That power of radioactivity was unknown in 1940. It wasn’t until the 60s (and Spider-Man) that it was discovered. 
DC publishes old stuff in their hardcover Archive format. About $50 a pop if you buy them in comic stores (I don’t usually see them in places like Borders anymore, although some might carry them), cheaper if you get them online. Marvel does hard and softcover Masterworks. Same deal, pretty much, except Marvel obviously concentrates more heavily on Silver Age stuff. The Archives never cease to amaze me, BTW. I can’t believe some of the stuff they reprint. Of course, they’re too expensive for me to actually buy.
Looks like DC is going to start systematic soft-cover reprints of Golden Age stuff next year with the Batman Chronicles, which should be cool (although you can get the first volumes of the Batman and Dark Knight Archives for $20 each right now).
Anyhoo, as to the OP, I’m a fan of superhero origins that make absolutely no sense as long as they’re fun to read. And from what I’ve read of the Golden Age Flash (just the Archive), it was a pretty fun read.
I got The Golden Age Flash Archives hardcover at this Amazon.com lnk. They also carry other titles in the DC Archives line.
I must say, as a long-time Marvel fan, DC it a lot better when it comes to putting out reprint anthologies.
I’m pretty sure he had lymphoma. Unless he was just faking it.
At the time it was written, there had been reports that drinking “hard water” would speed up your reaction time, and it was one of the things “serious” athletes did to improve their performance.
Now if I could only find a cite for something I’ve had in the back of my mind for decades…
AHA!!
D’OH!
I can top that.
The Silver-Age Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) had a bad-guy that was a super-evolved future shark (called The Shark of course).
You’d think even a super-evolved SHARK OF THE FUTURE would be toast for a Green Lantern who can casually tow planets out of orbit, right? Wrong. Due to a necessary impurity, Green Lantern rings are ineffective against the color yellow. “So” I hear you ask "Was this SHARK OF THE FUTURE colored yellow?
No. A yellow future-shark would be silly.
This SHARK OF TOMORROW! had vast mental powers which included the ability to surround himself with an invisible yellow aura* that, due to a necessary impurity in the ring, made the ring ineffecive against The Shark!
I’m not making this up.
Fenris
*Not a typo. He showed up a number of times with his “invisible yellow aura”.
Jule Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes was a treasure trove of superhero origins: Superman, Batman (excerpt), Captain Marvel (excerpt), The Flash, Green Lantern, The Spectre, Captain America, and Plastic Man. There are also stories about The Human Torch, Sub-Mariner (why do people dump on Aquaman while Namor was just the same thing with little tiny wings on his feet?), Hawkman, Wonder Woman, and the Spirit.
I’ll take Plastic Man’s origin over the others; not just for the vat of acid (don’t try that at home), but for the fact that he was a bad guy before he turned into Plas. Also, Plastic Man was much more fun than any other Golden Age superhero (except maybe Johnny Thunder, from what I’ve heard).
Because most people’s remembrance of Aquaman was from his appearances on The Super Friends.
In which he was, basically, a water-breathing fish-talking wimp whose only purpose in life was to get captured by the Legion of Doom so the rest of the Justice League could go and rescue him.
(The kick-butt-and-take-names Aquaman that appears on the Justice League cartoons is a relatively recent attempt to correct this image, of course.)
That really works, you know?
It’s a better origin than Black Condor’s. He was the double of an assassinated uS senator and took over his identity so that the Nazis wouldn’t know the fiendish plot succeeded.
Oh yeah, he could fly. Because he was raised from infancy by intelligent Mongolian condors. Who taught him to fly. When he was a baby.
Well how do you know it wasn’t yellow if you couldn’t see it? Huh tell me that one!
What powers would a transfusion of mink blood confer? Would I smell… well… “minky”?
That’s what happens when I don’t use my spell check.
[Chief Inspector Dreyfus] MINKY? You said MINKY! [/CID]
[Clouseau]
there was some question as to whether it was the organ grinder or his minky were breaking ze looer.
[/Clouseau]
Thanks for that tidbit. I remember reading the reprinted story in a digest (or whatever the Reader’s Digest style formats were called) but had completely forgotten the aura angle. Maybe because other silly elements of the concept seemed even more prominent in my mind.
My first purchased GL, around September '64, (cover date Nov.) introduced me to the yellow weakness. I think I came across an earlier GL, reading it in a barber shop sometime after September '61, (may have been published quite a few months earlier) but it only referred to the time-limit weakness. In the second story a bomb-wielding terrorist was threatening Coast City with total destruction from hiding, and GL was trying to track him down.
He was inconvenienced by a troublesome thick fog and had to maneuver around it. I guess the writer never thought about momentum-buildup and coasting through, BTW. So why was the fog so troublesome for GL? Simple! It had just enough of a yellow tint to neutralize the ring and make sustained flight impossible.
I realize that Coast City was supposed to be in California, but this is ridiculous. I think that the “fog”, better termed “smog” was a more imminent threat to the people of the town that the bomb-wielding terrorist.
No one can baffle me with these items, though.
Or anyone at all who has read the origin of Silver Age Supergirl. 'Nuff said.
True Blue Jack
with apologies
“invisible yellow aura” - band name
Back to the OP.
Why “hard water”? Duh! Because if it was “easy water” anyone could do it! 