Polite Dissent

Ultimate Fantastic Four #59
Joe Pokaski, writer
Tyler Kirkham, penciler

When I read the solicitation for this issue of the Ultimate Fantastic Four, I had high hopes. A Fantastic Voyage style adventure into Sue Storm’s brain? Sounds great! Unfortunately, the book didn’t live up to my expectations. Now don’t get me wrong: it’s not a bad comic — unlike many recent comics it actually advances the plot and has good characterization — but all the same it’s a frustrating comic because it could have been so much now. Plus there’s a handful of questionable medicine.

Sue Storm has been unconscious since using her powers to save New York City from a tsunami wave in Ultimatum #1. Not only did this give her a psychic nosebleed, but it also knocked her into a coma. Not a normal coma, but one that can only be corrected by zapping a specific area of the hindbrain known as the “Omega Synapse” (cue dramatic music) with a laser. Of course, this must done from inside her body. Since Reed Richards is nowhere to be found, Ben Grimm recruits disgraced scientist Dr. Arthur Molekevic (aka the Mole Man) to help him. Together they jerry-rig a space shuttle with a laser and a Pym-particle-based shrinking device, then hop in and begin their voyage.

Grimm and Molekevic start by flying in the mouth and down the trachea, because Molekevic assures Grimm that it is way it’s always done. It’s a little hard to tell it’s the trachea by the art, because it lacks the ring-structure normally seen in the trachea . Frankly, it looks more like the esophagus. Luckily, sensing my confusion, the artist has drawn lots of air lines, so we know it’s the trachea (or else Sue’s inhaling a lot of tiny worms). Plus there’s a caption.

Next, another caption identifies the shuttle as being in the carotid artery, but the dialogue indicates they’re heading toward the heart. If both are true, then that’s a very bass-ackwards way to get to the heart if the ultimate destination is the brain. Another comment a few pages later indicates that they are just then heading out for the carotid, so I think it’s safe to say the caption is wrong (it should probably read pulmonary vein).

Since the shuttle’s in Sue’s circulatory system now, at some point they must have crossed from her airways into her blood vessels, but how or where is never explained (or even mentioned). This is probably just the doctor/sci-fi geek in me talking, but I would have really liked to know how they did it. Personally, I’m assuming they crossed over in the lungs, because that’s the most logical location.

Molekevic: The brain is the destination, but we have to go through the heart to get there. It’s Grand Central Station. The good news is we can get pretty much anywhere from here. The bad is that the tissue us extremely sensitive and will reject anything foreign or artifical in — well, a heartbeat.

That must be shocking news for the thousands of people with artificial heart valves, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people with pacemakers.

While in the heart, the shuttle is attacked by hundreds of tiny insectoid robots. The Thing heads outside to fight them off.

General Ross: What’s happening Dr. Storm?
Dr. Storm: She’s gone into cardiac arrest.
Ross: And where are Grimm and Molekevic?
Storm: From the look of it, they’re putting the attack in heart attack.

That is either a confused scientist or a very bad joke. Cardiac arrest and heart attack do not mean the same thing. A cardiac arrest indicates that the heart has stopped (i.e. “arrested”). It can be caused by a heart attack, but it can also be caused by other things such as an arrhythmia (bad heart rhythm), direct trauma, or blood loss. On the other hand, a heart attack occurs when one of the tiny coronary arteries (the arteries which supply blood to the heart muscle itself) is blocked. Some of the heart muscle dies, causing a heart attack (myocardial infarction in medical terminology). Large heart attacks can be immediately fatal, but smaller ones can occur undetected.

The shuttle heads out of the heart and towards the carotid arteries and the medulla oblongata. Somewhere along the way they cross into the cerebrospinal fluid (the liquid surrounding the brain) — and once again I’d like to know how; the blood-brain barrier is tough to pass. The carotid is also not a very good route to get to the hindbrain, but maybe the goal was just to get into the cerebrospinal fluid and then float down to the medulla. The Omega Synapse (cue music!) is located and fried with the laser. Unfortunately, the robot insects have followed them and the battle continues. During the fight, the shrinking machine is injured and Grimm and Molekevic have to quickly leave Sue’s body before they return to normal size within her.

Sue survives, as do Ben Grimm and Arthur Molekevic. For better or worse, Dr. Storm and General Ross also survive.