Lieutenant Colonel Philip Nolan used to be in the army, but now he's the mission director for Sector Seven's space program. Desk work has made him relax his fitness standards, something his best friend Tom Kinnear dislikes, but hasn't got around to admonishing him for. Maybe Nolan's glory days are behind him now, or maybe he's just waiting for the right sort of crisis to come into his own once again...
History[]
IDW movie comics[]
"Frozen"[]
In February 1954, Nolan was stationed at the Sector Seven Alpha Command Post in the Arctic as part of a skeletal crew when an act of sabotage sent the furnace heating the base into overdrive, causing the temperature in the base to rise up and threatening to defrost Megatron, and trapping him, along with Bill Simmons, Anne Fischer, Joe Danco, and Fontaine inside the base. Nolan went a bit crazy believing that one of them was a N.B.E. in disguise and had caused the sabotage, forcing the others to lock him up. When Fischer tried to talk it out with him, he admitted that he had never liked Simmons because of his hand in discrediting Robert Oppenheimer, whom Nolan respected.
Upon finding Fontaine dead, everyone realized Nolan wasn't behind the sabotage and Simmons elected to scan everybody's blood samples to disprove his "alien spy" theory. This only served to reveal that Fischer was pregnant with Simmons' child, but Nolan was still suspicious of Simmons and asked him at gunpoint where he was during Fontaine's death. As Simmons relented and showed everyone to a hidden tunnel system beneath the base, Danco revealed himself to be the saboteur and a Soviet spy. A thawing Megatron then began trashing the base, and on Simmons' request Nolan took Fischer and escaped into the tunnels, where Jetfire saved them from the liquid nitrogen bombs that Sector Seven was dropping on Megatron.
Ghosts of Yesterday[]
After Philip Nolan finished Officer Candidate School, he was put in charge of an elite squad of soldiers, all trained assassins, who were referred to in certain circles as "the Bond Squad". After six months of training, they undertook their first mission: retrieve a defecting Soviet agent from Moscow. They managed the mission, but with the loss of one of their number, and Nolan swore never to leave another man behind. Years later, when he and Tom Kinnear were almost caught during an assassination op in Saigon, Nolan near carried his wounded friend all the way to the US embassy.
By the late sixties, he was working on the Ghost 1 project at the Sector Seven High Arctic Base, culminating in the ship's successful launch in 1969. A short time after, Nolan had to inform Kinnear that they'd lost contact with the ship. They regain contact to learn that the ship had gone far beyond its intended course and ended up in another solar system. Kinnear departed with a convoy taking the Ice Man to its new home in Nevada, leaving Nolan in charge of finding a way to get the Ghost 1 back.
Sometime later, Walter Simmons contacted Nolan with the news that the convoy had gone missing. Nolan left the communications director in charge and, gathering up Staff Sergeant Martin and his rangers, headed out to investigate. By the time they reached the convoy, things were dire — it was under attack by Russian soldiers and the Ice Man had thawed out. While Martin's men dealt with the former, Nolan drove his snowcat directly at the Ice Man, jumping out at the last moment.
The Ice Man was barely slowed by the explosion, though Nolan was badly injured in the attempt. Nolan found Kinnear, who himself had been mortally wounded by a Russian, and the two came up with a plan: Kinnear would provide a distraction while Nolan used liquid nitrogen on the giant. Nolan was not prepared for Kinnear's act of self sacrifice, as Kinnear tricked the Ice Man into picking him up, before detonating a backpack full of explosives, but it provided Nolan with the opportunity he needed. The nitrogen refroze the Ice Man, and Nolan subsequently expired of his injuries.