Radioactive Man

Real Name: Claude Kane III

Identity/Class: Mutated human

Occupation: Playboy socialite

Affiliations: Fallout Boy, Superior Squad (Plasmo The Mystic, Captain Squid, Bug Boy, Weasel Woman, Purple Heart, (later Bleeding Heart, then Heart of Darkness, then Bloody Heart), Lure Lass, Black Partridge), Gloria Grand (journalist, would-be girlfriend); Radioactive Man-Beta (other dimensional counterpart); Radioactive Boy (other dimensional counterpart), Glowy (Radioactive Boy's dog sidekick)

Enemies: Dr. Crab, The Bonfire Club, Pneumatica, Nega-Pneumatica, Radioactive Worm, Magmo the Lava Man, the Scoutmaster, Larva Girl, ECZEMA (criminal organization led by Madame Eczema), Mufelatto the Aliment Man, Canes

Known Relatives: Camellia Kane (mother, a.k.a. Pneumatica), Larva Girl (ex-wife)

Aliases: Radio Man, Dark Radioactive Man

Base of Operations: Zenith City

First Appearance: The Simpsons: "Bart the Genius" (14th January 1990, first mention); "Three Men and a Comic Book" (9th May 1991, first appearance of his comic)

Powers/Abilities: Radioactive Man has most of the standard "Superman" powers - strong, fast, able to fly, bulletproof, etc. He can fire beams of "clean, nuclear heat" from his eyes

History: (Radioactive Man comic) Claude Kane III was a rich playboy layabout who stumbled on to a nuclear test site, and was caught in an atomic explosion engineered by the commie spy Dr.Crab. Kane was virtually at ground zero, and the radiation permeated his body and mutated him.

Deciding to fight threats to society like Dr.Crab, Kane became Radioactive Man, and teamed up with a young orphan who became his sidekick Fallout Boy. The two soon joined the Superior Squad (later retconned to the Superior Squadron), a team of America's greatest heroes. He served with them for many years, through battles in the sixties with Magmo the Lava Man, through the drug infested Vietnam era, through his own death and resurrection as a more powerful, "dark" Radioactive Man, through the dark days in the 1980's when Ronald Reagan banned superheroes (although Radioactive Man was allowed to continue working as a government stooge), through a crisis which engulfed an infinity of Earth's, where he met his own counterparts Radioactive Man-Beta, the teenage Radioactive Boy and even into the retconning twenty-first century, where his entire history was rewritten by artists with no writing skills.

In his new origin, young Claude Kane, a 1940's cub radio reporter, ran into a mysterious radio repairman in a subway, and was magically shown how to transform into Radio Man. Years later , in the 1950's, his powers would evolve and he would become Radioactive Man.

(Simpson's cartoon) Radioactive Man is Bart Simpson's favourite comic character. A particularly thick hero, he is usually saved by his far brighter sidekick, Fallout Boy. The character's most prominent appearance in the show came when Hollywood moguls decided to make a movie of the character, and film it in Springfield. With dense Germanic actor Ranier Wolfcastle in the lead part, local kids were tested for the part of Fallout Boy. Bart was perfect for the role...except he was an inch too short. So the part went to his best friend, Millhouse van Houten, causing a rift between the two of them. Financial problems prevented the movie from being completed.

Comments: Radioactive Man started as a background character in the incredibly successful Simpson's cartoon. Eventually he got the spotlight when Bongo Comics published a mini-series, highlighting his career over the "decades", allowing them over the course of the series to engage in a large number of parodies of old comics from various eras. Radioactive Man's arch nemesis Dr.Crab was mutated over time until he became a barely humanoid crustacean.

Oh, and the lightning bolt on the top of his head isn't part of the costume. It's embedded in his skull, and is still clearly visible in his secret identity.

• Marvel Comic's Radioactive Man, a Chinese supervillain

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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