Sometimes, the bite of a radioactive insect just isn’t enough… Welcome to Ten Things: Ten Supers Empowered By Blood Transfusions!

Whooshman-Bicarbonate Films, in conjunction with An Amateur Comics Historian, the corpuscles and the platelets, Presents:

TEN THINGS: TEN SUPERS EMPOWERED BY BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS!

10) SHE-HULK

A sudden visit from her favorite cousin was a true stroke of luck for attorney Jennifer Walters, as agents of a crimelord she was prosecuting tried to kill her for her involvement in their boss’s case. Since her cousin was a doctor, he was able to stabilize her condition with an emergency blood transfusion, keeping her alive long enough to get her to the hospital. Of course, since he was Doctor Robert Bruce Banner, aka The Incredible Hulk, there were some… complications, but she generally doesn’t complain about being a seven-foot-tall powerhouse.

9) GORDON K. TRUEBLOOD

Plastic Man’s 1966 revival gave him not only pants, but a new sidekick in the form of pet shop owner and All-American boy Gordon K. Trueblood, Gordy to his friends. When an auto accident left Gordy in critical condition, Plas offered up his own blood to save the young man’s life, only to have said blood give Gordy stretching powers of his own. Master Trueblood tried to join Plastic Man in the field, but found the learning curve of a malleable body to be quite high. Since this was the last issue of the book, it’s unclear whether or not the plan was for Gordy to keep his plastic powers as Plas’ permanent sidekick or not.

This version of Plastic Man was actually the son of Eel O’Brien, and his adventures have retroactively been ascribed as occurring on Earth-Twelve, the home of the Inferior Five.

8) BLOODFIRE

One of a literal army of black ops government agents in the 90s, Brian Reace was critically injured in the line of duty. An experimental infusion gave him super-powers (the usual agility-speed-toughness combo platter, as well as the ability to ignite his blood, hence the name), but it also gave him a highly topical and somewhat insensitively handled HIV infection. His solo title clocked in at thirteen issues and they all made me quite uncomfortable in their portrayal of the hero and his health struggles.

7) THE BADGE

Roger Ryan was a minor player in organized crime, a gangster whose racket was busted up by a costumed hero called The Badge. When Roger was shot by his own pals, the hero rushed him to a nearby doctor and gave him a transfusion of his super-powered blood. The gunsels followed and shot the Badge dead, leaving Roger to recognize the hero as his own twin brother! Taking up the fallen hero’s costume and shield, Roger used his newfound power to fight his former gangster colleagues as well as the occasional Communist.

As with all Big Bang Comics characters, he is an homage character, combining aspects of Captain America and DC’s Golden Age Guardian (and eventually a little Nick Fury) into his tales.

6) BEAST BOY

Unlike his comic-book incarnation (who received his shapeshifting abilities from a serum to cure a strange disease called Sakutia), the Garfield Logan of the ‘Young Justice’ cartoon was a superhero fanboy who loved the costumed folk of his world. He was nearly killed when Bialyan soldiers stampeded a herd of wildebeests through his mother’s animal preserve, but an emergency blood transfusion from Ms. Martian saved his life. It also turned him bright green and gave him to power to turn into animals, who are also bright green.

The tail really makes the look, for me.

5) PATRIOT

Elijah Bradley is an interesting example, as his initial claim that he had super-powers from a transfusion of blood from his grandfather (Isaiah Bradley, one of the few survivors of the initial round of Super Soldier Serum testing) turned out to be a lie, and he was in fact using the illegal drug, MGH. He quit the team in disgrace, but later returned to action without powers and was wounded by gunfire, after which his grandfather actually did give him a blood transfusion with the accompanying Super Soldier powers.

4) MERCURY THE BOY STREAK

After his life was saved by the hero Silver Streak, young Mickey O’Toole impressed ol’ Streaky by punching out the full-grown gangster who tried to kill him. Impressed by the boy’s gumption, Silver Streak took the kid under his wing and in the space of a few panels gave him rigorous training and a transfusion of Silver Streak’s own “special fluid”-enhanced blood, giving him super-speed and flight powers and turning him into the Boy Streak!

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controversy is to be had as to whether Meteor, Silver Streak’s second sidekick, is the same person as Mercury, but most of the evidence seems to indicate no.

3) SWAMP THING

Tefé Holland is an interesting example, as her status of avatar of the green isn’t due to a transfusion she received, or even one for her parents, Abby Cable and the Swamp Thing. Tefé owes her existence to John Constantine, whose body Swamp Thing “borrowed” in order to conceive with Abby. John himself would have certainly been dead, had he not made a deal with the devil and gotten an infusion of demon blood to save his own life a few weeks earlier. Thus, as Swamp Thing, Miss Holland is a hybrid of human and plant with just a soupçon of demon to keep it all from getting boring.

And that’s what we call lateral thinking.

2) THE WHIZZER

After a bite from a venomous cobra, Robert Frank would have certainly died, had his father not acted quickly. Taking the mongoose that killed the cobra, Dr. Frank injected it’s blood into his son, and was shocked to see him immediately recover! (Sadly, both dad and the mongoose died.) For reasons unclear, the blood caused a mutagenic reaction giving Bob superhuman speed. These days he is roundly mocked for his outmoded name, but he chose it because of the noise he made as he rushed about and “whiz kid” for a remarkable person would have bee in broad usage at the time of his 1941 debut.

Language evolves, dear friends, and not everything is as “LOLFail” as you might think it is.

1) SUPAIDAMAN

A motorcycle racer by trade, Takyua Yamashiro was amazed to see an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth and follows his space archaeologist father (nice work if you can get it) to the crash site. Dr. Yamashiro is killed, but Takuya’s life is saved by an alien named Garia, who injects him with some of Garia’s own alien blood and gives him spidery powers. He also gifts the newly minted Supaidaman (which is just a transliteration of the English name, making them essentially interchangeable) with his ship, The Marveller, able to turn into a giant robot called Leopardon. The success of Takuya and Leopardon led Toei to add a giant mecha to their other superhero show, ‘Battle Fever J’. It became tradition, and eventually, when the Super Sentai franchise was localized to the United States as ‘Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers’, those mechas became known as Megazords. #TheRestOfTheStory

This week’s topic, Ten Supers Empowered By Blood Transfusions, is all me but feel free to follow along and suggest your own @MightyKingCobra on Twitter! Or check out the full Twitter archive here! As with any set of like items, these aren’t meant to be hard and fast or absolutely complete, though this particular empowerment vector is quite archaic and may finally be a dead trope. Either way, the comments section is below for just such an emergency, but, as always: Please, no wagering!

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