Polite Dissent

I have been conned into giving volunteered to give a talk at the hospital health fair tomorrow. It’s only a 30-minute talk, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. I’ll be talking about summer-related medical conditions, including sunburns, poison ivy and bug bites. I have lots of nice pictures of spiders and mosquitoes to show (heh, heh).

I hate long boring medical talks because presenters tend to talk slowly and monotonally and drag everything down to a horrifying end; I’m usually asleep halfway through (once they dim those lights, I’m in trouble!) I like to keep my talks light, so I usually throw in some good pictures of classic comic book covers. I teach a little bit about the history of comics in addition to whatever medical topic I’m discussing. (Given the probable age of the audience tomorrow, I think I’ll stick to the Golden Age. Who knows, maybe someone will have a copy of Action Comics #1 in their basement that they don’t want…)

I gave a long talk to a national pharmacists convention last year, peppering my PowerPoint slides with both Golden Age and Silver Age art. When I was done, I asked for questions. I got asked about 4 question in regards to the topic (Deployment Medicine) and at least 15 comic book questions. There are more individuals interested in comic books out there than most people realize, they just need a little push to know there are others like them.

UPDATE (21 Aug, noon): Well that was a bust. The whole health fair was sparsely attended, maybe forty or fifty people. My talk, which they held in the basement, attracted 3 people. Yep, three. Not enough to form a hockey team. That averages out to about 2 hours of prep per person. Frustrating to be surem, but not a total loss as it’s a good speech, and one I’ll be able to reuse later.