"Pass me the grafting serum…."
In the story titled “The Man Who Meddled,” scientist Paul Hartwick was experimenting with the acceleration of life cycles in mice, making them live out a typical two-year life span over the course of minutes. Of course, there’s an accident, as the devices used in this experiment blow up in Paul’s face…but Paul appears to recover fully and that’s that.
Some months later, Paul and his wife have a child, and to all appearances that child appears perfectly healthly:
…But shortly, it’s discovered that all is not well in the Hartwick household:
Before long:
And the end result is that the baby dies, and Hartwick himself suddenly ages to near death over the course of one panel, but that’s bit of a downer. Let’s look instead at Balding Pipe Baby, because that’s absolutely 100% fantastic:
So he just kicks it in the crib, occasionally climbing out to raid Pop’s smoke stash and grab the paper? Or does he just cry out: “Mommy? Can I have a pipe and the sports section, please? That’s a dear…thanks!”
In other news, Man Has Arms Replaced with Those of A Gorilla. Check it out, in a story that could only be called “Killer’s Arms.” Well, maybe not only that, but whatever:
John, Anne, and Anne’s father Professor Morton fly off to Africa to capture a gorilla and use one of its arms to replace Morton’s missing arm, using the professor’s experimental grafting technique. However, one night at their camp, a gorilla finds them…and John gets the worst of it:
Morton shoots and kills the gorilla, but he and Anne come across a horrifying scene:
Well, luckily for Morton he just happens to have a gorilla arm-donor dead and ready for the transplantation procedure. He begins the operation with maybe one of the greatest comic panels ever:
John wakes the morning after the surgery, probably with totally flyblown wounds at the edges of the graft since nobody bothered with any kind of bandaging:
…well, unless the grafting serum includes some kind of bug repellent. The serum could just be That Amazing.
John is understandably shocked:
Ah, the old “transplanted body parts have the personalities of their former owners” trick. If you insist, story, if you insist:
Anne’s bedside manner could use a little work, too, attacking gorilla arms or no.
John’s on the move…note the grafting serum bottle:
“I couldn’t control my transplanted gorilla arms when they were killing my annoying girlfriend and her wet-blanket father, Your Honor…honest!”
So, back to the serum bottle: apparently by spilling on John’s head, it continues the process of allowing the body to accept the grafted gorilla arms apparently by changing him into an actual gorilla. Well, sorta:
I’m beginning to suspect that comic books are not my best source for accurate medical information.
