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[MarkWarner]

Wow ... I think last week's reading (Captain Tootsie) was a pleasant surprise for most of us, and I don't think there was a dissenting voice in the house. This week our reading is something just a tad different with Key Ring Comics Radior The X-Ray Man.  It has been chosen by one of the reading group, who appears so certain of his/her assurance "it will be a hit!" that they have elected to remain anonymous!

The single story book can be found at https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=29320. This does look quite an intriguing oddity.

[crashryan]

I remembered reading about this odd comic and I Googled it to refresh my memory. It was a five-part comic, each part a separate mini-comic punched with holes so the owner could arrange them as he wished in a ring binder--making it easy to sneak the comics into school and read them without the teacher knowing. Since the five component comics were separate, I'm unsure how the package was sold. This was long before the era of the plastic bag.

The first thing you notice is the incredibly ugly color scheme. It obscures the fact that the art isn't bad for a 1941 superhero comic. Like many early superheroes, Radior's powers are vague and new ones pop up as needed. But he's nowhere near as bad in that regard as, say, the original Blue Beetle. His origin story ranks up there with The Whizzer and his mongoose blood. Surely even in 1941 people knew you can't feed a baby on radium! Talk about child abuse. I wonder if those cigarettes he smokes are atomic cigarettes like the ones Tobor the 8th Man used to recharge himself.

One strange feature is the use of huge headlines explaining what happens on each page. British comics and story papers used a similar gimmick but from what I've seen they didn't give away the entire story like these do. Maybe it's a convenient way for lazy kids to avoid having to read the comic.

In general the story is a bit more coherently written than your typical early Golden Age comic. But only a bit. Radior doesn't actually figure out anything himself; we learn all the important stuff from the captions and Radior somehow just seems to know it. Our hero certainly has no problem being judge and executioner for the bad guys.

All in all not a bad Golden Age hero comic, if you overlook the awful (but awfully cheap) two-color printing. I read on Comic Vine that examples of only four of the five Key Ring components are known to exist. One more is here on CB+; it'd be interesting to see the other two.

[SuperScrounge]

Read this once before, don't recall being too impressed, but let's see what a reread does.

Awful coloring.

The story is a mess.

A report of another plane crashing, so what do they do? Send out another plane! What?

Not only that, the colonel uses a pilot who is the brother of a girl who disappeared in the area in the hopes that this will make a difference. What next colonel? Astrology?

Okay, Professor Kennedy disappeared 20 years ago so, presumably there is no record of Radior existing, so how did he get drafted? Also if he's the son of Prof. Kennedy wouldn't that make Radior his "front name" and Kennedy his last name?

The plane's in trouble so Radior tells the colonel his backstory, rather than, you know, trying to help the pilot.

Oh, comic book radiation, is there anything you can't do?

"But Radior hadn't reckoned on Teufel's secret escape railway."
I can just hear Radior thinking, "Oh, dear! He's maybe 20 feet away! No sense running after him, I'll never catch up in time."

"I've already picked out my secretary."
Does she have any say in this? Can she even type?

Oh, man, here was a story that could have used a rewrite, or two, before being handed off to an artist.

[bowers]

I think the selling point of this series was the format and price, not the content. I've read the other issue available onsite and the writing was also a bit flawed. Even so, both contained a lot of action packed into very few pages. Radior's origin was extremely bad. Yes, radium was once thought to be healthy and used in patent medicines such as "Radithor" and systems like "Revigator". After the "Radium Girls" girls scandal and attempted cover-up by U.S. Radium Corp. in the late 1920's, ingestion of radium was proved to be lethal. This was over ten years before the story was written. The two-color printing was a bit garish- much better in the other issue. Although the backstory and logic got in the way, this comic did deliver what a younger reader would have wanted- lots and lots of action presented in a new format.  Looking at it from this point of view, these comics are quite interesting examples of a short-lived 1940's marketing experiment. Cheers, Bowers

[Philv]

Radior - I sense a radioactive theme in the last two selections (uranium and radium). First, seeing the cover, I tried to figure out why such severe minimalist colors were chosen,  I can only guess it was to save money.  If it was truly 5 issues for 10 cents, maybe they had to cut corners.

It's cool that his super powers come from radium, but Radior seemed invincible. He could do anything needed when it was needed and nothing could hurt him. Even Superman has his kryptonite.  Without some frailty, there really wasn't any suspense.  No Suspense describes this story well.  The colors, or lack thereof, were hard on the eyes, and the story did not hold my interest.

[narfstar]

The story lacked focus. I like the key ring idea but the two colors were not the way to go.

[MarkWarner]

Off we go reading this rather strange looking beast. 5 magazines for 10c (with free holes) looks a good deal. So, let's see if it really is so.

Wow ... things were ticking along fairly conventionally until our page 7, when we discover the origins of Radior. Nowadays, Professor Kennedy's ideas of child care may well raise a few eyebrows.

"Radium, the eternal element that never dies, never wastes! Drink!" 

"Absorb it! Breathe it! Radium is the secret source of all life, all strength!"

Right OK ... hmmm ... quickly skipping over that, the next observation is that Radior seems to have a bit of Arnie humor in him. As he dispatches "Operator 4" he tells him:

"You can explode a bridge in my face and live. But you can't bully a girl"

The finishing flourish of the comic is Radior being promised a top job and singling out his assistant ending with  "More about Radior next issue". But it is a lie. There wasn't, as that ladies and gentleman was Radior's combined entrance and exit.

Verdict: Ok, I admit the story was a bit light. But I thought the very basic printing and style of the book made it quite "primitive arty". This combined with the tinge of sadness for a superhero whose entire reign was only 16 pages long, means it gets my vote. Oh I almost forgot, this cost just 2c (remember the 10c for 5) so I'd certainly take a 8c punt on the others!

[paw broon]

I enjoyed this.  The garish colours were great.  Not being very good with colours made these shiny ones great for me.  Yes the origin is absolutely frightening, but it is comics.  Perhaps Radior is too all-powerful but a short dose (see what I did there?) of him is entertaining.  The story rattles along and there's a good bad guy.
What I'd like to know is the size of this comic.  It dawned on me when I read that it was a Key Ring comic and with that wee hole to string it on, that it was small, and being a bit nerdy about comic sizes and formats, I needed to know the dimensions but no details of that in Overstreet.
A decent wee escapist read.