“Look, if you would stop eating the dino treats I would haven’t lock them up. It’s not my fault the key is stuck.”
Radioactive Man #106 (volume 2 #6)
Bongo Entertainment (November 2002…I mean 1963)
“The Hallucinations That Weren’t Real” and “Isle Of Irregular Dinosaurs”
WRITER: Batton Lash
PENCILER: Dan DeCarlo
INKER: Bob Smith
COLORIST: Jason Latour
LETTERER: Karen Bates
EDITOR: Bill Morrison
(full credits according to comics.org, the Grand Comic Database)
Technically they’re two parts of the same story. Claude Kane II (our hero’s father) has created a way to clone new dinosaurs. Gloria comes for an interview but ends up going to lunch with Claude III (which should have been his first hint something was wrong). Suddenly Radioactive Man starts hallucinating threats that aren’t there. It turns out to be a plot by Dr. Crab to seal the “Foreverlution” formula to create his own dinosaurs. However, the process isn’t perfect and they all end up with humanoid faces and personalities. Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy race to rescue Gloria and the trio shut down Crab’s geriatric park. (Hey, it isn’t any worse than the puns in this book. They use a “gold key” to open a door in a “dell”.)
What they got right: Cute nod to two companies no longer around but were at the time this comic “came out”. The stories connect but could also work individually, which was the case in some comics of the time from smaller publishers. The “irregular dinosaurs” work for a parody comic like this. The additional material, like what to do in case of atomic bombs going off, is good parody.
What they got wrong: The Acclaim Comic/Valiant Heroes reference kind of sticks out as something more recent to when the comic actually was produced and it amounts to a brief cameo before Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy defeat them in shadow or off-panel.
Recommendation: One of the better issues. Worth tracking down.
