Ultimate Fantastic Four #23: A Medical Review
Ultimate Fantastic Four #23 Crossover, part 3 of 3
Mark Millar, writer
Greg Land, penciler
A quick look at Ultimate Fantastic Four #23 and Sue Storm’s grasp of brain anatomy (or lack thereof)…
Case Study One: The zombie Reed Richards from an alternate dimension has crossed into the Ultimate universe and attacks Ben Grimm. Sue Storm steps in and lays a whammy on Reed.
“[I] just collapsed his left synapse,” she explains. “Brain-damaged him…I just popped an entire chunk of his brain.”*
A synapse is the term for the connection between two adjacent nerve cells. It is across the synapse that information is passed from one nerve to another. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of synapses in the brain, not just a “left” and “right” one. Frying a single synapse would have no affect on someone’s brain, even a zombie brain.
Case Study Two: Sue has arrived with Johnny and Ben on the zombie world to rescue Reed. Faced with hundreds of zombified opponents, she strikes them all blind by turning their optic nerves invisible.
The optic nerve is not involved in the process of turning light into information — that’s the job of the retina. The optic nerve is simply a conduit; its job is to pass information from the retina to the vision centers in the brain. Being invisible would have absolutely no affect on the function of the optic nerve. It would be like turning a lamp cord invisible, the lamp would still work whether or not you could see the cord.
Thanks to Aaron for bringing this issue to my attention
*And I realize I was never an English major, but I don’t think “brain-damaged” is supposed to be hyphenated when used as a verb.
September 27th, 2005 at 10:04 am
“I don’t think “brain-damaged” is supposed to be hyphenated when used as a verb.”
I don’t think “brain-damaged” is supposed to be used as a verb at all… but if it is, I think it has to be hyphenated, because it’s being used as a single unit. “I brain damaged him” just doesn’t work, even to the small extent that “I brain-damaged him” does.
September 28th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
Paul’s right, “brain-damaged” is not supposed to be used as a verb at all. “Brain-damaged” is an adjective phrase. “I gave him brain damage” is the only correct way to say it.
September 28th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
“There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of synapses in the brain …”
Um, really? Doctor, there are billions of NEURONS in the brain, each of which represents at least one synapse. Think about it.
September 28th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Official Comment
OK, OK, I give. Here’s a statistic I just found:
“It is estimated that the human brain contains 100 billion (1011) interneurons averaging 1000 synapses on each; that is, some 1014 connections.”
So that’s 100,000,000,000,000 synapses (one hundred trillion)
September 29th, 2005 at 9:35 am
One down, 99,999,999,999,999 to go.
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:27 am
Maybe this is all just a matter of poor terminology usage on Sue’s part? She might have meant to say that she collapsed the left HEMISPHERE of his brain, for example. I don’t know if her force field can possibly be used in that way, but that’s another question…
Besides, you’re talking about a girl who once said to her boyfriend, “You want I should call the TV news now, or should I practice a few tricks with it first?”
Now, I don’t claim to be a master of the written word or even the English language here, but I think that I can safely say that, whatever qualifies Susan Storm as a child genius, it most definitely isn’t her grammar skills.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:42 am
More likely, the writer should have had her say, “I just cracked his cerebral cortex”. Primary motor functions, after all.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:29 am
Perhaps she is referring to the extent of decay already afflicting his zombie brain, and meant to say, “collapsed his remaining synapse”.
Leave a Reply
Contact Me
About
Subscribe:
The Best Of...
Special Topics
Archives
Categories
Twitter
Comic Blogs
Medical/Science Blogs
Currently Reading
Arbitrarily Interesting Medical Condition
Syndrome
The Net:
Contents may have settled during shipping. Past results are no guarantee of future performance. No animals were harmed during the production of this product. Void where prohibited by law. All rights reserved. Not valid with other offers or specials. Professional driver on a closed track. Your financial institution may impose other fees. All models are over 18 years of age. Employees must wash hands before returning to work. Results not typical. Many suitcases look alike. 18% gratuity added to tables of six or more.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
© 2004-2010 Polite Dissent. Powered by WordPress