The Metal Gear Solid series has long been acclaimed for having some of the best boss fights and villains around, but its comic adaptation revealed one of them to be even darker than the games would have fans believe.
In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the main character, Raiden, is being manipulated in order to recreate the Shadow Moses incident that Solid Snake went through in Metal Gear Solid. However, instead of Foxhound, Raiden is pitted against an anti-terrorist organization named Dead Cell. Since this 'simulation' is run by the shadowy Patriots, they ensure that they have a man on the inside reporting back on Raiden's progress. Unfortunately for them, his own obsessions cause him to go off-script and ultimately lead to his death.
This individual is the explosives expert Fatman, who is responsible for several deadly set pieces in Raiden's journey. The game explains Fatman's backstory slightly by saying he was a child prodigy with explosives who lost his mind over time. The comic however - written by Gen 13's Alex Garner with art from Zombies vs Robots' Ashley Wood - goes even further into Fatman's history. It turns out Fatman had a rival in his youth who he refers to as Little Boy. Seeing his fellow prodigy as a challenger, Fatman contrived to kill off the competition. The story emphasizes Fatman's need to be the best, which in turns add more weight to his relationship with Peter Stillman, the bomb expert who aids Raiden in the story and - in the comic - directly helps to defeat Fatman by preying on his pride.
Metal Gear Solid has always been known to include symbolism with its names, and Fatman is no different. While he is a large man - and one who accredits his reckless attitude to the motto "laugh and grow fat" - his name is also bound up in the series' theme of nuclear proliferation and disarmament. 'Fat Man' was the codename of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II, and it is generally remembered alongside Little Boy, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The competition between two characters of the same names is likely a reference to the nuclear arms race that followed, with Fatman as the 'winner' because he builds a deadlier bomb and has no compunctions about using it.
The implications of his deadly rivalry with Little Boy stress the meaning of Fatman's obsession with bombs and his need for supremacy in his field. While Metal Gear Solid's twisting, complicated narrative can be hard to unpick even for the most hardcore fans, the series' wider ideas about warfare and weapons development have always been starkly clear, and the comic adaptation of Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty adds to these themes with Fatman's backstory.