The Toxic Avenger:
The Novel
by Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke

Chapter One: The Town

This is the story of a town.[1]

Tromaville, New Jersey lies just across the Hudson River from New York City. No working class rock stars ever came from Tromaville. Neither did any movie stars, politicians (either corrupt or honest), astronauts (either corrupt, honest or immolated), or any celebrities of any kind. Some of the folks who live in Tromaville commute into the city every day for work, but none of them is an executive, banker, or anyone of any import or consequence whatsoever. Zack Raymer, who lives above the pet store on Reed and 50th, rides the train to Wall Street every day but he scrubs toilets at the New York Stock Exchange. Part of him hopes that someday he'll get promoted to the team that cleans the world-famous bullpen. A very small part. Most of him hopes that he gets home in time to stroke one out to Real Sex 17 on the HBO he steals.

Tromaville was named after the Troma Indians, whose land this once was. The original European settlers were a peaceful (in other words, cowardly) people and had no desire to fight the Indian[2]. for their land. Instead, they vowed to live in peace with the Troma and work together to forge a new, perfect society.

It worked well for about five years. The settlers and the Troma exchanged ideas almost as frequently as they exchanged fluids. The Troma men taught the white men[3] how to hunt and fish with handmade tools and weapons. The whites taught the Troma how to say, "Fuck that," and use guns. The Troma braves schooled the whites in the ancient tribal tradition of casino gambling, while the whites taught the Troma how to drink alcohol and sit around for most of the day doing nothing. Meanwhile, the Troma squaws demonstrated how they were able to get along without the men while they were off providing for the tribe. The white women paid careful attention to these lessons and soon realized they had little to no use for their men.

As with any idyllic society, this one couldn't last for long. After a few years, the Indians fell victim to a surprisingly wide array of new and exotic venereal diseases brought over from Europe. The settlers mourned, buried their new friends, and in tribute, named the town after the tribe who'd taught them so much. Granted, the tribute would have meant more if they'd been paying attention to a single fucking word the Indians said. Without the Troma to teach them, the Europeans fell back to their old ways almost immediately. Their inept hunting methods (which consisted mainly of wandering into the forest and shooting at anything that moved, be it a bird, a deer, a branch, or a fellow Tromavillian) resulted in most of the big game abandoning the area. Eventually they began to go into the city for food but for a few decades, they lived on squirrels, fish that had been half-destroyed by buckshot, and the occasional foray into light cannibalism [4].

Today, the descendants of those genital-wart-infested, ass-munching pioneers have overcome most, if not all of the obstacles their forefathers and mothers had endured. Things weren't great but the town limped along and the citizens rarely had to eat each other anymore [5]. The town enjoyed a brief economic high point during World War II. The country was encouraged to collect materials that could be used to make much needed equipment for the boys overseas. These materials then had to go somewhere and a lucky few towns were appointed to take care of these conversions. One got metal, another got paper. Tromaville was stuck with rubber. And while the economy flourished, the town was covered by the stench of burning rubber throughout the 1940's and into the 50's.

In their defense, the town's leaders, headed by Mayor Eli James Fuller, made some attempt to capitalize on this unforeseen boon. They cluttered the town with brightly-colored flag-waving billboards riding the crest of boosterism, sporting slogans like "Bouncing Back From The Axis!" and the unsuccessful anagram "TROMAVILLE - Turning Rubber intO Munitions And Vehicles In Light (of the effort to) Liberate Europe". Unfortunately, these pro-Tromaville slogans were overshadowed by those created by naysayers. Things like, "Visit for a Day, Stink for a Lifetime" and the blunt but effective, "Tromaville - It Smells Like Burning, Toxic Shit!"

The result of this half-assed war of the words was a mass exodus of the population out of Tromaville. No one particularly liked being associated with a town that was a punchline to a nation-wide "Who farted" joke. Tromaville's coffers were full of foul smelling rubber money that could have and should have been used on improvements to the schools, roads, and the rubber plant that caused all this in the first place. But when longtime residents abandoned the town, Mayor Fuller shrugged his shoulders and decided these ungrateful motherfuckers didn't deserve the money anyway. Thus, corruption slouched its lazy, apathetic way into Tromaville's local government.

Fuller died in 1958 and was succeeded by a series of handpicked status-quo maintainers, each one more dishonest and unethical than the last. Sure, Tromaville continued to have apparently democratic elections but the candidates in those elections were individually selected by a very powerful few, representatives from Tromaville's three elites: corporate, bureaucratic and labor. The elites continued to live the high life and ignore the problems of the town, never realizing that the war had been over for sometime and their one big industry had long ago teetered over the brink of bankruptcy. To the surprise of nobody except the city council, in the mid-1960's all that rubber cash turned into a series of rubber checks. Tromaville needed another industry; preferably one led by billionaires as corrupt and immoral as they were themselves.

A committee swung into action, leading a nationwide search to attract a new major player to re-enrich everybody who deserved to be rich. They did not lack for corrupt and sleazy candidates. However, the two favorites of the committee proved unfeasible. The tobacco industry was pretty well locked up in parts of the country where… you know, tobacco could be grown. A brief flirtation with the entertainment industry ended in disaster after Tromaville Alderman Bob Sandowski was caught with his sweet Jersey lips wrapped around the package of Hollywood up-and-comer (so to speak) Anthony Perkins. The whole affair was hushed up to everyone's satisfaction, the only exception being Tromaville Times editor Sam Huggins, who was forced to kill a front-page story with the headline "Sandowski Masters Bates".

Having struck out twice, the manic-depressives on the city council began to despair. They hadn't counted on the agricultural technicalities of the tobacco industry or the hypocritical morals of the entertainment industry. Maybe, they thought, they were out of their league. Well, not them personally, of course. They considered themselves to be renaissance men who could accomplish pretty much anything if they bothered to put their minds to it. But the sad sacks and dipshits who lived in Tromaville had proven themselves to be really good at just one thing: melting shit down into slag. They needed an industry that could put that skill to use. Soon after the Hollywood debacle, they found one. Nuclear power.

It didn't take much imagination, money or skill to convert the old rubber factory into a fully functioning nuclear reactor. Well…a poorly shielded, cheapjack reactor, one that required several thousand more dollars in hush money to the appropriate government officials, but a nuclear reactor nonetheless. The idea was that Tromaville would supply a big chunk of energy to the citizens of New York, not to mention taking care of most of Jersey. It was a fine idea and it worked for a couple years. Until three little words scared off the New York contingent: Three Mile Island.

Three Mile Island terrified most of America. All it did in Tromaville was piss people off. Just because one lousy reactor had some troubles (a reactor well known to be operated by drunks, junkies, and goat fetishists, the Tromavillians would often add), why should the entire industry be punished? But the damage had been done. New York City broke their contract with Tromaville and millions of dollars evaporated in a puff of green radioactive smoke overnight.

Undeterred, new mayor Howard Schiffman and plant CEO C. Bradley Drysdale scrambled to come up with a new source of income. Surprisingly, Drysdale was not an idiot and had actually picked up a few things about how nuclear power works in the few years since he'd taken over the operations of the plant. In conversations with other plant managers from around the country, a common concern had cropped up again and again. Namely, what to do with the toxic byproduct of all this fabulous energy. Now, Drysdale hadn't exactly realized this was a problem until now. The converted factory had come with a lot of underground storage space and there was plenty more where that came from in Tromaville. All you had to do was vat the goop up and lock it away. No big deal. If they started seeing humongous super-rats roaming around the plant and biting the heads off of babies, then they'd figure out another option but until that day came, everything was swell. Drysdale couldn't really understand why the other CEO's were nervously wringing their hands and sucking the blood that was flowing freely around their badly chewed fingernails.

Drysdale and Schiffman took this new information and in about forty-five minutes had formulated a plan [6]. Tromaville would accept the toxic waste from every other plant in the USA…for a steeply nominal fee, of course. And unlike other radioactive dumping grounds, there'd be nothing clandestine or secretive about it. Schiffman immediately ordered a new sign on the outskirts of town: "Welcome to Tromaville, The Toxic Waste Capital of the World!" For the third time in the town's history, the money poured in and also for the third time, none of it went anywhere except into the pockets of the labor, bureaucratic and corporate elites.

Of course, you can't turn a whole town into America's toxic shit hole without a few repercussions and yes, there were incidents. There were some mutations at the local high school in the mid-80's [7] but as far as Schiffman and Drysdale were concerned, no humongous super-rats = no problem.

So as Tromaville limped into the 21st century, things pretty much stood in exactly the same place they had fifty years earlier. The fat cats were getting fatter while the regular folks got screwed on a regular basis. Like most American towns, the status quo had been in place for so long that most people had forgotten how to hope for anything better. Like most American towns, crime ran rampant and unchecked [8] because the police had better things to do…like hauling barrels of toxic waste to and fro and accepting kickbacks from the people who were committing the real crimes against humanity. Like most American towns, Tromaville needed a hero.

Unlike most American towns, they actually got one.

His name was Melvin.