CURIOSITES #39: RADIATION REVELS

I've been a little curious lately as to when comic books began making sustained use of the fantasy-trope that radiation can cause either (1) modifications in infants at conception or in the womb, or (2) spontaneous changes in fully grown entities. In prose science fiction, the trope has been traced back to the late twenties and early thirties.

So far the earliest examples I've found appear in 1944. One is in a YOUNG ALLIES story, wherein a Nazi agent is mutated by radium exposure and changes into an atomic powerhouse who's variously referred to as both "The Green Death" and "The Radium Man."

By an interesting coincidence, 1944 also gave us the short-lived jungle girl strip, JUN-GAL, whose star gains super-strength from exposure to natural radium. There's no mention as to why the Black natives in her tribe fail to get similarly empowered.