Hulk #15 and #16: A Medical Review

December 15th, 2009

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

scene from Hulk #16Hulk #15, #16
Jeph Loeb, writer
Ian Churchill, penciler

At the end of Hulk #16, The (Red) She-Hulk stabs the (Red) Hulk in the neck with a sai. As the next issue starts, Samson gloats over the Hulk’s injury:

Samson: She severed your carotid artery. The more you move, the closer the sai will get to cutting into you aortic arch. Apparently, all those years in medical school weren’t for nothing. My father would be so proud.

I wouldn’t go counting on your father’s praise just yet, Samson, considering how little understanding of anatomy you have. It seems that medical school was a waste for you — at least anatomy class.

Let’s take another look at the scene when the She-Hulk stabbed the Red Hulk in the neck. This time, I’ve annotated the panel to make my point. The path of the sai is outlined in green (but bear in mind this is a two dimensional representation and the sai’s path is angled much deeper in the neck than I can show here). I’ll agree that she probably injured the carotid artery, so that part is true. Now, the blue arc is the aortic arch — which as you can see is not even close to the sai. Plus, with the prongs buried into the Hulk’s neck, despite what Samson says, that sai is not going anywhere.

scene from Hulk #16

hulkThen a page later Samson is called “Leonard Samson, PhD”; is he a medical doctor or non-medical doctor? Make up your mind. Remember, psychiatrists and psychologists are two different professions — they may both deal with the mind, but they deal with it in very different ways. (For the record, Samson has always been identified as a psychiatrist: Leonard Samson, MD.)
hulkAdmittedly, a severed carotid is still fatal, at least to most (non-Hulk) people.
hulkSamson’s speech contains some of the most bizzare emphasis I’ve ever seen in a comic. Who would speak like that, with the emphasis on “she” rather than — I don’t know — maybe the “severed” and “carotid.” And “the sai” — who emphasizes an article like that?

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9 Responses to “ Hulk #15 and #16: A Medical Review ”

  1. BPK
    December 15th, 2009 at 3:43 am

    Argh. Psychiatrists already have a bad rap for forgetting all the non-psychiatric stuff we learned in medical school. And the psychologist/psychiatrist conflation — rookie mistake, Loeb.

  2. EL
    December 15th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    The neck’s not connected to the, hip-bone. . .

    Could he mean that THE SAI’s points break off and penetrate further on their own — much like the tip of the dagger in the The Fellowship of the Ring, where Frodo is stabbed in the arm by the leader of the dark riders? The tip of the dagger in that case is supposed to slowly move towards the heart, changing the person into a wraith like the dark riders (from the book, not the movie).

    Nah! It’s more likely he bribed his way through medical school. . .

  3. Manic
    December 15th, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    Ha! It’s like that scene from Girl, Interrupted. Angelina Jolie was holding a pen up to her neck and said “Take one step closer and I’ll jab this pen in my aorta,” to whip Whoopi Goldberg replied “Your aorta is in your chest.”

    So really, this was a medical mistake that could’ve been caught by anyone who happened to watch a bad One Flew Over rip-off.

  4. Nmasrs
    December 16th, 2009 at 5:12 pm

    As far as I know, a sai is not sharp – it’s used to protect your arm from a bo attack, and can be used to hit or punch somebody but as a cutting weapon it sucks.

  5. Sean Duggan
    December 16th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    @NMasrs – They’re not pointy normally either, but for some reason, comic-book characters sharpen theirs.

    FWIW, sai lack a point or edges for good reasons. A) There’s no edge because you get better structural integrity from it just being a cylinder of metal B) There’s no point to it because one of the common positions involves it lying against your forearm and a point means a high chance of making yourself look like a cutter.

  6. Nmasrs
    December 16th, 2009 at 8:51 pm

    Thanks, Sean; I guess I’m less familiar with comic book characters than with martial arts weapons. Not that I’m terribly familiar with those but I do have a pair of sai and it never occurred to me that it would be a good idea to sharpen them :-)

  7. EL
    December 17th, 2009 at 10:55 pm

    I really appreciate the sai (sigh!) discussion. I get so much enlightenment from this website. . .

  8. Michael
    December 18th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    I’m just glad to know the tradition of emphasizing words at random that I remember from my childhood is still going strong.

  9. Eric Michael
    December 28th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    I haven’t read the comic in question, so I’m only guessing here, but maybe Leonard emphasized “she” because the Red Hulk has been shown to be quite the misogynist. Could this be Len’s way of goading him and rubbing his face in getting his butt kicked by weak little girly-girl?

    EM

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