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| Douglas Birely was a geneticist studying the mutagenic properties of radiation at a private research company in California. Reading of the growing number of human beings who had gained superhuman abilities through exposure to radiation, Birely asked his employer for permission to subject himself to the radiation they were using in their tests on animals. Although he was refused, Birely staged a laboratory accident during which he was exposed to the radiation. He did not acquire any superhuman powers, but instead contracted skin cancer. An official investigation of the incident revealed Birely's sabotage and he was fired from the company. |
| Jobless, Birely learned of a highly radioactive meteor, which had recently fallen near the Aleutian Islands and used his savings to character a boat to the site. Unearthing the huge meteorite, which he named the Lifestone, Birely acquired funds from some as yet unrevealed source in Japan and set up a laboratory in the Aleutian Islands. He then perfected a process by which to artificially mutate animals into huge, monstrous organisms. His first successful creation was Batragon, mutated from a bat. |
| Birely soon fashioned himself a bodysuit that inhibited the effects of the skin cancer eating away at his body, and adopted the identity of Doctor Demonicus. |
