Real Name: Solomon ‘Sol’ Smith
Alignment: Anti-Hero
Faction: Nu-Genix
The man now known as Granite – Solomon ‘Sol’ Smith – didn’t always have superhuman powers. Struggling to make ends meet with two jobs, he responded to a small ad offering good money for successful subjects for a pharmacological trial seemed like a good idea. The screening went well, and he was chosen,. Then they came to take a second blodd sample, and he didn’t question why. He only realised they were drugging him when it was too late.
Sol awoke in a windowless room. Staggering to the door he found it locked. In the following weeks he learned he was in e top-secret facility called Project: Nu-Genix. he days were controlled and regimented as he was dragged from test to test, or was given more drugs against his will. In time, Sol learned the painful and gruelling experiments he was subjected to were intended to unlock latent Unhuman powers. Nameless scientists hid behind their surgical masks as each new procedure was carried out, oblivious to the pain of their subjects. Days blurred into one another with no view of the outside world, and no points of reference. Sol lost track of the time he had spent in this personal hell.
There were brief periods of socialisation with other detainees. Each had been duped then imprisoned, and each had suffered the same unrelenting schedule of tests and procedures. Hearing the same stories made Sol angry, dissolving his normal easygoing demeanour, and hardening his resolve to escape.
A freak accident allowed them the chance to break free. A spontaneous Plasma X manifestation in the lab caused a system overload while the latest treatment was being injected to them en-mass. Suddenly their powers were finally unlocked, and in a rampage of destruction the prisoners escaped captivity, leaving the facility to burn behind them.
Sol joined up with three other escapees as the detainees scattered. His transformation was the most telling, his skin temporarily transformed into a rock-like substance. Taking the name Granite, he and team-mates Headlock, Kayo and Electrix have been on the run ever since, searching for other victims of the project, and determined to bring to justice the shadowy figures behind the conspiracy. This has brought them into conflict with other supers on numerous occasions as they face persecution and a fight for truth.
Granite’s powers allow him to assume a super-strong and durable rock-like form. As time passes the the happy-go-lucky Granite finds it increasingly hard to revert to his normal form, and he secretly fears he will one day become trapped. Worse still, he hates that the Nu-Genix team leader Headlock just views him as muscle with little else to offer.
“Time to rock!”
Granite – Astonishing Nu-Genix #3