Dangerous Origins part 1

September 17th, 2005

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

Comic books are full of origin stories that seem remarkably dangerous — like taking an unshielded ship up into space, for instance. But every once in a while, a story comes along that is so ludicrously dangerous that it defies belief.

The tale of Hydroman is one of these stories…

Chemist Harry Thurston is in his lab mixing a compound that is composed of water, sulfuric acid, alcohol and some unknown chemical. The beaker he is mixing it in suddenly explodes and the mixture spills onto his hand.

The beaker explodes!

Bizarrely, his hand turns into a waterspout.

What Happend to my hand?

He calls his friends Bob Blake and Joyce Church who rushe over to help. While Bob is in the lab, an entire bucket of the mysterious mixture is dumped on him and he turns into a geyser.

Sorry Bob!

Luckily, some “counteractive chemicals” are on hand and Bob is returned to his natural form. Then Harry says, “Hey, Bob. Let’s inject this strange mixture into your blood stream.”
“OK. Sounds like a good idea,” says Bob. (I may be paraphrasing just a little).

I've got an idea!

So let me get this straight: Harry has just invented this mysterious mixture that turns people into water. He hasn’t had it for more than 5 or 10 minutes when he decides that this dangerous chemical would be perfect to inject into someone’s veins. Nevermind the fact that it in all likelihood it will probably kill them. And his buddy agrees. No research, no testing, no “Hey wait! Your damn chemical turned me into a puddle of water just a few minutes ago!” No, Bob just says, “Sure thing.”

It’s not all bad…there’s some nice Bill Everett art. But please, if you learn nothing else today, please remember that no matter what anybody else tells you, injecting strange chemicals into your bloodstream is never a good idea.

Hydroman made his debut in Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #1, published by Eastern Color in August, 1940. Story and art by Bill Everett.

6 Responses to “ Dangerous Origins part 1 ”

  1. David Oakes
    September 17th, 2005 at 2:18 pm

    Oh. My. God.

    Not the idea of injecting yourself with mixtures of alcohol and sulfuric acid, even after watching earlier results. Heck, they were injecting themselves with everything and everything in the Golden Age, from mongoose blood to hard water.

    But a title like “Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics”? Man, they just don’t make them like that anymore!

  2. Scott
    September 17th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
    Official Comment

    There was at least some semi-logical reasoning behind most origins (hmm…I was bit by snake…mongooses eat snakes…I’ll use mongoose blood!). This one though…

  3. Scipio
    September 17th, 2005 at 4:40 pm

    Sounds like the boldness of Bragg in the origin of the AWESOME HUMAN FLYING FISH. Perhaps you should start a

    “Happy Human Guinea Pigs” series, Scott….

  4. John Nowak
    September 18th, 2005 at 1:17 am

    The “sure thing” is what really gets me.

  5. David Oakes
    September 23rd, 2005 at 12:45 am

    Where you see reckless, perhaps even foolishly suicidal behaviour, I see a daring ode to the pluck and verve of the Scientific Method. No “Intelligent Design” for these two young stalwarts of the Modern Age. No, faced with a seredipitous discovery, they immediately charge right in to show repeatability. Having shown that the effect can be negated under certain conditions, and without a moment wasted, they decide to further explore the phenomena under controlled conditions.

    And so ahead of their time, eliminating all that cruel and unneccessary animal testing as well, skipping straight to the human trials!

  6. Art Wi
    June 6th, 2006 at 8:05 am

    Oh.My.Gentle.Jesus.

    I’m gonna go try that right now!

    AAkk…

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