Where’s Finster when you really need him?
Radioactive Man #136 vol 2 #3 #136
Bongo Comics (May, 2001 1966)
“From Reinmania With Luv, Baby!”
WRITER/LAYOUTS: Batton Lash
PENCILER: Dan DeCarlo
INKER: Bob Smith
COLORIST: Lee Loughridge
LETTERER: Chris Ungar
EDITOR: Bill Morrison
While vacationing in the European country of Reinmania, Radioactive Man foils a series of assassination attempts against the king…although the only difference is that he’s alive and injured rather than full-on dead. The king’s daughter, the princess Paula, is heading to Zenith City as a foreign exchange student, and Radioactive Man is asked to protect her by the King’s advisor and brother. She immediately attracts the…attention of Rod (secretly Fallout Boy) but the poor kid is looked down upon by pretty much everyone at school including her. Radioactive Man is there to protect her but Claude does the saving and Radioactive Man the dancing. It’s up to Fallout Boy to save the princess from her uncle’s evil schemes as part of the organization MANN (Monarchies And Nobility–Never!!), who wants to replace the benevolent monarchy with a dictatorial police state. Radioactive Man returns to take the villain away, revealing he left a robot in his place that got its personalities switched.
What they got right: Poor Radioactive Man, not knowing his own strength and doing the king only slightly less harm that his assassins. I do feel sorry for Rod getting the short end as the parody comic nerd character. The surprises are well done, even if the evil uncle is clichéd by this point.
What they got wrong: Am I just not getting the joke surrounding the “DJ” narrator? Is there something I’m missing? Because it just felt unnecessary and a bit stupid to me.
Recommendation: A rather enjoyable superhero parody. Worth picking up.
