The original Steel (Henry "Hank" Heywood, Sr.) was a Princeton biology major who decided to join the U.S. Marines following the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. This sparked a long-running feud with Hank's then-girlfriend, a woman named Gloria Giles. She dumped him over what she perceived as Hank's warmongering. This particular relationship was complicated by the fact that Hank's then-boss, Dr. Gilbert Giles, was Gloria's father. Prior to joining the Marines, Hank had been assisting Dr. Giles in his efforts to develop "a special bioretardant formula." (ComicVine)Anyway, sometime after joining up with "The Corps," Heywood was on guard duty for a military base when it was attacked by Nazi saboteurs. Hank was horribly maimed in an explosion. Realizing he had little prospect of recovery (or even survival) he volunteered to be a human guinea pig for Dr. Giles' experiments. And so, Henry Heywood came to be the recipient of a largely steel skeleton (to replace bones pulped in the explosion), micromotors through his joints to facilitate the movement of his now much heavier limbs, an artificial replacement for his lungs (greatly increasing their capacity), and finally a sub-dermal layer of steel alloy that essentially made his skin near-unbreakable.
If this whole schpiel sounds familiar, I suspect it's no coincidence that the super-heroic Hank Heywood appeared four years after the very successful Lee Majors television show, The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-1978).
As alluded to above, the bio of this character is complicated by the increasingly-common phenomenon of there being multiple versions of Commander Steel. Apparently, in their editorial wisdom, someone at DC decided that wasn't enough confusion and so they've had these various characters adopt a similarly diverse range of names: Steel, Commander Steel, Citizen Steel, Captain Steel, and maybe even more that I don't know about.
Without getting into all the subsequent iterations, I want to briefly say a little about why I prefer the name Commander Steel. First, in the original appearance of Hank Heywood, Sr. (which is reviewed below) he is simply referred to as "Steel, the indestructible man." I don't want to use the unqualified name Steel because it breeds unnecessary confusion with a DC's 1990 John Henry Irons character. (For the sake of clarity, Heywood did not technically become Commander Steel until gaining a commission after his first mission with the All-Star Squadron. (ComicVine).
Second, Captain Steel--especially when considered in light of his patriotic color scheme--makes our man, Hank, look even more like a Captain America wannabe.
Third, there's only about a bazillion "Captain Somebody or others" out there. For these three reasons, then, I think Commander Steel is best name to use.
After being introduced in his own title Steel experienced a pretty unceremonious cancellation as part of the DC Implosion. He resurfaced in the pages of Jerry Ordway's All-Star Squadron. (Incidentally, as the above the pic suggests, it was in the pages of All-Star that "Steel the Indestructible Man" experienced his first major rebranding, as "Commander Steel.")
