got to what he considered a safe distance, he opened the case, and found a small vial inside. From the way the liquid inside of it glowed and pulsated, Brian knew immediately what he was looking at – it was a hyper-serum.
Without even the slightest bit of hesitation, Brian drank the entire vial. Instantly, his body began convulsing, then floating in the air. When the convulsions stopped, he slammed back down to the ground. The impact left him dizzy, but a few moments later, after his head cleared, he realized that simply by thinking it, his body’s atomic structure would alter, in a way that decreased his weight, and allowed him to rise off the ground. He was ecstatic! He could fly!
It took Brian all of a couple of hours to master his ability, as the serum also served to heal the wounds he had incurred from Dezzie. He immediately started scheming, and within days he was already using his powers for criminal activity – namely robbing banks. His ability to fly made it impossible for the police to catch him, and so his success rate was through the roof. The authorities, of course, continued in their attempts to catch him, but they were not the only ones, as Edgar Lockhart’s people were also hunting him down – they were determined not to let the theft of the hyper-serum go unpunished. Somehow, Brian managed to remain at large, and soon he started calling himself Volar – which means “to fly” in Spanish.
He went largely undetected for several years. It was super-soldier Lt. Rashard Bonds who would actually be the first to track him down. Lou was on a mission to assemble an elite team of heroes and hyper-beings, to help protect the world from a variety of threats, including, but not limited to, Edgar Lockhart’s evil empire. Lou had discovered Volar’s name in a file that had been stolen from Lockhart’s computer network, along with a number of other hyper-powered beings. The super-soldier had been attempting to recruit these people for his team, and not only was Brian’s name next on the list, it had also been highlighted. So, after already securing the services of established superheroes, such as Black Jag and Musashi, as well as the mystical Iroquois warrior, Orenda Barefoot, and old friend of his, Sasha ‘Encore’ Paris, Lou used the hacker/tracker skills of another recruit, Interface, to find Volar. He would soon learn that this was not the type of guy he wanted on his team.
The bank robber was sitting outside in an abandoned junkyard he had made his home. With a Pabst beer in hand, and a Marlboro unfiltered cigarette between his lips, Volar quickly exclaimed to Lou he was not welcome. The super-soldier looked at the disheveled, shirtless man before him. The hero could not believe his eyes. Volar certainly was not what he expected. Amidst his puzzlement, Volar shouted again for Lou to leave, but this time, he began throwing terribly racist words and names at him – including the worst slur you could throw at a individual with brown skin. Yeah, THAT one.
The super-soldier was taken aback at first, but then grew angry. Volar spit in his direction, and continued to call him demeaning slurs, and demanded he leave immediately, otherwise he would be sorry. Tension filled the air, and that was when Volar began approaching Lou. This actually amused Rashard a bit, as he could tell this guy had no idea he was about to pick a fight with a man who could literally break him in half. He told the light-footed bank robber to stay calm, but Volar’s anger only grew at the idea of a black man giving him any kind of order. And that’s when he took a big swing at his unwelcome visitor. Instinctively, and with extreme ease, the hero maneuvered out of the way with a slight head movement, then countered with a vicious right hand of his own. Every telepathic nano-cell in Lou’s body was firing, and they propelled his polycarbonate muscles forward, like a speeding freight train. Thus, when his fist connected with Volar, the bank robber flew back about eleven feet, before his fractured face was planted in the dirt. He was knocked out cold.
And with that, Lou turned around and left. There were more names on the list to visit, and he had already wasted enough time on this knucklehead.