I Have A Cunning Plan
Lex Luthor’s brilliant plant is to use his special maser ray to erase Batman’s mind and then transfer Superman’s mind into Batman’s mindless body. Now that Superman’s mind is no longer housed in an invulnerable Kryptonian body, Lex will physically pummel him until he dies.
I hope it comes as no surprise when I reveal [Spoiler Warning!] that through a cunning plan of their own, Superman and Batman are able to avoid the fiendish trap and defeat Luthor. In hindsight, they really didn’t have to put as much effort into it as they did — Luthor’s plan was flawed at a very basic level.
Luthor seems to believe that light (and similar forms of electromagnetic radiation) are transmitted through the pupil, across the eye, and then down the optic nerve into the brain itself. This is a very common misconception. In reality, the light never reaches the brain because it never passes beyond the eye.
Quick Summary of how the Eye Works:
Light enters the eye through the pupil and falls upon the retina, a special layer of cells at the very back of the eye. The cells of the retina “translate” the light into nerve impulses, and these impulses are what travel down the optic nerve to the visual centers of the brain.
Take home message: Light stays in the eyes; nerves go to the brain
Sorry Lex, your plan is defeated by basic anatomy and physiology. Better luck next time.
This scene is from Batman #293, part of the “Where Were You on the Night Batman was Killed?” storyline reprinted in the book The Strange Deaths of Batman
. You really need to pick up this book, if nothing else for the color reprint of The Brave and the Bold #115, the infamous story where the Atom literally jumps into the head of a brain-dead Batman and steers him around, solving crimes and taking out bad guys.
May 15th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Another flaw in Luthor’s plan was his belief that he could take Superman-in-Batman’s-body in a fight.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:12 am
In order to shine the maser through someone’s pupils, that person would have to look directly at the satellite.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Official Comment
Dean,
I agree, but Luthor figured that the disorientation Superman experienced from being in Batman’s body — and not realizing he was in Batman’s body — would allow Lex the upper hand. Well, that and the Power-punching glove he was using.
Carl,
Luthor actually has that figured into his plan, though in a very contrived way.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Anyone else picture Luthor making air quotes when he says MASER?
May 15th, 2009 at 10:26 am
FlowerPower… I am now. And I am literally laughing out loud.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Yes, and you could mount the “MASER” on sharks, or failing that, ill-tempered sea bass.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Who is DVR, the initals of whom are in the footnote? A collaborator with Bob Haney?
And wouldn’t an optical maser have made more sense?
May 15th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Official Comment
DVR would be David Vernen Reed, who wrote this issue under the almost-pseudonym “David Vern.”
May 15th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
An “optical maser” would be a laser.
MASER=”Microwaves Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”
LASER=”Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
This plan is nowhere like as cunning as a fox what used to be Professor of Cunning at Oxford University but has moved on and is now working for the U.N. at the High Commission of International Cunning Planning.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I allow that Luthor’s plan seems pretty unlikely to succeed. But I read a Supergirl story in one of those Showcase collections recently in which he was able to escape from prison by turning himself invisible, and he accomplished that with … a transistor radio and some vitamin c. I hesitate to put anything past him after reading that.
May 16th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Scott – Thanks, I think. You mean it wrote it under a nom-de-plume, but still used his initials?!? 8-|
Carl – and that’s why I suggested it. If “David Vern” wanted technobabble, optical maser sounds a little more impressive.
FUN FACT: Hey, kids, a laser is monochromatic, coherent source of light. But shine a red laser pointer at glow in the dark things, and nothing happens! Why?
Ron – I remember an issue of “Fantastic Four” where Johnny Storm is moaning that Doctor Doom could make a bomb with a radio and two aspirin. To which Reed Richards responds, nonsense — he’d need at LEAST a whole bottle to make a bomb of any credible threat.
That one panel alone by John Bryne balances his later decision to turn the Invisible Girl into Malice.
FUN FACT ANSWER – red photons can’t stimulate the fluoresence, no matter how long you shine the laser pointer.
May 17th, 2009 at 8:39 am
So, for a comic-book scientific genius …
radio + aspirin = bomb
radio + vitamin c = invisibility
Presumably, there is a whole host of other effects from combining pharmeceuticals with a radio if the combiner is enough of a brain. I think there should actually be a character devoted to exploring just these possibilities.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Sorry to be a anatomical nitpicker, but technically, the retina should be considered a part of the brain (well, CNS… tomAEto/tomAto).
The optic nerve is developmentally derived from the diencephalon. This means that it is sheathed in the meninges and that the myelin covering is composed of oligodendritic cells, and not the Schwann cells which cover peripheral nervs.
And since the human retina is designed by a blind watchmaker, it’s turned inside-out and the nerves are actually blocking the photosensitive rods and cones (unlike the much more intelligently designed squid retina which is right-side out).
All in all this means that any light entering the eye strikes the nerve fibres of the retina, which is a part of the brain and hey presto! The brain has been reached through the pupils of the eyes!
May 18th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Huh? If he could kill Batman like that, why couldn’t he kill Superman like that?
…or am I missing something?
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