Polite Dissent

I felt this was the weakest scene in the whole comic. First, it doesn’t sound like Reed Richards — it sounds more like bad Braniac-5 fanfic*. Second, that whole “adrenal glands” comment just struck me as awkward. It’s not necessarily wrong, just graceless.

The adrenal glands are located just above the kidneys. Among the many hormones they produce is epinephrine (better known as adrenaline), the chemical that activates the fight-or-flight response. Adrenalin is produced at the direction of the brain when the body experiences certain kinds of stress. So I guess Reed is saying the seeing Sue stresses him to such an extent that it activates his fight-or-flight response and makes it hard to communicate romantically. That’s entirely likely — from personal experience I can tell you that seeing the person involved in a bad break-up can cause those feelings.

But why mention the adrenals at all? Why not blame the locus ceruleus or the other areas of the brain responsible for activating the adrenal glands in the first place? Why not just say “it hurts to see her” and leave it at that. And while the fight-or-flight response might cause some problems, I think the bigger problem is the anger and betrayal they feel with each other and you can’t blame the adrenal glands for that. The way it’s written, it makes Reed sounds like someone trying to seem smarter than they actually are by using big words that are close, but not quite right. And that’s not Reed — he may use big words, but he uses them correctly (usually).

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*“I…will…always…love…you…Quer-” she gasped. Taking a final ragged breath of the thin air, she clutched at my arm and then was still.

“You shouldn’t have, Mary Sue,” I said feebly to her lifeless body, the rising wind tousling her long blond hair. “That death beam was meant for me.” I realized that my computer-like brain was unable to deal with the rush of emotions I felt. I cursed my unfeeling ancestors of the planet Colu and their emotionless breeding program. Gently I closed her eyes, which before had always shown the most brilliant azure blue but now had slowly faded to dull gray in the light of the setting suns. I clung to her body until it became cold and then I buried it on that barren world.

I returned to my lab and cried for a full ninety-three minutes.

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Or maybe Reed has just been listening to too much “Death Cab for Cutie” and now he’s going to run home and blog about it. Reread his captions above, but this time imagine them on some overly dramatic MySpace blog or LiveJournal.

Tags: comics medicine civil war reed richards adrenal gland braniac-5