Van McNulty

From Smallville Wiki

Van McNulty was a metahuman hunter.

Van McNulty was the son of Lt. McNulty, a Marine recruiter who was sent to inform Mrs. Fordman that Whitney Fordman was killed in action. Lt. McNulty was killed by Tina Greer while impersonating Whitney.

With Tina Greer already dead, Van sought vengeance against other metahumans. He hacked into Chloe Sullivan's database and found a list of suspected metahumans. He shot and killed Leonard Wallace, a mechanic with a stretching ability, in the fall of 2003. He left a meteor rock with the word "freak" scratched in the side near the body.

He subsequently shot and killed Jake Pollen, a student with amphibious abilities, in the pool at Smallville High, saving Lana Lang in the process.

Next he tried to kill Lex Luthor, who was in Chloe's database because he had survived so many near death experiences. Van failed to kill Lex when Clark intervened, Clark catching the bullet and subsequently getting Lex to safety, but he learned that Clark was bulletproof but allergic to meteor rocks when Clark tackled Van as he tried to escape and was exposed to the meteor rocks in his backpack.

Now aware of Clark's weakness, Van created meteor rock bullets and shot Clark, but Jonathan and Martha were able to extract the bullet. With the roads out of Smallville all blocked, Van asked Lana for help escaping the police, reasoning that she'd understand how dangerous the 'freaks' were after all her experiences with them. When Lana expressed disapproval for his shooting of Lex and grief for his shooting of Clark, stating that Clark was more human that Van would ever be, Van labeled her a "freak-lover" and abducted her. Using a police radio, knowing that Van monitored police channels, Clark invited Van to a showdown where he had seen the picture of Van's father. Van met Clark at the school- Clark having the seen the picture in Van's locker-, taking Lana along to prove to her that Clark was a freak. He emptied an entire clip of meteor rock bullets into Clark, but he was unaffected. Van and Lana were both stunned, but Lana took advantage of the opportunity and subdued Van with a couple of well-placed kicks. Clark revealed that he was wearing a lead plate to protect himself from the bullets. Van was sent to Belle Reve for his crimes.

At Belle Reve, he met Ian Randall and Eric Summers. They teamed up to take Clark Kent down. Van got a piece of meteor rock smuggled in, but Ian turned on him and killed him.

[edit] Trivia

• In a sense, Van is responsible for Lex Luthor's future path into villainy, as his actions resulted in Lex first becoming aware of the possibility of the meteor rocks causing mutations in others and started his research into creating superhuman soldiers.