- You may be looking for the comic story.
Mr. Steelman is one of the world's foremost villains, with aspirations of ruling the world. He is a regular antagonist of Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, and appeared in many of her comic and prose stories.
Biography[]
The Luthvian Affair[]
After Parker steals plans for a hydromic device from the Luthvian Embassy in Mr. Steelman, Steelman hires and sends a mercenary army to Creighton-Ward Mansion in order to steal the plans for himself, with the army under orders to get them "at all costs". During the attack, Roger Lyon sneaks into the mansion and smuggles the plans out, taking them to the Dunwell atomic plant in order to destroy them.
The army notices the plans have been taken and in response, Steelman sends two of his thugs - Gardoni and Luigi - to Dunwell, so they can kidnap Roger and take him to Steelman's ship. Believing that Roger would have glanced at the plans before destroying them, Steelman plans to take him to his lab underneath Mt Vesuvius, where he has a device capable of controlling minds - hoping to extract the memory plans from Roger's brain. Steelman is, apparently, entirely encased in metallic armour, making him look like a robot.
Arriving in Naples, Steelman has Gardoni and Luigi take Roger to the lab, while Steelman doubles back in order to "check in" on Lady Penelope, who he correctly suspects are on his trail. Eventually encountering her in Seabird I, Steelman launches a torpedo from his ship and sinks her vessel - with Lady Penelope and Parker only narrowly escaping by seeking refuge in the bomb-proof garage.
Steelman prepares to read Roger's mind (Mr. Steelman)
Returning to his lab, Steelman hooks Roger into the mind-control device, but is interrupted by Lady Penelope and Parker before the device can get to work. Meeting for the first time, Steelman promises death for Lady Penelope - and she is quickly captured by Steelman's men and strapped into a ramp, set to drop her into the crater of lava below the lab.
Steelman grants Lady Penelope one last request before her death, believing it was customary to do so. She asks for her lipstick, which is really a gas canister, and promptly uses it to knock out one of his men - with Roger quickly reacting and overpowering the remaining goon. Steelman tries to beat Parker to the ramp's controls, but Parker head-butts Mr Steelman out of one of the lab's windows and sends him tumbling into the lava below, surely meeting a firey end.
Later on, while returning to England, Lady Penelope and Parker wonder if it really was Steelman in the armour, or just a robot.
Eluding Lady Penelope[]
Steelman has vanished by the time of Cool For Danger. Roger managed to pick up his trail in Europe, but the scent suddenly went cold after the agent found himself imprisoned in the alpine country of Revonia. It turns out Steelman has retreated into the Maritime Alps, perfecting a machine that can control the weather. When Lady Penelope set off in aid of Roger, still imprisoned, Steelman took opportunity to use his new machine to drown her at sea. Unsuccessful after he only causes them to wash up on the coast, he pivots and instead draws her in to his base, an old ruined shooting lodge, which he rigs to explode. Steelman flees the lodge with his weather machine, but Lady Penelope and Parker also manage to make their escape.
Steelman has been working with General Lazio, who leads up a rebel army preparing to overthrow the government of Revonia. With Steelman's weather machine, the rebels are all but assured victory in their upcoming conflict with the army, but Lazio is tired of Steelman's delays and wishes to bring forward the attack. Meanwhile, Lady Penelope and Parker, with help of local cracksman Flaginne, break roger out of his prison. With Roger knowing the location of the rebel's secret cave base, Steelman turn the general's daughter Tania into an enemy for Lady Penelope, and sends her after them in order to assassinate Roger before he can share the location. Tania fails on her mission and within hours Lady Penelope, Parker, and Roger have arrived at the cave system. Steelman plans on kidnapping Lady Penelope to force her agents to come to her rescue, getting them all grouped together so he can finally kill them all and be done with their interference, but Lady Penelope is able to escape his clutches once more. The army are swiftly notified of the rebels' hideout and they are dismantled, but Steelman is nowhere to be found among those captured.
With the rebel army captured, Steelman never receives his payment and once more pivots, kidnapping Flaginne instead. His new plan is to rob the vaults at Monte Paradiso, and he needs Flaginne's skillset in order to do so. Wiping the thief's memory, Flaginne succeeds in emptying out half of the vault's contents, but is caught by the soldiers. Steelman, however, gets away with the valuables, and continues to wipe the memories of any guard he encounters to ensure he can escape through the city's canals. Lady Penelope and Parker eventually track him down on the outskirts of the city, as he prepares to load up his cruiser with the stolen treasure. However, this time Steelman has prepared for the two, and forces them on to his cruiser along with FAB 1.
Steelman takes them away across the Mediterranean towards Benghazi, where he wants to torture Lady Penelope for information on International Rescue and, when he is done, wipe her mind. He entrusts the transport of his prisoners to Kitto, who drives them to Wadi Zem Zem. But when Steelman arrives at Wadi Zem Zem, he finds Penelope and Parker have freed themselves from Kitto and Parker is in the middle of tapping out a message in morse code. Kitto eventually arrives on foot, and Lady Penelope claims she bribed Kitto to let them free, prompting a fight between the two men. Penelope and Parker make a lazy escape while everyone is distracted. Moments later, the police force arrive, prompting Steelman and Kitto to make a hasty retreat to avoid capture. He wipes Kitto's mind and leaves him to be found by the police, while Steelman makes his escape undetected.