Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 10, 2025 | 4 comments

MORRISON MONDAYS!

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By BILL MORRISON

Back in the Bongo Age of Comics, I had the good fortune to work with Batton Lash as his editor on our Eisner Award-winning Radioactive Man series. From the very first issue, Radioactive Man’s mission was to parody the history of comics, and in 2000 I had asked Bat to write the rebooted adventures of the Atomic Avenger in a new series because he really knew his onions when it came to comics history.

One of the issues Bat pitched, Radioactive Man #222, was set firmly in 1973 and parodied the “Crisis on Campus!” storylines that were popular in comics at the time. I was an avid Marvel reader in those days, and a charter member of the Jim Steranko-designed and edited Marvel fan club, F.O.O.M. (which stands for Friends of Ol’ Marvel). When Batton turned in his script for the issue, he included a Stan Lee-style column page that included a come-on to join COZ — Citizens Of Zenith — a club for Radioactive Man fans.

Naturally, the patter of the COZ ad matched the circa ’73 Marvel style, and the items offered in the fan club kit were a nod to the goodies I’d received when I joined F.O.O.M. It was a spot-on parody of early 70s Marvel hype.

Bat asked me if it was possible to actually make the COZ kit described in the ad available to readers, almost 30 years past when the issue was supposedly published, making it a real ad disguised as a fake one. Recognizing brilliant ideas when I hear them, I thought that was a brilliant idea! I’ve always felt wistful when I see an ad for something cool in an old back issue of a comic or monster mag, knowing that the offer was no longer valid, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that feeling.

I got approval for a limited number of items that we could produce cheaply, in-house, so the F.O.O.M. poster became a low budget 8” x 10” photo print, and the stickers were replaced by non-sticky ink-jet printed “flyers” of the same size. We did have a membership card that a Bongo employee had to print out and cut on a paper cutter, and a printed envelope, plus a letter from Radioactive Man’s imaginary creator, Morty Mann himself, printed on a Bongo letterhead. Sadly, the budget was not there for a COZ magazine, but all-in-all, it was a pretty nifty kit!

Bat cleverly worded the text of the COZ ad so that present day readers in 2001 would get the idea that they could send in a dollar and actually receive the kit in the mail. We had no idea just how many of our readers would take the ad seriously and actually send us a buck, so we didn’t print anything up ahead of time, opting instead to print-on-demand. Then, we waited.

As it turned out, most of our readers either didn’t bother to read the ad, or didn’t believe the offer was still good. We were prepared to print dozens of kits, maybe even hundreds. But we only received a few takers, making the Radioactive Man COZ Fan Club Kit probably the rarest of the rare when it comes to Bongo collectibles!

As a bonus, here’s my cover for the issue, an homage to the Gil Kane cover to Iron Man #45:

Pencilled by Bat, inked by me

Pencilled by Gil Kane, inked by John Romita and Frank Giacoia

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