Friday Fun: 6 superheroes who got their powers from being lousy scientists

Posted by John Dupuis on March 23, 2012
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I’ve always been a big comics and graphic novel fan. In particular in my youth I was a huge superhero fan.

So this one was just a natural for me. Especially since one of the heroes that is profiled was one of my youthful favourites: The Incredible Hulk!


6 superheroes who got their powers from being lousy scientists

The Incredible Hulk

His Origin: Bruce Banner runs onto a gamma bomb testing facility to save a trespassing teen. He shoves the teen into a ditch, but gets hit with the full powers of radiation.

Note in the pic above that it says Banner was miles from the detonation of the bomb. So the bomb is powerful enough to mess up a guy miles away. Yet they didn’t think to put up a fence?

Why are there guards? Aren’t the guards going to get hit with the gamma radiation? Also, if we’re going to be testing radiation bombs, can we put up some signs and get a little more clearance from humans than one mile? John Wayne died from cancer caused by appearing in a film that was in a different state from bomb testing.

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Comments

  1. #1 Polonius
    March 23, 2012

    John Wayne died from cancer caused by appearing in a film that was in a different state from bomb testing.

    Nothing to do with 120 cigarettes a day then?

  2. #2 D. C. Sessions
    March 23, 2012

    Nothing to do with 120 cigarettes a day then?

    Maybe, maybe not. Turns out that tobacco leaves do a remarkably good job of filtering microscopic heavy metal particles out of air, and hang onto them all the way through processing into cigs.

    I doubt that makes them set off Geiger counters, but if you’re looking for excuses …

  3. #3 Pierce R. Butler
    March 24, 2012

    Didn’t Element Girl get her powers from mishandling an irreplaceable find on an archeological dig?

    Hank Pym screwed up multiple times, becoming Ant-Man, then Giant-Man, then various other unstable identities.

    And Ray Palmer should’ve taken that dwarf/neutron star to his lab, instead of recycling it into a lycra costume so he could become The Atom.

    Hell, if Peter Parker had kept his home chem lab cleaner, he would never have been bitten by that radioactive spider!

  4. #4 John Dupuis
    March 25, 2012

    LOL, yeah there are likely many more cases where superheroes got their powers from a tragic misuse or misunderstanding of science.

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