Polite Dissent

Outsiders #26 “Tick Tock, part one”
Peter J. Tomasi, writer
Will Conrad, penciller

Fuse, a villainous telepath has implanted several kidnapped individuals with miniature atom bombs (though 10 kilograms of uranium [i.e. 22 pounds] is a lot of uranium to hide in someone’s body…that’s a full term pregnancy!) The original Outsiders confronted Fuse and he fell into a coma during the fight. Most of the human bombs were rounded up, but a few escaped. Now several years later, Fuse is waking up from his coma and Black Lightning is reuniting the original team (plus Arsenal) to track down these human bombs. Somebody else is a few steps ahead of the Outsiders and is killing these people one by one.

In the opening scene of the comic, one of these human bombs has decided to cool himself down by submerging in a bath of ice water. He has installed a length of small hose to breathe through. Meanwhile, this mysterious person has snuck in and shot him — but they really shouldn’t have bothered. He would have been dead of asphyxiation within ten minutes. He’s using a long narrow tube to breathe through and there’s no way he’d be able to get enough fresh air to survive. He’d re-breathe his own carbon dioxide, pass out and drown. Even if he exhaled the carbon dioxide into the water, he still wouldn’t be able to draw enough oxygen in through the hose to stay conscious for long.

In a later scene, Black Lightning, Metamorpho and Arsenal are visiting the medical unit where the still comatose Fuse is being held.

Black Lightning: Fuse hasn’t had any brain activity for fove years. A few weeks ago they noticed a change in alpha waves.

There are four main types of brain waves: alpha waves, beta waves, delta waves and theta waves. They are thought to represent different types of brain activity (for example, alpha waves are thought to represent a state of relaxation). Sadly, a lot of New Age gobbledygook has been attached to these brain waves, so you have to sort through a lot of nonsense to get to the real science. People in comas can show different types of brain waves depending on how the brain was injured and what part of the brain was injured. Delta waves seem to be the most common in comas but, like Black Lightning says, alpha waves have also been noted in comatose patients.

My problem with the quote from Black Lightning is his first statement about the patient showing no brain activity. If Fuse had no brain activity then he was dead, not in a coma. That’s a big difference. People in comas have demonstrable brain activity on EEGs.

Metamorpho: Weird to see his eyes open even though he’s in a coma.

While most comatose people have their eyes closed, some have their eyes open. This is often a sign of the patient starting to come out of the coma, which fits the storyline here.