Green Arrow and Black Canary #3, #4, and #5: A Medical Review

March 12th, 2008

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

Spoiler Alert!

Green Arrow and Black Canary #3, 4, and 5
Judd Winick, writer
Cliff Chiang (issues #3 and 4), André Coelho (issue #5), pencilers

Connor shotEscaping from the island of Themyscira, Connor Hawke (Green Arrow II) is shot through the heart1.

Panic ensues. Oliver Queen (Green Arrow I) tries direct pressure to stop the bleeding, while Mia grabs the first-aid kit.

Mia: It’s a full surgical kit including plasma2 and some high tech field dressings.

Oliver is able to contact Superman who swoops in and flies Connor off to the hospital where he is rushed into surgery. Oliver wants to enter the operating room, but Dinah (Black Canary) stops him, pointing out that he’s not sterile. Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) goes in instead3
He returns hours later after the surgery with bad news:

Hal: It wasn’t an ordinary bullet…it was laced with a toxin. Like a corrosive. It flooded his tissues just a few seconds after it entered his bloodstream4. It was in his brain Ollie4…he’s in a coma; he’s brain dead.5

Oliver enters the OR and cries over his son.

Notes:
1. It looks to me like a through-and-through shot — that’s a pretty good exit wound.
2. What is comic writer’s fascination with plasma? Plasma is not used for general fluid resuscitation, it is only used in rare and specific circumstances (a clotting problem, for instance). If you absolutely have to keep a blood product around for emergencies, store Type O- packed red blood cells. Blood products have a short shelf life and require refrigeration, so you would probably be better off just storing some bags of IV fluid instead.
3. I guess Hal’s ring must make him sterile (snicker).
4. I was thinking it was unbelievable that a bullet that left such a spectacular exit wound would have enough time to “flood his tissues” with toxin in the millisecond it was inside the body, but I queried my friend Karl — who knows much more about ballistics than I do — and he was able to suggest a couple of scenarios that could account for both an exit wound and a retained portion of the projectile. Unlikely, he’ll admit, but certainly possible — so I’ll give Winick a pass on this (for now).
5. There’s a special membrane known as the Blood Brain Barrier that needs to be considered. As the name suggests, the barrier separates the tissues of the brain from their blood supply and protects the brain from chemicals and infections by only allowing select molecules to pass through. The mysterious toxin would not only have to specific enough to target the brain, but also able to pass through the blood brain barrier. Again, not impossible (especially in comics books), but still unlikely.
6. Hal is very wrong about Connor being brain dead. First, being in a coma and being brain dead are two different things. Brain death, by definition, is irreversible — a coma is not. Additionally, at the end of this issue and in the next issue we can see that Connor is clearly breathing on his own — people who are brain dead have no spontaneous respiration.

Finally, take a look at this scene from Green Arrow and Black Canary #5:

scene from Green Arrow-Black Canary #5
Why is the blood pressure cuff giving an EKG reading — and a bad one at that?

Tags:

12 Responses to “ Green Arrow and Black Canary #3, #4, and #5: A Medical Review ”

  1. Sable Hope
    March 13th, 2008 at 1:47 am

    Do OR staff normally let people-off-the-street [or Costumed Maniacs]in either before or after?? That seems a bit strange.

  2. Scott
    March 13th, 2008 at 8:09 am
    Official Comment

    Generally no, nor is the OR that easy to walk into layout-wise, but I figure he’s an armed costumed vigilante, so nobody probably wants to challenge him on it.

  3. EMT Student
    March 13th, 2008 at 8:43 am

    could the bullet possibly have passed through some CSF? Given the angle it almost looks like it could have hit or nicked the spine. And if so, would that get it into the brain?

  4. Keith
    March 13th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    There’s really no reason for any Marvel character to be worried, since they’re never allowed to die permanently.

  5. Skizelo
    March 13th, 2008 at 9:26 am

    It’s a medical technique in ERs all across the Marvel New York ER to kill their patients, to speed recovery.

  6. Keith
    March 13th, 2008 at 10:05 am

    “50 cc of Ret-conex, stat!”

  7. Andrew
    March 13th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    I’m pretty sure there are bunch of bacteria that produce exotoxins that can cross the BBB. There are a lot of studies out there trying to conjugate therapeutics to a component of tetanus toxin to target it to the CNS.

  8. Dr Archeville
    March 14th, 2008 at 8:47 am

    Keith, this are DC characters, not Marvel. Though death expectancies are similarly short.

    With “high tech field dressings” in that line, maybe by “plasma” they don’t mean the plasma we’re familiar with, but some sort of… “universal body fluid replacement solution (UBFRS)”?

  9. cardoso
    March 14th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    You know, I don’t buy the whole “blood-brain barrier”. It makes good drama (as in House) but I’ve got a plain, common and mundane shot of vodka in my hand telling me that barrier thing is overrated ;)

  10. Carl
    March 14th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    Why is Connor, after major chest surgery, in bed wearing a shirt?

  11. LurkerWithout
    March 15th, 2008 at 3:28 am

    His dad was worried he’d get chilled in just bandages?

  12. KDBryan
    March 15th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Yes, he’s shot through the heart, but who’s to blame? Who, in point of fact, has given love a bad name?

    This reminds me of the Kevin Smith issues of Green Arrow where Ollie has donated a ton of blood to save his son. Not great for his body but not a huge problem, medically speaking, I imagine? But Ollie then has to stand up and hold an arrow taut in the mouth of a would-be killer for the duration of his son’s life or death surgery. I think you may have already reviewed the plausibility of the scenario but I can’t recall.

Leave a Reply

« Grand Rounds Jonah Hex, Again — This Time the Eyes »