Story plot: Stan Lee
Script: Jerry Siegel
Art: Dick Ayers
Lettering: S. Rosen
It's been over a year since we last looked at an example of Stan's hilarious misunderstandings of how nuclear power works, and I think you'll agree, today's panel was worth the wait.
Having failed to decide if the Eel or the device he was carrying was the true threat, Stan and Jerry decide to ramp up the tension by revealing that the explosion is due to occur right next to a Veterans' Hospital. Ignoring the fact that the scale of the explosion and resulting fallout would not only obliterate the hospital but pretty much all of the town and surrounding countryside, the story decides that only a noble sacrifice from Johnny can negate the blast.
So, Johnny flies upwards, and wills both the force of the explosion as well as the radiation up into the atmosphere with him. Imagine that. No, really, imagine it. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, each of these catastrophic nuclear events could have been prevented by a teenager with a lot of willpower.
Even more hilarious is the ridiculous expository speech bubbles which, thanks to the high perspective showing the curvature of the Earth, suggests that the people speaking are either in space, or they're shouting really loudly so that the reader can hear them.
Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind
[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]