Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

My pal Fraser S. wrote in to suggest that since I've already listed the DC Comics characters who gained their powers from the Bloodlines aliens, I should also do the same for the characters that gained their powers from the Gene Bomb explosion.

In case you're unfamiliar with the Gene Bomb explosion, back in 1988-89, there was this DC crossover event called Invasion! where a bunch of alien races got together and decided to take down Earth before there were so many metahumans on Earth that Earth would start taking over the rest of the universe. The invasion was defeated by Earth's heroes. As a last bit of revenge, the aliens dropped a "Gene Bomb" on Earth, a bomb that could possibly kill any one on Earth who had a "metagene," DC's version of mutants. So basically anyone who suddenly gained powers and wasn't, like from another planet or given a Green Lantern ring for their powers.

Luckily, all the alien heroes and the Green Lanterns got together and flew after the aliens and found a way to cure everyone afflicted by the Gene Bomb. However, in the process, some people ended up gaining superpowers when their metagene was "activated" by the bomb and some people had their current powers altered by the Gene Bomb. Here are as many of these characters that I could think of...

METAMORPHO

One of the oddest examples on this list is Metamorpho, who had died in the PREVIOUS DC Comics crossover event, Millennium, which was barely a year earlier. The Gene Bomb brought him back to life. This happened during Invasion! the crossover itself...

MAXWELL LORD

The guy who put Justice League International together gained the ability to control other people's minds (with the warning sign being a nose bleed) when the Gene Bomb activated his dormant metagene, as seen here in Justice League International #24 when he used his new power to telepathically tell Blue Beetle that he is trapped...

FIRE

Fire, from Justice League International, saw her powers mutate from her simply being ability to generate a green flame from her mouth to becoming, in effect, living green flame...

TASMANIAN DEVIL

This one is a bit of a leap, but the Tasmanian Devil's powers dramatically changed from being a guy who wore a suit to being a mutated beast right around the time of the Gene Bomb, so it appears likely that that is why he mutated...

CRAZY JANE

One of the teams most affected by the Gene Bomb was the Doom Patrol, who actually lost a member to the Gene Bomb explosion (the only major fatality), so when Grant Morrison took over the series with Doom Patrol #19, he had to rebuild the cast, and one of the most major additions was Crazy Jane, who gained her powers from the Gene Bomb...

LODESTONE

Almost two years into his run, Morrison also showed Rhea Jones, an earlier member of the Doom Patrol who had gone into a coma after the Gene Bomb, finally successfully mutated into a new being...

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THE ARTIST

One of the only other characters to be specifically shown dealing with the effects of the Gene Bomb in Invasion! was a normal guy whose metagene was activated. He was then kidnapped in the pages of Spectre and experimented on, which forced him to go crazy as the reality-shaping being known as The Artist...

MOST OF THE CONGLOMERATE

Booster Gold ended up quitting the Justice League because he was sick of being treated like a joke. He ended up becoming the leader of a new corporate-sponsored superhero team known as the Conglomerate. Besides Booster, Gypsy and the mysterious Praxis, all of the other members of the team (Echo, Vapor, Echo and Maxi-Man) seemed to gain their powers from the Gene Bomb explosion...

DEADLINE

Deadline, the most notable villain from the pages of Roger Stern and Tom Lyle's Starman and, heck, perhaps the most notable character period from that series, got his powers (which he used to make himself an awesome assassin) from the Gene Bomb explosion...

JOHN HENRY MARTIN

One of the characters that the bounty hunter/superhero Manhunter had to hunt down was John Henry Martin, a Death Row inmate who gained superpowers when the Gene Bomb went off while he was in prison...

Manhunter writers John Ostrander and Kim Yale later brought Martin over to the pages of their other series, Suicide Squad.

JOSIAH POWER

Josiah Power, the head of the superhero-for-hire company known as the Power Company, gained his powers from the Gene Bomb explosion...

THE BLASTERS

The Blasters sort of kind of gained their powers from a similar experiment, but not literally the Gene Bomb. I figured I'd count them here, anyways, since they are so closely related. They were the results of the aliens trying to force the metagene to kick in in humans, so they got a random sampling of humans and subjected them to assault by lasers and landmines until a few of them had powers that kicked in...

The results of these experiments helped CREATE the Gene Bomb, which is why I figured I'd count them here.

MAYFLY

The short-lived assassin, Mayfly, who was hired to kill Wonder Woman, gained her powers from the Gene Bomb explosion...

I'm sure I missed others, so feel free to write in to brianc@cbr.com to mention more examples and I'll probably edit them in later!

If you have other suggestions for future installments of Knowledge Waits, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!