On Boing Boing Maggie Koerth-Baker takes the genre staple of the radiation accident which, rather than causing either instant death at best or a slow, lingering, dreadfully painful death at worst, gives the victim superhuman powers, be it Bruce Banner being exposed to gamma rays, Peter Parker bitten by a radioactive spider or the spoof of the genre in the Simpsons with Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy. Maggie decided to talk to some scientists and talk to them about this long-cherished accidental method of imbuing a mild mannered character with powers beyond the ken of mere mortal beings:
“In the first part of the 20th century, the evolutionary scientists were expressing the idea that maybe cosmic radiation, which we’ve lived with on earth for our whole history, might have caused some changes to our DNA. Radiation can do that. At the same time, people were learning about evolution, which depends on random changes. I think that caught their imagination. That connection between radiation and evolution. I remember one of the earliest stories I read where they put this guy into a chamber and irradiated him, and he evolved before their eyes. Really he would have just died, but the idea remains.”
(cover to Incredible Hulk #1, art by Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman, (c) Marvel)
Mon, Nov 2, 2009
Comics and cartoons