The Story of Halogen Part 3: The Name

Where did the name "Halogen" come from? When I first "created" the character in 1983, he was more or less just a copy of Iron Man colored in blue and white, rather than red and yellow. My first attempt at naming him, as you can see in the picture above, was just as unimaginative and derivative: "Ice-Man," because he was blue.

But I did like another, more original idea on that notebook page above: that his armor would be cold to the touch. Because I had seen a demonstration on TV of how cold liquid nitrogen was and how the bottle it was in gave off whips of "cold smoke" (like the photo above), I decided that my super hero could turn himself into colorless nitrogen gas, but that in his more condensed physical state (looking like Iron Man) his armor would be like a container of liquid nitrogen: cold to the touch.

Now, back to the name. Simple really. When I had to change a burned-out lightbulb in the desk lamp in my bedroom I saw the word "halogen" on the replacement bulb. Halogen: a combination of "Halo" and "Nitrogen." That was it.

Next time, Halogen is embroiled in a "Bizarre Love Triangle"