Enemies: Vince Paretta; Tim Turpin; the Avengers (Beast/Hank McCoy, Captain America/Steve Rogers, Falcon/Sam Wilson, Iron Man/Tony Stark, Ms. Marvel/Carol Danvers, Vision/"Victor Shade", Wasp/Janet Van Dyne, Wonder Man/Simon Williams)

Known Relatives: Darleen (wife); Annie (daughter)

Aliases: None

Base of Operations: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

First Appearance: (As Conroy, BTS) Journey Into Mystery I#120 (April, 1964);
(As Conroy on panel and as Inferno) Avengers I#192 (February, 1980)

Powers/Abilities: Conroy was altered by exposure to molten steel and a flake of Thor's hammer Mjolnir. As Inferno, Conroy exists as a large humanoid creature made from molten steel and slag, and radiated great heat at all times as a result. He could increase the amount of heat he radiated at will, and could project molten steel slag from his body. Inferno possessed great superhuman strength, at least Class 50 (and probably closer to Class 100), and was sufficiently durable that he withstood blows from Wonder Man with ease. At other times, his body seemed to be semi-liquid, and bullets were seen to partially pass through him. Through the uru flake on his right palm, Inferno also possessed Mjolnir's ability to absorb and redirect electrical energy. He was thus able to drain the power from Iron Man's armor and then project it as lightning-like bolts.

   As Inferno, Conroy was apparently mute and suffered from clouded thinking abilities as well (see comments).

Height: (as Conroy) Unrevealed (approximately 5'7"); (as Inferno) 7' (by estimation) (see comments)
Weight: (as Conroy) Unrevealed (approximately 135 lbs.); (as Inferno) 6757 lbs. (by estimation) (see comments)
Eyes: (as Conroy) Unrevealed; probably brown; (as Inferno) white (no visible pupil or iris)
Hair: (as Conroy) Black; (as Inferno) none

History:
(Avengers I#192 (fb) - BTS) - Joseph Conroy was a steelworker at a Pittsburgh steel mill owned by Williams Innovations.

(Avengers I#193 (fb) - BTS) - He was happily married to his wife Darleen...

(Avengers I#192 (fb) - BTS) - and father to a little girl called Annie.

(Journey Into Mystery I#120 - BTS/Avengers I#192 (fb) - BTS) - One night when Conroy was shift foreman Thor stopped at the Mill, as he needed to use their machinery to repair Mjolnir following a battle with the Asgardian Destroyer. After he finished, he shook hands with a number of the mill personnel, including Joseph Conroy.

(Avengers I#192 (fb) - BTS) - Conroy found a flake of Thor's hammer in the mill, and used it as a good luck keychain. When Simon Williams, owner of Williams Innovations, became Wonder Man and seemingly died, the Mill fell under Maggia control, using it to launder dirty money. New owner Vince Paretta knew of this when he bought the mill, but happily took Maggia money to look the other way.

   After Wonder Man revived and joined the Avengers Annie became a fan of his.

   Despite already making good money from the Maggia payoffs, the greedy Vince Paretta began a numbers game among the workers, including Conroy, but when Conroy began losing heavily he became (rightly) suspicious that the game was rigged and threatened to expose Paretta to the police in retaliation. Aware this might also expose his Maggia connections, Paretta approached Stark Innovations with a view to quickly selling the Mill, and also paid unscrupulous mill worker Tim Turpin to ensure Conroy had a fatal "accident."

(Avengers I#192) - While Tony Stark and Wonder Man were negotiating the sale of the mill, Conroy's fellow worker Tim Turpin, acting on Paretta's orders, knocked Conroy into a vat of molten steel. As was tradition, the ingot made from the steel Conroy fell into was placed outside in a makeshift "graveyard." However, Conroy had been mutated by the combination of the molten steel and enchanted uru, and burst from the ingot to seek vengeance on those who had "killed" him. Conroy was opposed by Wonder Man and Iron Man (Tony Stark), but he casually defeated them and stalked off towards Paretta's office.

   There, Inferno scared Paretta off and chased Turpin to the docks, where he crushed his killer between a barge and a concrete wall. Sensing that Paretta was still alive, he began marching through Pittsburgh to kill him, destroying all in his path. By this point, the Avengers had been summoned, and they briefly fought Inferno. Conroy defeated them all within minutes, and when they gave chase, he endangered a streetcar full of people to delay them. Inferno had cornered Paretta at the latter's house, and the fearful mobster confessed all. The Avengers, who had reached the house just after Inferno, overheard this and burst in. Iron Man had deduced a method of destroying Inferno, but Inferno saw Captain America promise Paretta would go to jail for his actions. At this, Inferno's desire for revenge was satisfied, and he turned and walked into a nearby river, apparently killing himself.

(Avengers I#353) - The Grim Reaper transformed a victim of an airline crash into an Inferno facsimile to add to his undead Legion of the Unliving and battle the Avengers.

Comments: Created by David Michelinie, Arvell Jones, Ricardo Villamonte, and maybe George Perez

   An interesting character created of some minor continuity, and then later reused after he became a piece of minor continuity.

   In terms of calculating Conroy and Inferno's height and weight: We never see Conroy next to anyone who has an already established height. He does seem slightly shorter than at least some of his co-workers, so for that reason alone I've guesstimated him as a little under the average height of an American male, 5'9", so around 5'7". Since his build seemed fairly trim, not overly muscled but certainly not overweight, I've then guesstimated him to be around the middle of the healthy weight for that height, or around 135 lbs.

   Inferno likewise never has a decent shot standing next to someone whose height we know, or even an object like a car that we could work from. His appearance on the cover of Avengers I#192 doesn't count, as he's depicted way bigger there than he is inside (and with pointed ears for some reason) - that atypical depiction is why that image is no longer the main image of this profile as of the last update. The closest we get to seeing Inferno next to someone whose height is known is when he's fighting Wonder Man (6'2") who he is clearly somewhat taller than, not towering over him but definitely larger. We also see him next to a Duquesne Incline tram, but he's also standing on the incline and try as I might have been unable to find any dimensions for those online. Still, he seems to be way taller than the silhouettes of the (presumably average height) passengers within. So I'd say at least 7' tall, if not taller.

   Okay, if he's 7' tall, how much does a man composed of molten steel slag weight? Assuming Inferno has the same proportions as Conroy, just scaled up (which isn't certain - Inferno looked buff and ripped), then the height increase from 5'7" to 7' is matched to an overall volume increase of 1.972 times. The density of a normal human body is roughly 98.5 kg/m3 (don't worry about the metric measurements - we could always convert, but honestly we're more interested in the multiplicative increase). The density of molten steel slag varies between 2500 to 3500 kg/m3, depending on temperature, composition and type of slag (we can probably but not definitely discount the effect of a tiny sliver of uru). So taking the lowest of these estimates, he should be 25.38 times denser, and when volume is consistent density is directly proportional to weight (for non-Mathematicians, that means we use the same number to multiply here), making him 135 lbs. times 1.972 (volume multiplier) times 25.38 (density multiplier), or 6756.66 lbs. or 3.378 tons. The only thing that makes me question this is that Inferno should probably have tipped the barge more when he got on it, or sunk into the soft ground by the riverside when he walked into the river - he's heavier than a pick-up truck, and unlike those vehicles whose weight on the ground is spread across four large tires his entire weight would have been on the soles of his feet. Perhaps the uru is somehow mitigating this, making him lighter than he should otherwise be?

   Conroy was white in Avengers I#192 but black in Avengers I#193. This discrepancy was brought up in a reader's letter in Avengers I#197, where David Michelinie confirmed he was always intended to be black, and the error was in #192. Subsequent reprints haven't helped the confusion though, as none have recolored Conroy in #192 as black, but some have recolored him in #193 to make him white. For the purposes of full transparency, the headshot above of Conroy was taken from #192, and depicted him as white; I've personally recolored it to match the skin tones shown in #193, but wanted to make that "fan edit" clear. Normally I wouldn't pull that annoying internet "fixed it" meme where random people take it on themselves to "correct" other people's artwork by recoloring it, but here it really was correcting an admitted error.

   A corollary to this information is that it means Conroy did not actually appear in Journey into Mystery I#120. If he had been white, he could have been one of the unnamed workers depicted at the start of that issue, but there were no black steel workers shown; we know from his dialogue in Avengers I#192 that he was present, but he must have been off-panel. - Loki

   Williams Innovations was later revealed to fully be under Maggia control in Marvel Premiere#55, and it was still later revealed that the Nefaria family was responsible in Iron Man I#138. A Maggia-controlled Pittsburgh construction company hired Blacklash/Whiplash to kill Vic Martellini in Iron Man I#146-147. All of these stories were written by David Michelinie. When you consider that Nefaria used ionic power on himself (like Simon Williams transformation into Wonder Man) and that his Maggia family was Whiplash's original employer, there's actually some heavy continuity under the surface of this story and those linked to it.

   I've got to wonder how Thor reacted when he heard about the Inferno case. Wonder if he or the other Asgardians might have been able to restore Conroy? Also, I can't help but think there's some other beings out there who've gotten their powers from Thor's hammer. Anyone spring to mind? Throg, specifically via his hammer Frogjolnir, which originated as a splinter of off Mjolnir. Though of course he didn't exist back when Omar first wrote that query. - Loki

Profile by Omar Karindu

CLARIFICATIONS:  Inferno is not to be confused with:

• Inferno, transformed version of the demon Slifer, @Ghost Rider II#4
• Inferno-42, a powerful incendiary compound, @Tales of Suspense I#75
• Inferno, Samatha McGee, exemplar of Balthakk, @ Iron Man III#21/2
• Inferno, the big X-crossover that introduced Nas'tirh
  
• Inferno 2099, of the Triumvirate, @ X-Men 2099: Oasis
• Slag, Theodore Slaght, another molten-metal creature opposed by Iron Man, @Iron Man I#316