Solovar

King Solovar
Solovar from Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 by George Pérez
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	The Flash (vol. 1) #106 (April–May 1959)
Created by	John Broome (writer) Carmine Infantino (artist)
In-story information
Alter ego	Solovar
Species	Gorilla
Team affiliations	Gorilla City The Flash Family Black Lantern Corps
Notable aliases	Lord Solovar, King Solovar, The Forefather
Abilities	currently; Speed Force derived evolution Intelligence/power absorption Superhuman strength, speed, durability, stamina, endurance Telepathy Accelerated Probability Precognition Postcognition Retrocognition Space/Time Traversal previously; Genius level intellect Superhuman strength, durability, stamina, endurance Telepathy Thought reading Diplomatic immunity formerly; Undead Physiology reanimated as Black Lantern

Solovar is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Solovar is a sentient gorilla and the progressive leader of a race of gorillas that first appeared as supporting characters of the Flash.

Publication history

Solovar first appeared in Flash #106 and was created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino.

Fictional character biography

For many years, Solovar is the leader of Gorilla City, a hidden city of hyper-intelligent gorillas. Renowned for his wisdom and psychic powers, he is virtually unchallenged, except by the villainous Gorilla Grodd. This rivalry is so great that, after Solovar is captured by humans (playing dumb to keep his identity and origin secret), Grodd follows him to Central City to learn the secrets of Solovar’s force-of-mind powers. He succeeds in this, but the Flash captures him after Solovar escapes and tells the Flash of Grodd.

The Flash helped the gorilla leader escape and became the first human to learn of the city’s existence, and its location. This leads to a rivalry between Grodd and the Flash, as well as an alliance between The Flash and Solovar. Flash helped defeat Grodd many times.

Under Solovar’s guidance, Gorilla City is a technological utopia. Eventually, he decides his people can no longer use their science to hide from the human world. Believing that the world's ecological and political problems cannot be solved by ignoring them, he opens his city's borders to the world and asks for membership in the United Nations. He advocates peace — among the gorillas and with humans — and is behind two diplomatic overtures to the human world. The second tour of the U.S., sadly, is cut short by his assassination by a lethal car bomb. While a mysterious group calling itself the Human Supremacy Movement takes credit for the act, it quickly made clear to the reader that Solovar's assassination at the hands of human racists is in fact a ruse concocted by the Simian Scarlet, a group of gorillas within Gorilla City seeking to overthrow the ruling council. (The manipulators are themselves manipulated by Gorilla Grodd).

Solovar is briefly succeeded by his nephew, Ulgo. With tensions between humans and gorillas rising, the JLA is invited to Gorilla City to assist in a diplomatic mission, only to fall victim to an ambush. In the heat of battle, the gorilla army tests its new weapon on the heroes, a "gorillabomb" that transforms humans into gorillas. While the JLA retreat to their moonbase to find a cure, Prince Ulgo appears before the United Nations to formally declare war on the human race.

However, he promises, there will be no bloodshed in the battle, and he makes his point by detonating a gorillabomb in the auditorium. With the entire UN assembly transformed both mentally and physically into gorillas, the JLA act swiftly to minimize damage and loss of life. Alas, saving the delegates uses up their only chance to change back into humans, and so our transformed heroes must remain in their simian forms until they can find another way to return to normal.

Not that they were allowed much time to do that; as the Martian Manhunter telepathically learns, the gorillas are strategically targeting several places around the globe, including Themyscira (Wonder Woman's homeland), Atlantis (Aquaman's kingdom), Central City, Blüdhaven (a suburb of Batman's Gotham City), Metropolis (where Superman lives, one of the largest cities in the DC Universe), and low Earth orbit (Green Lantern's). The heroes split up and set out to neutralize the gorilla army, end the human-gorilla war, and find a way to return to normal.

Once the JLA have achieved their goals, Ulgo is later succeeded by Solovar's son, Nnamdi.

During the Blackest Night, Barry Allen raced to Gorilla City to seek aid from Solovar, not knowing of his death. Finding the city ravaged, Allen assumed Grodd had attacked, only to discover Solovar had been reanimated as a Black Lantern. Barry managed to temporarily stop him by dragging his corpse through the air at superspeed while leaving it outside the protective aura his body generated when he took passengers, reducing Solovar's Black Lantern self to dust when he could not cope with the friction he was being subjected to.

The New 52

Solovar in the new universe is the founder and first ruler of Gorilla City, regaled as The Forefather of his species. He and his herd, his family had been around during the apex of the Mayan civilization just moments before its abrupt destruction by a metaphysical force of reality. Just as the Speed Force had destroyed the ancient culture in a blare of lightning, that same lightning bolt struck him and a few other apes within the vicinity; creating the first few in a new generation of super intelligent gorillas who would come to found the hidden nation of Gorilla City.

The Speed Force had accelerated their evolutionary cycle increasing both their intelligence and physical capabilities beyond that of other stereotypical apes of the herd. As such Solovar and his select council had become adapt at the various sciences of infrastructure, architecture, physics and technology eventually coming to build a secret society sequestered away from the rest of the world, protected from the outside by the burgeoning psychic powers he and his fellow simians would develop over time and with great practice. But Solovar's connection to The Light ran much deeper than most of his tribe, as such he was often plagued by visions of the future involving the true inheritor of its full power. An overturn of events that would spell certain doom for the rest of the world and beyond unless he did something to stop it from happening. Saddened but resolute in his undertaking, King Solovar would leave his home and hearth behind by using his Speed Force connection to traverse the future. But he undershot the point of time he needed to get to and arrived a couple of decades early, when the one whom he'd been searching for; who'd one day inherit the mantel as The Runner, was still a child.

Because of his impeded trip to the next millenium, Solovar was badly disoriented by his travels through the speed force. Ending up appearing before Barry Allen years ahead of the time he'd take up the mantel of The Flash in a feral state, attacking the safari trailer he and his mother were aboard at the time after killing & devouring an antelope. Mutilating it with his teeth and bare hands, an event which would traumatize the Allen's for decades to come.

DC Rebirth

Solovar has yet to make his appearance within Rebirth Continuity.

Powers and abilities

Solovar possesses's similar physical and mental abilities akin to Gorilla Grodd stemming from the same meteorite that evolved them and the rest of their brethren. though not as significantly developed as his evil counterpart, Solovar is a gifted mentalist in his own right. As well as an able bodied political activist being king of his own highly advanced civilization and an accomplished diplomat with savvy knowledge of world affairs. Other than that, Solovar like all apes of gorilla city, boasts an accomplished intellect knowing the workarounds of all his nations advanced science and technology. Being a contributing pioneer to its development himself. He also boasts the augmented physical abilities of all Super Apes of his homeland, he also has vastly augmented physical abilities. Being a stark pacifist to the former however, he bearly exercises these traits. During the events of the Blackest Night the deceased king Solovar is reanimated by a Black Power Ring and gifted with all the abilities that come with being a Black Lantern; such as accelerated regeneration, emotional reading and consumption by removing the hearts of the living, simulation of old powers from his previous life and the typical functions allotted by a Power Ring.

Within the DCnU reboot, Solovar was the first among his lineage of apes touched by the The Light. The misnomer of Flash's Speed Force which pushes reality forward; who went on to found Gorilla City. Solovar naturally possesses a greater physical and mental constitution greater than humans and most of his fellow apes. Having once been run though by Grodd using a stop sign but was able to recover once properly healed and restored once returning to his homeland. Like in previous continuum Solovar boasts telepathy potent enough to reach out and touch the minds of thousands of individuals at once as well as envision the past, present and alternating future with it. the only difference being his evolution is a direct result of being struck by the Speed Force and as such, has the capacity to influence space & time with the power of his Speed Mind. The superhuman ability that a few speedsters and practitioners of The Light come to share. Having used this facet of his powers he'd traveled millennia into the future by accessing the speed force dimension to travel through time, his control over which is dicey at best as he arrived too early into the future before Barry Allen inherited the mantel of The Runner. The venture also temporarily turned Solovar into a frothing savage as his jaunt through eternity badly disoriented his mind.

As with all apekind who hail from the city, Solovar is capable of partaking of the right of "Ceresorbis", where his kind kill and take the knowledge of a fallen foe by devouring their brains. Effectively increasing their intellect by consuming their vanquished adversaries graymatter in order to broaden their minds as well as assimilate any underlying skills or abilities they may possess. Solovar is a pacifist by nature however and does not willingly partake of the barbaric passage like others of his kind do. As the founder and architect of his home of intelligent apes, Solovar boasts a naturally expanded intellect and charismatic following. He is an avid study and practitioner of the sciences involved with the Speed Force, his groundwork in its understanding paved the way for the advanced technologies utilized by his people over the coarse of a thousand years.

Other versions

Flashpoint

In the Flashpoint reality, Solovar was the original ruler of Gorilla City until he was overthrown by Gorilla Grodd.

Injustice 2

Within Injustice comics, King Solovar is the kind yet ruthless leader of his society of super apes who; much like Grodd, all share a bitter enmity towards human kind. Seeking aid in the international eco-terrorist and master of the League of Assassins; Ra's al Ghul and his family. The two would work together on a means of pruning the population of the human race to a more manageable size via the works of Professor Anthony Ivo. Whom designed a killer android built for Ra's and his contemporary under coercion and threats to his family, a lethal remote controlled automaton created with enough power to kill kryptonians barehanded with ease.

In other media

Television

• Solovar first appeared in the Challenge of the Super Friends episode "Revenge on Gorilla City" voiced by Michael Rye. When Gorilla Grodd attacks Gorilla City with the Legion of Doom and mesmerizes the citizens, Solovar teleports himself to the Hall of Justice to seek help from the Super Friends.
• Solovar appeared in an episode of Justice League voiced by David Ogden Stiers. This version is depicted as having white fur and black skin. He appears as the chief of security of Gorilla City rather than its king and does not appear to have the psionic powers of his comic book incarnation. He was pursuing Gorilla Grodd to stop him from launching nuclear missiles at the city. With the help of Flash and Green Lantern, he eventually took Grodd back to Gorilla City.
• David Ogden Stiers reprises his role of Solovar in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Dead Reckoning." Solovar was seen fighting Gorilla Grodd's Secret Society when Gorilla Grodd plans to use an artifact stolen from the temple Deadman was living at in order turn all the humans into gorillas.
• Solovar appears in The Flash episode "Attack on Gorilla City, voiced by Keith David. This version is an albino gorilla. When Flash and his friends are caught trespassing while searching for Harry Wells and accused of being spies, Solovar and his advisor Grodd arrange for Solovar himself to fight Flash in single combat, though Grodd secretly asks Flash to kill Solovar, deceiving him into thinking that he intends to attack Central City. Solovar's superior strength and tactics overwhelm Flash until he cripples Solovar by phasing his hand through his chest, though he does not kill him. Afterwards, Grodd declares himself the new King of Gorilla City and reveals that he has been manipulating events from the beginning in order to exact revenge on human society. In the next episode, "Attack on Central City", he is recruited by Barry to stop Grodd's army by reclaiming his throne in battle. Solovar is persuaded by Flash not to kill Grodd after defeating him in combat. Afterwards, Solovar and his gorillas return to Earth-2 while Flash hands Grodd over to A.R.G.U.S. Solovar was gruff but wise, benevolent, valiant, and honorable. Although he was initially suspicious of Flash and his team, he grew to trust them after seeing Flash's mercy and bows to him for it.

Video games

• Solovar features in the video game Justice League Heroes voiced by Nick Jameson. This version is shown to have white fur and gray skin.
• In DC Universe Online, Solovar is mentioned by the Flash in the Gorilla Grodd's Lab instance.
• Solovar is mentioned several times in Injustice 2.

External links

• Solovar entry at Flash: Those Who Ride the Lightning website