Michael Bishop 
Count Geiger’s Blues [EPUB ebook] 

Xavier Thaxton is the arts editor of a great metropolitan newspaper, and is a man whose aesthetic values are of only the highest calibre. But after an accidental dip in a radioactive swimming hole, Xavier finds his life changing as he is forced, step by step, despite all he can do, to assume the mantle and manner of a comic book superhero, and to be a living icon of the pop culture he has spent his life detesting.