Polite Dissent

I’ve had several people ask me what I think, medically, of the game Batman: Arkham Asylum and I’m happy to oblige. If posting to the blog seem light this week, you can blame the game.

Overall, it’s a great experience. Though I’m a big fan of video games, it takes a lot for a game to really suck me in to its world completely, and Batman does that (the previous game that pulled this off was the first God of War). The setting, character design, and storyline are all appropriately creepy and the voice acting — especially Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill — is excellent. Playing the game, I really feel like Batman — I see a crowd of thugs and think, “I can take them, easy,” just like Batman should.

Admittedly, the game isn’t quite perfect:
Riddler’s voice seems flat and tinny, but I just blame this on him using a jerry-rigged radio transmitter.
The final confrontation with Harley Quinn was a definite anti-climax.
Once Poison Ivy joins the big baddies, the atmosphere becomes more cartoony and loses much of its creepiness.

Even with these (admittedly minor) flaws, I’d consider it the best solo super-hero video game.

Time for another Comic Book Medicine Case Study. There’s a fair amount of discussion after the case study — not about the actual diagnosis — but about what the patient thinks it is.

Read more…

With the 2009 NASCAR season just starting¹, I thought it was about time to finally get around to looking at the NASCAR Heroes Free Comic Day issue² from last year.

The story takes place shortly after the third issue of the comic³, but the scene shifts from the race track to a movie set. It’s the best issue of the series yet, probably because the racetrack is left behind⁴ — but with a slightly different ending, it could have been even better.

The director of the Zoom Speedster movie is in trouble. He has gone through three different lead actors because the set is haunted by a headless ghost — and not just any ghost, but the ghost of a racecar driver. In desperation, the director calls Jimmy Dash and asks him to play the role of Zoom Speedster. Dash agrees and when he asks why the previous stars quit, the director and his staff claim to have no idea.

The first day on the set goes well even though Dash encounters the ghost. His friends are scared, but Dash tells them that he doesn’t believe in ghosts. The next day, the ghost kidnaps the lead actress and in order to rescue her, Dash has to race him. It’s an eye pleasing — if unrealistic race — including vertical loops, flaming rings, alligators, and games of chicken at over 150 miles per hour⁵. In the end, Dash wins and the ghost mysteriously disappears. It’s not a happy ending though, as Dash is fired from the movie for wrecking the set.

The story is set up an awful lot like an episode of Scooby Doo, and there are many of the familiar characters and situations: a confident skeptical hero, cowardly friends, a mysterious ghost, and authority figures who know more than they’re letting on. There’s an important part of Scooby Doo that the writers of this story forgot though: the reveal at the end. That was always the best part of Scooby Doo.

As far as I can tell, this was the last issue of the comic distributed through standard comic retail channels. There have been two more issues released by Starbridge Media Group — and available at their site — but they don’t appear to have had distribution through Diamond⁶. Issue #4 appears to be this same comic with a slightly different cover, and issue #5 purports to start a new story arc⁷.

Previous NASCAR posts: Review of NASCAR Heroes #1 Review of NASCAR Heroes #2 Review of NASCAR Heroes #3 A History of Comics and NASCAR

With the upcoming film, Warner Brothers has been busy preparing an avalanche of Watchmen merchandise. Among the t-shirts, action figures, mugs, video games, mad-libs, thongs, and pogs, these little beauties almost slipped by unnoticed. Which is a shame, because nothing says “I Love You” better than a Watchmen Valentine.

The second good episode of Fringe in a row. Maybe my Doomsday Clock threat is working

The Plot:The episode starts with Mr. Jones, the enigmatic villain who escaped from a German prison several episodes ago through the use of Dr. Bishop’s teleport machine. He was shoved in a decompression chamber the minute he arrived, and now he finally emerges 2 weeks later. Everything should be fine, but he notices a distinct tremor of his hands.

Meanwhile, a newspaper vendor in the city dies in a particularly gruesome way. In a matter of seconds, his skin grows over his eyes, nose, and mouth and he suffocates to death. On first hearing about the case, Bishop suspects ceramides were involved. Agent Dunham, on her part, suspects that Mr. Jones is behind the death and is determined to find him.

One of the junior FBI agents determines that Jones’ late lawyer had access to a warehouse in Texas that, after years of lying dormant, had its power switched back on the same day Jones escaped from prison. Broyles is just about to order a raid on the warehouse when Mr. Jones turns himself in to the FBI at the Boston office. He refuses to speak to anyone but Agent Dunham.

For once making sense, new head honcho Harris refuses to let Dunham talk to Jones, telling her that doing so would be giving in to a terrorist’s demands. Instead he sends Dunham on the raid on the Texas warehouse. The raid turns up evidence that Jones had been there, and when one of the FBI agents (coincidentally, the same one who located the warehouse in the first place) dies of the same weird condition, the team knows Jones is responsible for the strange disease.

Dunham and Peter Bishop track down the manifesto of the ZFT, the group Jones is associated with. It tells of a coming war between two realities with only one surviving. By now, Dr. Bishop has discovered that the strange disease is caused by toxin absorbed through the skin that causes hyperactivity of the “protein responsible for scar tissue.”

Back in Boston, Jones refuses to talk to Harris, but does give him a list of supplies he requires. Dunham returns from Texas and meets with Jones. She hands him the supplies he requested and he promptly uses them to make an anti-surveillance device so no one can overhear their conversation. He admits that he is responsible for the two deaths, but tells her he wants to prevent any more. Before giving her anymore information, he tells her that she must take the key he brought with him and take it to an abandoned amusement part. Once there, she finds what appears to be a box of old children’s games. A note tells her that she must pass the “first test” — mentally turn off all the lights in a box — with her mind alone before Jones will tell her anything else.

Dunham tries the test, fails, and is convinced it is nothing but a game Jones is playing. She confronts him again, and he tells her it is not a game, but reality. He then tells her that she is special because she received treatment with the drug Cortexiphan. It turns out that this is a drug designed by Massive Dynamics — by Dr. Bell himself in fact — which is supposed to “remove limitations” from the mind. During their conversation, Jones collapses, suffering from after effects of teleportation; effects which are hinted at, but never explained. He is rushed to Bishop’s lab where Dr. Bishop manages to resuscitate him. Dunham has Peter Bishop rewire the light board so it looks like she passed the test. Jones relents and tells her the location of a bomb containing the compound that causes the disease. The FBI rushes there to find that the bomb is wired with an array of lights, just like the “test” Dunham was given. The only way to defuse the bomb is turn out all the lights without touching the device. Olivia decides she has to try and manages to mentally turn off all the lights with just seconds to spare.

Afterward, when she goes to talk with Jones, she discovers he has escaped the hospital where he was transferred by punching an enormous hole in the wall. The words “You Pass” are scrawled on the wall. Meanwhile, Walter has been reading the ZFT manifesto and discovers that its typewritten pages exactly match the print produced by his old typewriter.

1. Would a Fat-Free Diet Help?
Ceramides are lipid molecules common in cell membranes. As Walter says, they play a role in cell differentiation. On the other hand, he’s mostly wrong when he also mentions cell growth. Ceramides don’t seem to play a role in overactive cell growth — just the opposite actually — they appear to inhibit cell growth. (And being a lipid – a fatty molecule — it has nothing to do with the scar tissue protein implicated later).

2. Not Quite Far Enough
Performing her emergency tracheotomy, Agent Dunham successfully cut through the skin, but neglected to actually cut into the trachea — the key part of the procedure. She just slid the tube into the loose tissue in front of the trachea — though it ended up being a moot point.

3. Rescue Me
Unexplained bradycardia. An EKG is a good call.
They confused cardiac arrest (the heart stopping) and heart attack (lack of blood flow to the heart causing damage). Nitroglycerin is good for a heart attack, but won’t do any good for a cardiac arrest.
50cc is not enough saline to resuscitate anyone; it’s only about 1 ½ shot glasses of salt water. A normal resuscitation required liters of fluid. Though to be fair, Walter orders the saline and never states why; it is Peter who tells us it is for resuscitation, and he might not know what he’s talking about.

4. Lying or Stupid?
Mr Jones didn’t tell Olivia “where or when” the bomb was going to go off? He may have neglected the where, but he certainly told us the when — 16 hours.

5. Elementary, My Dear Watson
Some interesting choices for the movies and book mentioned in this episode. I’m suspicious they may be clues, or at least hints.
The Land of Laughs. I actually have the book in my library (but not the edition shown). A very good book. Among other themes, it deals with reality versus fantasy. Since they explicitly singled out the book by name, I suspect it’s important. I’ll have to reread it.
Charade. Good movie. Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn. Deals with people who aren’t what they seem. Good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys.
Rear Window, the only Jimmy Stewart/Grace Kelly movie. A classic Hitchcock suspense thriller.

There were hokey aspects (Dunham’s psychic powers, alternate realities) and questionable medicine, but there was enough cleverness in this week’s plot to allow me to overlook them. I particularly liked the manifesto and the twist that the bomb had to be deactivated just like the test she only beat by cheating. I’m moving back the clock another minute, and the Doomsday Clock now stands at 11:55. (Of course, now we have to wait until April for new episodes, and I will have forgotten all the clues and the show will have lost all its building momentum.)

One by one, all the female members of the Legion of Super-Heroes fall ill and collapse. Even Night Girl, who goes to help them, succumbs to the same malady. Mon-El announces that they all have a mysterious “Crimson Virus” and that there is no known cure¹. Worried that the infection may spread, the male legionnaires ship all their female members off to “Quarantine World” — but not before doing their best to cheer them up:

A short time later, a masked woman calling herself Satan Girl shows up and offers to join the Legion. When she is turned down, she announces that she is the one who made all the women sick, and now — out of spite — she’s going to kill them. She heads off to Quarantine World to finish the job. Luckily, Supergirl arrives at that moment, discovers what has been happening, and heads off to stop Satan Girl. She arrives just in time and a vicious battle erupts. Surprisingly, Satan Girl is am equal match for Super Girl and manages to escape, but not before swearing to return:

The sick Legionnaires are moved to another planet³ and then another to hide them from Satan Girl, but she always manages to find them. Supergirl sets traps for her nemesis, but they are always avoided or ineffectual. In the end, Satan Girl manages to defeat Supergirl by burying her under green kryptonite.

Overconfident, she turns on the male Legionnaires but is defeated by the Legion of Super-Pets⁴ — and then the truth is revealed. Satan Girl is really an evil double of Supergirl that split off when Supergirl unknowing collided with a red kryptonite meteor. The evil double knew she only had 48 hours to live unless she could somehow rid herself of the red kryptonite radiation. She was able to project the radiation into the female super-heroes, causing their illness. But now her 48 hours are up and she fades away to be absorbed by the original Supergirl. With Satan Girl gone, the “Crimson Virus” vanishes and all the Legionnaires are instantaneously cured⁵.

Notes:
1. There is never any actual virus in this storyline, so why is Mon-el so adamant that the disease was caused by the Crimson Virus? In fact, it turns out not to be an infectious disease at all.

2. It would have been a better story if she had brought Doom, and then they played video games all night long. But then Jack Thompson would have blamed them for the rising violence among Khund children and it would have all gone downhill from there.

3. One of the planets seems to be inhabited entirely by Madballs.

4. That would be Krypto (the Super-Dog), Streaky (the Super-Cat), Comet (the Super-Horse), and Beppo (the Super-Chimp).

5. Despite being 1000 years in the future, the Legionnaires sure have some dismal medical care. Sure they have fourth dimensional surgery, but when you get down to it, that’s actually pretty backwards. An earlier issue showed that they keep a powerful healing urn stored in a museum — why not actually use it? This is what happens when you have a Coluan who thinks that he’s a doctor.

This episode brings an end to the applicant competition, with satisfying results. The medicine tried to be clever, but succeeded mostly in being nebulous and vague (and fairly confusing).

Jimmy Quidd is a 38 year-old punk rock singer. He is hard-drinking, like drugs and fights, and has a generally poor attitude and outlook on life. He also has a severe bloody cough that causes him to pass out in the alley behind a punk rock club. He is brought to the ER for evaluation where House admits him to his service because he feels Jimmy will make a challenging case for his applicants.

Jimmy has a long list of symptoms including fever, arthralgia (joint pain), hyperinflated lungs, fatigue, anemia, low blood oxygen levels, melena (blood in his stool) and hematuria (blood in his urine). He also shows signs of hard living including a history of multiple traumas, cutting, and a drug screen that’s positive for alcohol, cocaine, opiates, and amphetamines. House suggests drug use, trauma, and “being a loser” as possible explanations for his symptoms. The team suggests endocarditis, hemorrhagic lesions of the lungs and gut, bronchiolitis obliterans (inflammatory obstruction of the bronchioles in the lungs), and bacterial meningitis.

Amber starts out by testing her suggestion of bronchiolitis obliterans. Her plan is to perform a bronchoscopy (look down the lungs with a flexible fiberoptic camera), but Jimmy sneaks a cigarette while on a bathroom break — unfortunately, he’s on oxygen, which leads to a nice little explosion (though fires are much more common since oxygen is more of an accelerant than explosive), giving him smoke inhalation making a bronchoscopy useless. Now Amber wants to perform an open lung biopsy. While prepping him for the biopsy, Foreman realizes that he is wearing all his Nicotine patches at once and overdosing on nicotine. Amber and Kutner notice blood clotting in his fingers, meaning that Jimmy has DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation), but the cause of the DIC is unclear. Amber suggests drug impurities, but Dr. 13 suggests malaria. This intrigues House, and she now takes over the case.

Meanwhile, Jimmy has disappeared. They manage to track him down in Pediatrics, entertaining the children. He passes out and is returned to his room. The malaria tests come back negative, but other tests show that “bad blood fragments” are causing the DIC. Kutner suggests blood exposure during sex as a cause for the fragments, and 13 mentions that the malaria medication may be causing the destruction of the blood cells (but he had DIC before he was started on the antimalarials). House points out what really should be obvious: that Jimmy has been shooting up drugs with dirty needles, and this has been getting other people’s blood into his system, which explains the blood fragments and the DIC.

The new differential includes inhalant abuse, bleeding problems, and infection. Kutner suggests chronic pulmonary embolism and takes over the case. House performs an echocardiogram on Jimmy. He finds some masses near the heart, but the study is hard to read because Jimmy was moving around too much. There is no evidence of emboli, so Taub suggests Jimmy may have an abnormal blood vessel wrapping around his trachea. He wants to check an MRA, but that will be affected by patient movement as well. Instead, the team elects to do exploratory surgery of the heart (do I really have to mention what a bad idea and how ridiculously unrealistic this is?). The surgery reveals no abnormal vessels. The masses House saw on the echo were enlarged lymph nodes. About this time, the patient starts to crash with plummeting blood pressure so he is given two units of blood and started on Dopamine (a drug used to raise the blood pressure in critically ill patients).

House threatens to fire Kutner and 13, and under pressure, they suggest ARDS (Adult Rrespiratory Distress Syndrome), anaphylactic shock, or an immune overreaction from impurities in the drugs he’s been using. House starts Jimmy on Dimercaprol to treat presumptive heavy metal poisoning from contaminated drugs, but this is not successful. House then threatens Amber and Taub with their jobs, and then the whole team, but they can’t come up with any coherent ideas. House takes their four “wrong” ideas, and combines them into a single diagnosis: measles. He thinks Jimmy has measles that his drug use made him susceptible to. His immune system is overreacting in response to the measles and causing his symptoms. House wants to perform a brain biopsy. Cuddy refuses, pointing out that Jimmy would be having neurological symptoms if House were correct. Amber mentions that he has been showing some abnormal swallowing, and it could be a partial complex seizure. House then tries — and succeeds — to induce a seizure in Jimmy (a generalized tonic-clonic seizure, though, different from a partial complex seizure). This is enough proof to allow him to get his brain biopsy which shows measles, so Jimmy is started on corticosteroids.

In the end, House fired Amber for being unable to lose. He then fires 13 and keeps on Kutner and Taub. It turns out his is all a ploy — Cuddy confronts him and tells him that he can’’t fire both women and insists that he rehire 13. House acquiesces, and as Cuddy leaves the room she realizes that had been House’s plan all along.

The medicine was almost too vague this week, throwing around poorly defined phrases such as “impurities”, “bad blood”, and “immune over-reaction”.

I did have some concerns:

How did Jimmy get all those Nicotine patches? A nurse will only give one a day — and make sure the old one is removed.

The heart surgery made my brain hurt, the logic behind it was that bad. You can’t sedate the patient for an ultrasound or MRA, but you can place him under general anesthesia and cut his chest open?

Once again, the show is being vague about symptoms — was it a bloody cough, or bloody vomit? It’s referred to as both during the episode, though the differential focused on the lungs not the gastrointestinal tract.

Exactly what test is performed to show “bad blood fragments”? House already pointed out that Jimmy had schistocytes (fragmented red blood cells) as proof that he had DIC, now the writers are invoking them as the cause of the DIC as well as the result?

Why was House performing an echocardiogram? Pulmonary emboli don’t show up on ultrasound (you need a ventilation/perfusion scan or a spiral CT), and furthermore, pulmonary emboli don’t generally come from the heart — they come from the deep veins of the leg.

If the measles infection/immune overreaction was in the brain, something should have shown up on the lumbar puncture (LP) which was performed earlier in the show.

If Jimmy had been having a partial complex seizure then he would have lost consciousness (that’s what the word “complex” means in the name), not just had strange swallowing. Partial complex seizures are very different from the tonic-clonic seizure House induced later.

The medical mystery was strictly average this week. Nothing very dramatic or eye catching (and whatever happened to all the great “inside the body” animations?), just an average C. I’m still trying to make sense of the final solution (his immune system was so weak it allowed a measles infection, but still strong enough to cause an autoimmune reaction?) — I think the measles part was clever, but the autoimmune aspect not so much. I’ll split the difference and give it a B-. The medicine was just too vague. There was a lot of hand waving and terms that didn’t really mean anything. It earns a C+. The soap opera was the best part, but still not as good as a few of the earlier episodes, and earns a B+.

The previous House review
A list of all prior House reviews

There are so many incredible pages of the Atom running through Batman’s brain in The Brave and the Bold #115 that it’s hard for me to pick just a few panels to highlight. But somehow, I did.

Courtesy of Bob Haney and Jim Aparo, here’s the Atom running around inside the brain of a brain-dead Batman, stimulating various parts of his brain, and using him like a puppet to track down and apprehend the crooks who killed him.

Script by Paul Levitz, Pencils by Keith Giffen

As suggested by various commentators in the previous post, here is a perfect example of the “Surgical Precision” style of taking down an enemy from within: in this scene from Legion of Super-Heroes #294 (the concluding chapter of the Great Darkness Saga), Shrinking Violet (well, Yera really) causes a stroke in one of the Servants of Darkness by blocking blood flow in their brain.

Stood in line in the cold all night last night at the local Target to (succesfully) obtain the Nintendo Wii. Also picked up the new Zelda as well as “Trauma Center: Second Opinion.” Resultingly, I am very tired — and possibly chillblained — and plan on going to bed as soon as this week’s Midsommer Murders is over.

Regularly scheduled posting will resume tomorrow.

Dr. Karla Sofen was a brillaint psychiatrist* whose mother had to scrimp and save and work three jobs to put food on the table. Karla decided that she wasn’t going to end up that way and had no intention of working hard to make ends meet; she wanted all the finer things of life, and she wanted them NOW. She left her private practice and took up with another evil psychiatrist, Dr. Faustus, and helped him with his crimes. At one point, she became the therapist of Lloyd Bloch, the original Moonstone. Using her evil psychiatric skills, she convinced him that the stone was turning him into a monster. He handed the stone over to her and she took it to become the villainess Moonstone.

She worked for some time with the Masters of Evil, but when the majority of Earth’s heroes disappeared, she joined with Zemo in forming the “hero team” the Thunderbolts. As a Thunderbolt, she took the name Meteorite. After the Thunderbolts were exposed, she received a pardon for her past crimes and returned to her original name of Moonstone. Currenlty, in addition to her own Moonstone, she has taken possession of the moonstone from an alternate dimension which has dramatically increased her powers. Except she’s in a coma and Zemo controls the stones now. Or at least that’s what she wants him to think.

Dr. Sofen may be evil, but you have to admire her for actually using her medical/psychiatric skills. Her med school training and residency didn’t go to waste. I’m sure her actions violate the Hippocratic Oath somewhere, but at least she’s doing it in style.

*There is some debate whether Sofen is a psychiatrist or psychologist. Most sources state the former, but quite a few name the latter (and many are wishy-washy and list both). Marvel.com lists her as a psychologist, but the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe lists her as a psychiatrist — so that’s what I’m going with since it is, after all, official.

• The Wikipedia entry on Moonstone.
• Marvel.com entry on Moonstone.
• The Moonstone HeroClix.
• Who would win? Danny Phantom vs. Moonstone.
• The Moonstone Homepage fansite.
• Thunderbolt micro-heroes, including Moonstone and Meteorite.
• Information on the real world gem “Moonstone”.
• And of course Moonstone Comics, home of Buckaroo Banzai, Kolchak, and the Phantom.

It’s been a year since I took my last look at pregnancy in comics so I think it’s time to take an updated look. In the past few months alone, Selina had her baby, and unlike Jessica Jones, managed to have a pregnancy of less than a year (how long was Jessica pregnant anyway, 2 or 3 years?). As always, comments, corrections, and suggestions are appreciated. Thanks to everyone who has contributed in past years.

Heroes:
ADAM STRANGE
1. Alanna dies during childbirth.

ANIMAL MAN
1. Annie was pregnant and gave birth in the last issues of the series.

AQUAMAN
1. Dolphin and Garth (Tempest) had a son, Cerridan.
2. Mera’s pregnancy happened “off camera.
3. In the Atlantis Chronicles: Cora was raped by her cousin Dardanus and gave birth to Kordax (pregnancy not shown). Also Atlanna had a tryst with her ancestor Atlan and gave birth to Orin (Aquaman). This pregnancy was shown.

AVENGERS
1. Ms. Marvel was pregnant*
2. Scarlet Witch’s pregnancy was shown in the Scarlet Witch and the Vision mini-series, though her twins were later ret-conned out of existence. This led her to become murderously insane and then crossover-miniseries-murderously insane**. Apparently, the children have now shown up as characters in Young Avengers.
3. Jessica Jones was pregnant for what seems like years, and delivered a healthy baby.

BATMAN COMICS
1. Spoiler was pregnant and gave her child up for adoption in Robin; she later died during Wargames.
2. Francine (Man-Bat’s wife) was pregnant in the Batman titles in the 1970s and gave birth in Batman Family #17.
3. Batman and Talia had a son in the more-or-less non-canon Son of the Demon (though the pregnancy was pretty much “off screen”

CATWOMAN:
1. Selina gave birth in the first “One Year Later” issue of Catwoman. The pregnancy has not been shown (it was in that one year time gap) and the identity of the father is unclear at this point.

FALLEN ANGEL
1. Lee conceived a child with Juris. She let him think that she had miscarried after a fight with Boxer, but instead handed her son over to a nun.

FANTASTIC FOUR
1. Sue Richards had Franklin, and then lost her second pregnancy. A magical/time-stream induced third pregnancy gave the Richards a daughter, Valeria.
2. Lyja Storm was pregnant and gave birth to an egg.
3. Crystal and Pietro (Quicksilver) have a daughter Luna. Reed Richards (apparently an obstetrician in his spare time) delivered the baby.

FLASH
1. Iris was pregnant with twins at the time that the silver age Flash (Barry Allen) died.
2. Linda West lost twins due to an attack by Zoom. There was some question as to whether she would be able to become pregnant again. However, after another melee involving the timestream, Linda suddenly found herself very pregnant (from 0 – 9 months in seconds) and delivered a healthy set of twins.

HARBINGERS:
1. Kris Hathaway was pregnant and gave birth to the child who would be sent to the future to become Magnus, Robot Fighter.

INCREDIBLE HULK
1. Betty Banner was pregnant, but miscarried.

IRON MAN
1. Pepper Potts was pregnant, but miscarried.

JLA
1. Sue Dibny was pregnant when she was killedin Identity Crisis #1

JSA
1. Hawkgirl was pregnant as a teenager and gave the child up for adoption.
2. Dove was raped by Hank Hall (Hawk) and later gave birth to a child who ultimately ended up housing the soul of the new Dr. Fate, Hector Hall.
3. Power Girl was mystically impregnated by her grandfather Arion so she could give birth to the prophesied demon fighter Equinox.

INFINITY INC.
1. Hippolyta Hall was pregnant a long time, and ultimately gave birth to Daniel (who was taken from her by Morpheus to become the new Sandman).

KILLRAVEN
1. Carmilla Frost discovered she was pregnant in the Killraven graphic novel.

LOSH (1)
1. Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad) and Irma Ranz (Saturn Girl) had twins. (Twins are the usual on Garth’s home planet of Winath; however, twins are determined maternally and Irma come from Titan. Plus are the twins fraternal or identical? Both have been shown on Winath in the series.)

LOSH (2)
1. In the “five years later” Legion, Night Girl was not only married to Cosmic Boy, but also pregnant.
2. Laurel Gand had a child by Rond Vidar.
3. The Ranzzs had a second set of twins during the five year gap.

LOSH (3)
1. Apparition (Tinya Wazzo) and Ultra Boy (Jo Nah) have married and had a child (Cub).

L.E.G.I.O.N.
1. Stealth had a child by Vril Dox.

MANHUNTER
1. Kate Spencer miscarried after a fight. She had not been aware she was pregnant.

MIRACLEMAN
1. Liz Moran gave birth in Miracleman #9.

MR. MIRACLE
1. Beautiful Dreamer was pregnant and gave birth.

NOBLE FAMILY
1. Zephyr became pregnant after a spiteful “night of passion” with her family’s greatest enemy. She delivered a healthy child, but it was stolen and she informed that her child had been stillborn.

SABRE
1. Melissa Siren was pregnant and gave birth in Sabre.

SQUADRON SUPREME:
1. Arcanna Jones was pregnant for most of the limited series, and gave birth sucessfully.

STARMAN
1. Jack fathered children with the Mist (see below) and his significant other, Sadie.

SPIDER-MAN
1. Mary Jane was pregnant but miscarried when one of Norman Osborne’s flunkies poisoned her before she gave birth (there is some debate online about whether she actually miscarried or the baby was stolen by Osborn).
2. Gwen Stacy had twins after an ill-advised tryst with Spider-Man’s greatest enemy: Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin).
3. In the Spider-Girl universe, Mary Jane’s second pregnancy was shown in detail.

TEAM TITANS
1. Donna Troy was pregnant at the beginning of this series. Her husband and child died in a car accident, and then she died in Graduation Day. She came back (again), but has yet to mention her family.
2. Mirage was pregnant at the end of the series and has since been shown with her infant daughter Julianna (Refresh my memory: was the father of Julianna the evil future Nightwing? And was it consensual?).

X-MEN
1. Madelynne Prior was pregnant with Scott Summer’s child (and gave birth to him) in the Uncanny X-Men. This child later went on through a very convoluted storyline to become Cable.
2. Wolverine left a pregnant lover behind in the Savage Land in the one-shot Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure (though it’s not 100% certain that he’s the father).
3. According to one of the tales in Classic X-Men, Colossus also fathered a child during a visit to the Savage Land (pregnancy off camera).
4. Angel Salvadore and Beak had a brood of flying beaked kids. Angel laid eggs, so I’m not sure you would necessarily call her pregnant.

Villains:
Punch & Jewlee
1. During their time inSuicide Squad, Jewlee suffered morning sickness and discovered she was pregnant. She and Punchh left the team soon thereafter and the pregnancy and delivery were “off camera.” They later showed up in Hawk & Dove toting a toddler.

Chesire
1. Gave birth to Lian, fathered by Speedy/Arsenal (Roy Harper). The pregnany was entirely off-camera, and Roy didn’t know he was a father until well after the fact.
2. She seduced Thomas Blake (Cat Man) in Villains United, allegedly for him to father a child for her.

Mist
1. Had a child by Jack (Starman). Pregnancy was entirely off camera.

Star-Sapphire
1. Raped by Predator (another of Carol Fenris’s alternate personalities) and impregnated in Green Lantern #43. Gave birth sometime during Extreme Justice.

Non-Super-Hero:
FABLES: Snow White became pregnant after a drug-induced night with Bigby. She later gave birth to a litter of wolf/human hybrids.

Y: THE LAST MAN:
1. Beth is pregnant with Yorrick’s daughter (note that this is not fiancee Beth, but another one)
2. The female astronaut conceived a child with one of her fellow astronauts and has delivered a healthy son

HELLBLAZER:
John Constantine’s birth was shown in detail, including the death of his mother and twin.

LUCIFER:
Jill Presto is mystically impregnanted by a magic deck of cards.

SWAMP THING:
Swamp thing used the body of John Constantine to father a child on Abby, unaware that John was tained with demon’s blood. Abby ultimately gave birth to Tefe. Not sure if pregnancy was “on camera” or not.

STRANGERS in PARADISE:
Francine miscarried.

ELFQUEST is chock-full of pregnancies and births. I’m not conversant enough with the series to comment.

Characters UNABLE to become Pregnant:
1. Black Canary – Sustained tortue injuries in Green Arrow: Longbow Hunters that rendered her sterile. Her recent dip in a Lazarus pit may have reversed this.

2. Firestar – Using her powers will cause her to become sterile. Hank Pym developed a costume for her that repairs the damage.

*Explanation per Matt Rossi: “Ms. Marvel was impregnated originally by Immortus’ son, who used the devices of Limbo to draw her to him, make her fall in love with him, and then implanted himself into her via some freaky Limbo technology. She then was sent back to Avengers mansion where she gave birth in an extremely short amount of time and the baby was Marcus, Immortus’ son (the one who impregnated her, remember) and then the baby, too, grew up rather remarkably quickly while time itself went ape because Marcus, concieved and born in Limbo, was a being out of time and his mere presence, not to mention the twisted nature of his self-conception into our world and the rapid time displacement, was shattering causality. Eventually Marcus agreed to go back to Limbo but pledged his love for Ms Marvel and asked her to come with him to Limbo, which she agreed to do and the Avengers let her (this was later pointed out to have been a really dumb move.) …I’ve simplified this immensely.”

**Explanation per Chris Arndt: “At first they were magically concieved from the Vision and Scarlet Witch’s love. I mean, how else could they do it? The Vision may be a synthezoid, but I bet he lacks swimmers. Heck, in Avengers West Coast, John Byrne revealed that the Vision didn’t even have external equipment, so to speak. Anyway, eventually it was revealed that the kids souls were re-allocated chunks of the major WCA villain at the time, Master Pandemonium. Mephisto stole his soul, broke it in five chunks, and Scarlet Witch accidentily made off with two of them when she started concieving babies; turns out creating life was beyond her; she still housed souls but later the housing disappeared when her thoughts were not specifically on her children. Raw deal. Her memories of the kids were erased to remove the trauma. All in all it turned out to be a good story but definitely something too dark for an all-ages comic. The worst part is that it was part of Byrne’s de-construction of the Scarlet Witch. She made up her children; she forgot her children; most readers assumed that the Vision was anatomically on-model and as Star Trek’s Data puts it “fully functional” and then Byrne revealed that the synthezoid lacked a male member (and based on dialogue the sudden absence wasn’t a noticeable change) which would essentially de-humanize the character to the greatest degree and thus make the Scarlet Witch the sickest she’s ever appeared to her fans. You can fool a legion of nerds, geeks, sci-fi fans, and whatnot into thinking she married a man if they’re given the impression that the Vision is a man but for his origins. It’’s harder to achieve the idea that she married anything but a robot, something with a life value or even a sexual value equevalent “to a toaster oven” when the robot in question has no Mr. Happy!”

We need a new way of looking at continuity. It seems to be me that there needs to be a standardized score given to comics rating their continuity requirement. That way a new reader (or even an established one) will know before a comic or storyline starts exactly how much backstory they are required to be familiar with to enjoy and “get” the story.

Therefore, I am proposing a standardized unit for scoring comic book continuity. I suggest we call it the Geoff (abbreviated G). The standardized unit will be set as equal to Silver Age Batman. Therefore 1 Geoff (1G) is equal to the amount of continuity required to enjoy Silver Age Batman.

The Geoff score is set on a straightforward scale. A comic with a score of 2G required twice as much knowledge of continuity of a 1G comic. A book with a 0.5G score requires half as much knowledge.

At the basic score of 1G, the reader should be familiar with the main characters and their back-story, as well as familiar with the main villains and a little of their history. Only minimal knowledge of specific past storylines is required.

A story that that has recurrent characters with minimal backstory and no required knowledge of previous issues would be about 0.5G. These would include most children’s comics such as Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, as well as many Golden Age comics.

Stories such as Scott Pilgrim or the initial Ex Machina storyline, which require no previous knowledge, have a continuity score of 0G. Generally, these scores don’t last long as backstory is fairly quickly accumulated, raising the scores for subsequent storylines to 0.5G or even higher.

At the other end of the scale would be the James Robinson’s Starman, Geoff John’s JSA, or pretty much any non-Conan story by Roy Thomas. These comics would all earn continuity score in the 3-4G range, depending the particular storyline. Most of Claremont’s X-Men stories would be in the 5G range, as would a large chunk of Legion of Super-Hero series.

Personally, I think this score should be displayed prominently on the cover (next to the S.C.R.U.B.S. score for Batman storylines, of course).

The Geoff Score is a surprisingly flexible concept:

• There could be negative scores. These would be given to stories that purposefully throw out or ignore previously established continuity. Some readers would view these scores as a good thing, while established readers probably won’t. Strange would be a good example of a comic with a negative G score.
• Just like computer games, dual ratings could be given for certain books. There would be the “Minimum Continuity Requirement” and the “Recommended Continuity Requirement.” For example, take a look at Sandman: The Doll’s House. For basic enjoyment, little knowledge is required other than who Morpheus himself is, so the minimum requirement at 0.5G. However, to fully understand all the intricacies of the storyline, it helps to know who the Silver Age Sandman was, who Hector and Lyta Hall were, and even who Matthew Cable was. This increases the Recommended Continuity Rating to 3G. So Sandman: The Doll’s House would be rated at 0.5G/3G.

Adventures in Reading, starring the Amazing Spider-Man. Spidey Travels Through Time and Space in the battle against Illiteracy!Story by Louise Simonson, Pencils by Jon Bogdanove. Marvel Comics, 1990

Cara, Mike, and Dwane are bored inner-city kids who are lamenting the fact that they have nothing to do. As luck would have it, at just that moment Spider-Man swings by chasing a villain called the Troglodyte who has stolen a prototype weapon known as the Transporter. The Troglodyte shoots the bazooka-sized ray gun at Spider-Man and the kids, and they all find themselves in The Lost World. They help Professor Challenger and his crew fight off some pterodactyls, but then the Troglodyte hits them with the ray gun again and they find themselves in Victorian England during the Martian Invasion from The War of the Worlds. Next they find themselves in The Jungle Book, then That was Then, This is Now, and finally in Ivanhoe before they manage to subdue the Troglodyte and return to our world.

Spider-Man, a brilliant scientist and a college graduate, falls prey to the ONISGS (Oh No, I Suddenly Got Stupid) Syndrome commonly seen in PSA comic books: it took him until That was Then, This is Now to figure out they were being transported into the storylines of famous books. Seriously, if he didn’t recognize Professor Challenger or H.G. Well’s Martians, then a talking bear named Baloo should have given it away.

When it comes down to it, this book really has othing to do with fighting illiteracy. Instead, it’s geared toward encouraging children who already know how to read. Not to mention that there’s something fundamentally wrong about a comic book — with a narrative relying almost entirely on the written word — combating illiteracy.

As usual for a PSA comic, this book features several pages of “fun and games” such as word searches and anagrams in the back. One feature in particular caught my eye. How many of you fanboys (and -girls) can identify the source of this “code”?

Being a household consisting of a family doctor and a teacher, we often get things in the mail designed for children. Case in point today, when we got a sample packet of “Weird n’ Wild Creatures” cards. These are good sized full-color cards, each detailing a particulardangerous animal. They can describe current animals (anaconda, grat white shark), historical creatures (saber-toothed tiger, dinosaurs), or mythical beasts (cerberus, hydra). If I were five or six years old, this would be cool. I was totally into dinosaurs and monsters at the age, and could bore an adult to tears with my recital of dry dinosaur facts.

However, since I’m no longer five, the cards got pitched after a brief review and reminiscence. One thing quickly caught my eye: included with the larger cards were a set of smaller cards of the same creatures set up as a collectible card game. Clever idea, but clearly incorrect. Everyone knows that Nessie could easily take out nearly any other animals (except maybe King Kong, Godzilla, or Titano), but these cards have her losing to a frilled lizard and a tree frog. Nessie, call your lawyer.

Attack:3 Defense:3 Life:90	Attack:7 Defense:4 Life:100
Attack:2 Defense:8 Life:80	Attack:3 Defense:4 Life:70

Finishing up the Trivia Night questions with rounds seven through ten. These were some of the hardest rounds, particularly rounds eight and ten.

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Continuing the Trivia Night questions, rounds three through six.
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The game consisted of ten rounds of ten questions each. There were ten categories, so each round consisted of ane question from each category. Twelve teams competed, and each team could have up to 8 people.

Each team could also purchase up to ten “mulligans.” They could use a mulligan once per round to skip a question, yet still get full credit for it. Most teams purchased the maximum ten mulligans.

I was originally going to spread out the tough questions evenly over the ten rounds, but I was concerned that because of the mulligans, teams would be able to skip all the hard questions. Instead, I saved the harder questions for the last five rounds (and this is reflected in the fact that the percentage of right answers for the first five rounds averaged out at 65%; but dropped to 41% for the last five rounds).

I tried hard to have a variety a questions so that having a well-rounded team would be important. I avoided trick questions.

Questions are below the cut. The category is in brackets at the begining of each question. Answers will be in the comment section.
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I’ve been spending several hours a day for the last week playing Dungeon Siege II. The original Dungeon Siege was one of my favorite hack-and-slash style RPGs, and it had some innovative concepts, especially in regards to skills and character progression. The new game logically extends some of these concepts into a more comprehensive skill and bonus system.

Overall, this game is a slightly prettier version of the original Dungeon Siege. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: the same could be said about Diablo II, another favorite game. The underlying storyline is incrementally better as well.

Dungeon Siege II is an enjoyable game, but it’s also one of the most frustrating games I’ve played recently. I’d like to recommend it unreservedly, but I can’t. There are too many poorly thought out gameplay elements. In fact, there are several areas where Dungeon Siege II has actually taken a step backwards from the original game:

1. Saves. Unlike the original game, players are only allowed a single save game in Dungeon Siege II. And while you can save anywhere, you always start over in the nearest city, not the spot where you saved. This leads to a lot of needless trudging throughout the game. If this were a console game — or even a console port — I could understand this; but this is a PC game and there’s no need for this frustrating save system, especially since the first game did it right. (There’s also no easy way to load the saved game. You have to go back to the main menu and load it from there, you can’t load it in game).
2. Pathfinding. I’m having more problems with pathfinding AI in this game. The members of my party routinely get stuck behind walls and rocks.
3. The screen real estate is too cluttered. There are character portraits and status displays in the upper left, a large information panel in the top center (that all too often obscures other menus), and a large “order bar” at the bottom with a map. There are no hot keys that will hide/reveal this information as in the first game. You can resize the character information (to a point), but you have to click and drag each portrait separately. Increasing the resolution helps with this cluttering to some degree, but it also makes the map (the one useful item on the order bar) significantly harder to read (especially when trying to find those important “blue dots.”)
4. Shopping is an annoyingly inefficient. If I want to stock up on potions, I have to drag and drop each potion individually. If I’m buying 10 potions for each member of my party, this means I’ll need to do this 40 or 60 times. In the original version, there was a hot key you could click to buy an item instead of having to drag and drop.
5. The game has limits in the original setting (”Mercenary”). Your party can’t be any larger than four, including pets and pack mules. The more powerful enemies and better treasures are not encountered. You can only get a larger party, stronger foes, and better treasures by playing the games at the higher levels — but you can’t play thses levels until you “unlock” them by finishing the Mercenary setting. This forces repetition if you want to get your money’s worth. It seems to me that players should want to play the game again, not be forced to.

While most of these are annoyances, the save game situation is a real distraction. What is so frustrating is that the original game got all these right. The cynic in me suspects the programmers were trying to lengthen a short game, or focused too much on multiplayer to the detriment of the single player.

Unless these issues can be fixed, I’d recommend waiting to pick up Dungeon Siege II in the bargain bin in a few months.

I hope everyone had a nice weekend and a pleasant holiday. The Polite-Family officially celebrated Christmas (and all associated or non-associated, non-denominational and pagan holidays) today because we were waiting for my wife to return from visiting her family. As luck would have it, her plane had to make an abrupt change-of-landing due to fog, and she ended up spending most of Christmas evening stranded in the Springfield, Missouri, airport. I finally picked her up at the local airport at 3:30 AM, and she was asleep before we left the airport parking lot.

Today, we had my parents over as well as my sister for our annual bout of eating, gift giving, eating, card games, and eating. As always, there were some truly bizarre gifts (Marvel really needs to pay more attention to where it is licensing its characters) and some spectacular food. It all finished with several hands of the mystery/card game Sleuth which is still going on downstairs as I type this up.

Much of the comic relief is provided by the pets. My sister brings her dog Suman over, and let’s just say that our cats aren’t particularly fond of him…

Regular blogging resumes tomorrow.

I can’t think about the phrase “deus ex machina” in relation to comic books without being reminded of Deus Ex Machina Man, from the What’s New (with Phil and Dixie) strip in Dragon Magazine #75. What’s New was a hilarious comic by Phil Foglio (best known today for Girl Genius). The strip in Dragon #75 dealt with super-hero role playing games and Deus Ex Machina Man was one of the throw-away gags in the comic.

Speaking of comics, Deus Ex Machina Man was the comic Sam Simeon was illustrating in 1991’s Angel and the Ape mini-series, also written and drawn by Phil Foglio.

Right off the bat, SPANC has three things going for it. First, it is published by Steve Jackson Games, publisher of such fine and outstanding games as GURPS, Ogre, Munchkin and Illuminati. Second, the art is by the incomparable Phil Foglio of Girl Genius fame. Third, the concept itself is pure genius: Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls — what’s not to love?

The game consists of three decks of cards: Crew, Toys, and Challenges. There are also counters to represent Loot and each player’s crew. To start, each player is dealt a crew of four catgirls. Each player also starts with one Toy (think “gear”) card and 2 loot markers.

Crew members are scored in 4 abilities: Space Pirate (representing gunnery, piloting and carousing), Amazon (outdoor survival and intimidation), Ninja (sneakiness), and Catgirl (fashion sense and sex appeal). Attaching a Toy card to a crew member may raise one or more of these scores (or may lower one of them). Certain “one time use” Toy cards grant dice re-rolls, returns from the dead and other special abilities.

Each turn, the players attempt to complete a “caper.” Each caper is composed of four Challenge cards, each requiring a different skill to succeed. To beat a challenge, the crew member must roll their skill or less on two dice. The best crew (and the best toys) will finish the challenges and complete the caper. This earns that player more loot and more toys. The first player to obtain 10 loot wins.

SPANC is quick-playing, fun, easy to learn game. Anyone who enjoys Steve Jackson games or Phil Foglio comics will love this game, as will anyone with an appreciation of Space Pirates, Amazons, Ninjas and/or Catgirls.

I spent the better part of the past weekend reading the Batman: No Man’s Land storyline. I only picked up a few peripheral Batman titles when this was originally published in 1999, so I missed most of the story.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot: Gotham City has been demolished by a severe earthquake. Rather than rebuild the city, the government instead decides to abandon it. The residents are evacuated and all access to the city destroyed. Gotham City is declared a “no man’s land” and anyone left inside is considered an outlaw. The military is called in to enforce the borders. No aid of any sort will be given to Gotham’s remaining residents.

As the dust settles, different areas of the city have been claimed by different gangs. City block by city block, Batman and his associates, along with the remaining GCPD officers, reclaim Gotham City. As a final act, they head off an attempt by Lex Luthor to take over the city.

No Man’s Land was an overarching storyline that lasted for just under a year. Within this storyline there were several smaller story arcs* and some done-in-one stories.

Although it was dragging by the end, this was one of the better Batman storylines of the past few years. It was certainly better than War Games and Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive/DDR Champion. Until the very end (the conclusion of the Joker arc), it managed to avoid the unnecessary and wanton murders that have populated the Bat books as of late.

*The individual story arcs within No Man’s Land used the same technique Marvel has been widely criticized for using in its upcoming Spider-Man: the Other storyline — the same creative team writing and drawing all the cross-over books in a particular month. The stories definitely benefited from this unified presentation, though admittedly DC wasn’t trying to launch a new ongoing Bat book at the same time.

That doesn’t look like a PlayStation, it looks more like a George Foreman Grill. I think this is a big step back in design, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

It not only plays video games, but it can grill hamburgers and chops!

For a weekend challenge, here are two “psychic games” pointed out by the always enlightening Skeptico. Play around with them and see if you can deduce why they work.

First, let the Amazing Garfield tell you which card you picked and then let the Mystic Ball will tell you which number you chose.

Hint #1: Neither site actually involves mind-reading.

Hint #2: Look for “Pretty sneaky, Sis” moves on both sites.

My turn it seems:

1. Ten years ago:
I was a few months into my fourth (and final) year of medical school. I had just returned from several weeks over in the Philippines visiting my sister, who was a Peace Corps volunteer there. I arrived back in St. Louis just in time to take Part 2 of the Medical Boards and start a rotation in Pediatric Endocrinology.

2. Five years ago:
I was a physician in the USAF stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. At this point, the Polite-Girlfriend (not yet the Polite-Wife) and I had been dating about a year.

3. One year ago:
I was refinishing our back porch. I had power-sprayed it, just trying to wash away some of the grime, but it turned out that I inadvertently washed away the cheap weather-proofing the previous owners had used. A one-day project became a two-week nightmare as I had to sand, re-sand and finish the porch. Looks great though.

4. Yesterday:
A long day at work, then a too-quiet evening at home (the wife and cats are down in the new house).

5. Today:
Another long day at work (mostly school and sports physicals) and another too-quiet evening at home.

6. Tomorrow:
Hospital rounds first thing in the morning, and then I’ll swing by the post office and mail some credentials forms for the new job. If the hospital is not too busy, I’ll head down to the St. Louis area and see how the unpacking is going in our new house.

7. Five snacks I enjoy:
Bottlecaps, Nerds, Iced sugar cookies, tangerines, honey-wheat pretzels

8. Five bands I know the lyrics of most of their songs:
The Who, Pink Floyd, Simon & Garfunkel, Chris Robison, Heather Alexander

9. Five things I would do with $100,000,000:
Pay off the house, send my nieces/nephews to college, go back to school myself, buy a vacation home and hide the rest under the mattress.

10. Five locations I’d like to run away to:
Anywhere in the Appalachians, Belgium, Reykjavik, Las Vegas or Kauai

11. Five Bad Habits:
A horrendous sweet tooth, ignoring people who are talking to me if I’m involved in something, being fanatical about the proper use of the word “unique” and yelling at the TV or radio when it is used incorrectly, the inability to count to 5

12. Five things I like doing:
Watching mindless TV, Reading books and comics, researching bizarre medical questions for this site, sleeping and playing computer and video games poorly.

13. Five TV shows I like:
Kim Possible. Black Adder, the Simpsons, MythBusters and Deep Space Nine.

14. Famous People I’d like to meet, living or dead.
Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, C.S. Forester, Wellington, Steve Ditko, Robert Parker and Bobby Labonte, Alton Brown.

15. Biggest joys at the moment:
Just hoping the move will be over soon and praying that someone will buy our house.

16. Favorite toys:
The computer, my Trek and my iPaq.

During my senior year of high school, our family purchased a computer. It was a Zenith computer (yes they made computers back then) that had a monochrome monitor (amber/black), a 5 1/4″ floppy disk drive and a 30 MB hard drive. No mouse, as the Macintosh was fated to be introduced later that year. If you wanted to select text, you higlighted it by using the F8 key. Sure, it was cumbersome compared to today’s computers, but it was still better than a typewriter. We also had an Epson dot matrix printer that could churn out an amazing 2 oe 3 pages per minute.

Still, this was not my first computer. Let’s go back a few years to my freshman year in high school. Upon returning from a marching band trip over Christmas break, I took the money I had left over and puchased an Atari 800XL. This computer was a thing of beauty. It had 64KB of memory and built in BASIC. True to its Atari lineage, it had a video-game cartidge slot on the top and two joystick ports*. It didn’t have a monitor but instead had an RF switch to attach to the back of the TV. No floppy drive or hard drive, though you could purchase a floppy drive separately. I couldn’t afford those, so I picked up a tape drive that utilized regular casette tapes. You’d put the tape in the drive, fast forward it to the point where you thought the program you wanted was and then type “CLOAD” and it would (hopefully) load. This was a simple computer, but that’s why I loved it. I knew exactly how everything worked and what every variable and command did. Now I’m lucky if I know 1%.

*It had very few good games — it wouldn’t play Atari 2600 games, only the 5200. I think I had Donkey Kong, Pitfall II and Space Ranger.

As much as I enjoy some of the more recent computer games, I get the feeling that way too often they feature nice-looking (yet CPU-churning) graphics instead of a decent plot. I find myself reminiscing for the days when computer games had at most 4 or 16 colors, or none in the case of Infocom’s text only games.

No sound cards, no graphics cards, no modems, 5 1/4″ floppy drives (and even tape drives) and hard drives of about 30 megabytes.

These were by far my favorite games of that era:

• Legacy of the Ancients
• Zork I, Zork II and Leather Goddesses of Phobos
• Manhunter: New York and Manhunter: San Francisco
• Covert Action
• SSI’s “Gold Box” AD&D games

A close-up picture of my desk when I was deployed to the Mid-East. The computer is my faithful HP laptop, which was purchased with long deployments in mind. Thus, it had plenty of mp3s, games, books…oh, and medical texts, too.

The toy ambulance was a gift from the Polite-Wife (then the Polite-Girlfriend) because it reminded her of my problems with driving ambulances. The Hulk I picked up in a Happy Meal and he traveled to all my deployments, so he’s quite the well-traveled action figure. The plane is an F-22 Raptor, again bought by the Polite-Wife. Whenever we played NTN trivia, my name was always “Raptor” (not because of the plane, but because it was a 6-letter name that sounded cool. My second choice was “wombat”). The paper disks are coins. Unlike other establishments on base, the local BX (PX for you army types) only took American money. Since they didn’t want to lug heavy bags of change halfway around the world, they had these disks printed up in 5-, 10- and 25-cent denominations. Coins in cardboard. I think I still have about $30 worth stashed around here somewhere.

The first (and sadly, only) second female physician on the list of Comic Book Doctors Who Actually Practice Medicine:

#3 – Dr. Leslie Thompkins

Originally appearing in Detective Comics #457, Dr. Leslie Thompkins runs a clinic in the poorer section of Gotham City. She went to medical school with Thomas Wayne, Bruce Wayne’s father (and according to Batman: The Animated Series, the Crime Doctor was also there at the same time). She gave up working a high paying hospital job to help Gotham’s less fortunate.

She was once of the first to comfort the young Bruce Wayne when his parent’s were murdered and she knows of his dual life of Batman, though she does not approve of it. She works with several other of the Gotham City vigilantes as well.

She has been seen recently Batman: Gotham Knights #793 and then in Batman: Wargames.

Once again, pregnancy and child-bearing has become an issue in comics, thanks to Avengers Disassembled and now House of M. I figured this would be a good time to take another look at the list of Comic Book Pregnancies.

Heroes:
ADAM STRANGE
1. Alanna dies during childbirth.

ANIMAL MAN
1. Annie was pregnant and gave birth in the last issues of the series.

AQUAMAN
1. Dolphin and Garth (Tempest) had a son, Cerridan.
2. Mera’s pregnancy happened “off camera”.

AVENGERS
1. Scarlet Witch’s pregnancy was shown in the Scarlet Witch and the Vision mini-series, though her twins were later ret-conned out of existence. This led her to become murderously insane and now crossover-miniseries-murderously insane.
2. Ms. Marvel was pregnant*

BATMAN COMICS
1. Spoiler was pregnant and gave her child up for adoption in Robin; she later died during Wargames.
2. Francine (Man-Bat’s wife) was pregnant in Batman in the 1970’s.
3. Batman and Talia had a son in the more-or-less non-canon Son of the Demon (though the pregnancy was pretty much “off screen”

FANTASTIC FOUR
1. Sue Richards had Franklin, and then lost her second pregnancy. A magical/time-stream induced third pregnancy recently gave the Richards a daughter, Valeria.
2. Lyja Storm was pregnant and gave birth to an egg.
3. Crystal and Pietro (Quicksilver) have a daughter Luna. Reed Richards (apparently an obstetrician in his spare time) delivered the baby.

FLASH
1. Iris was pregnant with twins at the time that the silver age Flash (Barry Allen) died.
2. Linda West lost twins due to an attack by Zoom. There is some question as to whether she’ll be able to become pregnant again.

INCREDIBLE HULK
1. Betty Banner was pregnant, but miscarried.

IRON MAN
1. Pepper Potts was pregnant, but miscarried.

JLA
1. Sue Dibny was pregnant when she was killedin Identity Crisis #1

JSA
1. Hawkgirl was pregnant as a teenager and gave the child up for adoption.
2. Dove was raped by Hank Hall (Hawk) and later gave birth to a child who ultimately ended up housing the soul of the new Dr. Fate, Hector Hall.

INFINITY INC.
1. Hippolyta Hall was pregnant a *long* time, and ultimately gave birth to Daniel (who was taken from her by Morpheus to become the new Sandman).

KILLRAVEN
1. Carmilla Frost discovered she was pregnant in the Killraven graphic novel.

LOSH (1)
1. Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad) and Irma Ranz (Saturn Girl) had twins. (Twins are the usual on Garth’s home planet Winath; however, twins are determined maternally and Irma come from Titan. Plus are the twins fraternal or identical? Both have been shown on Winath in the series.)

LOSH (2)
1. In the “five years later” Legion, Night Girl was not only married to Cosmic Boy, but also pregnant.
2. Laurel Gand had a child by Rond Vidar.

LOSH (3)
1. Apparition (Tinya Wazzo) and Ultra Boy (Jo Nah) have married and had a child (Cub).

L.E.G.I.O.N.
1. Stealth had a child by Vril Dox.

MIRACLEMAN
1. Liz Moran gave birth in Miracleman #9.

MR. MIRACLE
1. Beautiful Dreamer was pregnant and gave birth.

NOBLE FAMILY
1. Zephyr became pregnant after a spiteful “night of passion” with her family’s greatest enemy.

SABRE
1. Melissa Siren was pregnant and gave birth in Sabre.

STARMAN
1. Jack fathered children with the Mist (see below) and his significant other, Sadie.

SPIDER-MAN
1. Gwen Stacy had twins after an ill-advised tryst with Spider-Man’s greatest enemy: Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin).

TEAM TITANS
1. Donna Troy was pregnant at the beginning of this series. Her husband and child died in a car accident, and then she died in Graduation Day.
2. Mirage was pregnant at the end of the series.

X-MEN
1. Madelynne Prior was pregnant with Scott Summer’s child (and gave birth to him) in the Uncanny X-Men. This child later went on through a very convoluted storyline to become Cable.

Villains:
Punch & Jewlee
They showed up in Hawk & Dove toting a toddler, but I don’t know if the pregnancy was ever mentioned or shown in Suicide Squad or elsewhere.

Chesire
Gave birth to Lianne, fathered by Speedy/Arsenal (Roy Harper), but I don’t know if the pregnancy was shown.

Mist
Had a child by Jack (Starman). Do not recall if the pregnancy was shown.

Non-Super-Hero:
FABLES: Snow White became pregnant after a drug-induced night with Bigby. She later gave birth to a litter of wolf/human hybrids.

STRANGERS in PARADISE: Francine miscarried.

ELFQUEST is chock-full of pregnancies and births. I’m not conversant enough with the series to comment.

Characters UNABLE to become Pregnant:
1. Black Canary – Sustained tortue injuries in Green Arrow: Longbow Hunters that rendered her sterile. Her recent dip in a Lazarus pit may have reversed this.

2. Firestar – Using her powers will cause her to become sterile. Hank Pym developed a costume for her that repairs the damage.

*Explanation per Matt Rossi: “Ms. Marvel was impregnated originally by Immortus’ son, who used the devices of Limbo to draw her to him, make her fall in love with him, and then implanted himself into her via some freaky Limbo technology. She then was sent back to Avengers mansion where she gave birth in an extremely short amount of time and the baby was Marcus, Immortus’ son (the one who impregnated her, remember) and then the baby, too, grew up rather remarkably quickly while time itself went ape because Marcus, concieved and born in Limbo, was a being out of time and his mere presence, not to mention the twisted nature of his self-conception into our world and the rapid time displacement, was shattering causality. Eventually Marcus agreed to go back to Limbo but pledged his love for Ms Marvel and asked her to come with him to Limbo, which she agreed to do and the Avengers let her (this was later pointed out to have been a really dumb move.) …I’ve simplified this immensely.”

We get too many magazines here at the Polite Household. Sure, my wife gets a couple (usually as a grandmotherly Christmas present), but by and large the majority of them are mine. If you think trying to cut back on the number of comics you buy is tough, try cutting back on the number of magazines you get – it’s even harder.

There’s Newsweek and National Geographic, because every household in America is constitutionally obligated to subscribe to both a weekly news magazine and National Geographic. No really, it’s true. I know I read it in the Constitution somewhere.

Then there are the computer and videogame magazines. PC Magazine is honestly useful, though I could do without the in-depth reporting on $3000 business software I’ll never buy. Maximum PC is inexpensive and one of the best resources for updating and upgrading computers.

I’ve cut back to two computer gaming magazines now. For all intents and purposes, they’re entirely identical on the inside. Same reviews, previews and “exclusives.” One provides a more thorough coverage of obscure wargames, and that’s the one I’ll keep – as soon as I remember which one it is (but I’ve been saying that for two or three years now). Does anyone every use those CDs that are bundled with the magazines? They load slowly and rarely contain anything that can’t be found quicker on the web. I wish they would let me renew without the CD (or “beverage coaster” as I like to call them). And to whoever decided it would be a good idea to attach the CD to the middle of my magazine instead of simply including it loosely: you should be shot.

PSM is my choice of videogame magazines. It’s cheap ($12 for 12 issues) and informative, even if it does degenerate to frat boy humor on occasion (but still less often than Wizard).

In terms of comics, I currently receive four magazines. The Comics Journal, Alter Ego and Back Issue are read cover to cover and worth every dime. I also get the Comics Buyers Guide, but the jury’s still out on that one. Let’s just say that I preferred it as a weekly newspaper instead of the monthly magazine it’s become.

I get several woodworking magazines as well. I love woodcraft and would love to spend more time in my workshop. That is, if I actually had a workshop. For some reason, our garage actually contains cars and that limits that amount of industrial-size power tools I can have. I try to throw away the magazines, but then I start thinking: “Wait, that’s the Router Isue! I must keep it!” Or “This issue has that special report on wood staining with linseed oil. You know the minute I throw it away, I’ll have a project that requires a linseed stain!” I think I’ll need to build a bookshelf just to hold my woodworking magazines.

Ironically, we probably receive 2 or 3 trees worth of nature magazines annually. We subscribe to National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure and Illinois Outdoors. The rest seem to arrive whether we want to read them or not. Admittedly, we in the Polite Household tend towards the “green”, so we support a number of nature charities. They are all happy to send a magazine or two (or four) our way. Why is it that environmental charities seem to send the most mail? Isn’t this counter-productive?

I haven’t even touched on the medical journals yet, but that’s a topic for another day (did you know that just by putting an M.D. behind your name you’re guaranteed an additional 4 or 5 magazines a week? And they won’t stop no matter what you do?).

If driving a car, fishing, or leading a cheer can be considered a sport then why not cutting down a tree? And there you have the quitessence of timbersports.

The Stihl Timbersports Seriesis the mainstay of lumberjack competitions. There are a number of regional events — usually held at state fairs — and then a final showdown at the end of the summer. There are six events incluidng the Underhand Chop, the Stock Saw, the Springboard, the Single Buck, the Standing Block Chop and my favorite, the Hot Saw. In this last event, competitors use souped up chainsways (usually powered with a snowmobile motor) to quickly saw three complete cuts through a log.

The ESPN Great Outdoor Games has a series of timbersports events as well. They include everything the Stihl series has, but adds log rolling competitions, speed climbing, relay events, and female lumberjacks. Truly a sight to behold.

Both series can be caught on ESPN or ESPN2.

I’ve been playing video games for the better part of ten years, since the glory days of the Playstation . With a few exceptions, the games I prefer seem to fall into three categories: action games, adventure games and roleplaying games. I know the line between the various types of games gets a bit blurry now and then, but it’s my site, so it’s my call.

The following have been my favorite games over the past ten years, in no particular order. Most can be found cheap in bargain bins or eBay:

Action Games:
Ratchet and Clank I, II and III(PS2) – My favorite series of games. Fun and humorous on so many levels.
Jak and Daxter I, II and III(PS2) – a close second to the Ratchet & Clank series.
Medievel I and II(PS) – Humorous horror-inspired series. Lots of fun.
Psychonauts(PS2, XB) – My current game.
Sphinx(PS2) – Play as a muumy and a god.

Adventure Games
Akuji the Heartless(PS) – Voodoo and Richard Roundtree, what more could you want?
Beyond Good and Evil(PS2, XB) – Clever setting with an intriguing storyline.
Nightmare Creatures(PS) – chasing monsters at night in Victorian England.
Ghost in the Shell(PS) – Very (very) loosely based on the original movie. In this game, you get to pilot one of the spider-like Tachikoma tanks around, shooting innocents bad guys.
God of War(PS2) – A recent favorite. Bloody, but fun.
Resident Evil(PS) – The original.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds (PS2, XB) – Surprisingly good for a licensed game.
Devil May Cry(PS2) – The orginal was haunting and fun. Diluted by the sequels.
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter(PS2) – Another good licensed game.

Roleplaying Games
Skies of Arcadia (DC, GC) – Probably my favorite video game RPG.
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time(N64, GC) – The best of the Zelda series.
Final Fantasy VII(PS) – The best of the Final Fantasies.
Final Fantasy VIII(PS) – Good storyline and good characters.
Final Fantasy X(PS2) – Beautiful, but became too much like a chore at the end.
Final Fantasy X-2(PS2) – Like Final Fantasy X, but with beautiful women and dancing…
Legend of Legaia(PS) – An overlooked classic.
Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes(XB) – The closest I’ve come to my D&D games growing up (we were all about the hacking and slashing).
Baldur’s Gate(PS2) – A little more thoughtful than the above.
Parasite Eve(PS) – A modern day RPG by the makers of Final Fantasy.

Just taking a lzay day: reading, mowing the lawn and working in the garden, watching TV (Mythbusters) and playing video games. Sometimes it’s nice to have simple day and really do nothing imprtant.

Tonight’s House is a repeat showing of Episode #6. Instead of watching a so-so episode again, I’ll watch Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel and play a little Psychonauts.

The Holy Grail of war games when I was growing up was Squad Leader. Four game boards, hundreds of cardboard counters of varying colors and a rule book that made the Bible seem like a light read. Then there were the many expansions packs up to and including Advanced Squad Leader, a war game whose rules actually required a three-inch thick three-ring binder.

I think my friends and I managed to sit down and play Squad Leader all of three times, and actually finished two of those games. The game was fascinating and fun, but took a large amount of dedicated time to play (and frankly, being freshman in high school, we had just discovered girls). Still, Squad Leader sits proudly on my shelf, waiting for the day when I will find the time to play it again.

I’d love to say that playing Squad Leader and similar games led me to develop to a fine sense of strategy. I’d love to say it, but it wouldn’t be true. Despite years of war gaming I still can’t develop brilliant strategies or worthwhile (or even competent) tactics. Over the years I’ve discovered that cleverness just doesn’t work for me in this arena, so I’ve learned to be blunt: Hit ‘em hard and hit ‘em fast, that’s my rule (or if that doesn’t work: hide in Australia until everyone else is done fighting).

Tags:games squad leader risk

My vacation delayed my weekly review of House, but now I’m back and tanned (well, sunburned) and ready to review:

The ultimate solution to the patient’s problem was elegant, yet the route the team took to get there was full of dangerous assumptions. An obese 10 year-old girl has a heart attack. The lab tests and EKG all support this fact. The physicians aren’t entirely sure why she had this heart attack. Dr. Chase believes it is because of the child’s obesity, but Dr. Cameron thinks the patient may have Syndrome X (otherwise known as Metabolic Syndrome). Testing does not support this theory and the patient exhibits a bizarre mood swing while undergoing the test. Maybe it was the diet pills she was taking? Now the team decides that the patient is clotting so they start her on the anticoagulants heparin and warfarin. They believe that this clotting led to her initial heart attack as well as a small stroke that led to her mood changes. At no point does the team actually perform any tests or studies to confirm clots or to discover why the patient is clotting (if she even is), they just start her on the anticoagulants. (As a side note, if the patient had a heart attack, she should already be on the heparin). Areas of skin necrosis appear on the patient and House decides it must be warfarin necrosis. At the last minute, just before the patient is to go through some major surgical repair, in one of those “but doctor, if you’re wrong the treatment will kill the patient” moment, House discovers that the patient has Cushing’s Syndrome caused by a pituitary tumor. After the tumor is removed, the patient is cured – and even manages to drop 30 pounds by the end of the week.

The doctors on this show routinely jump wildly from conclusion to conclusion, but they normally run tests (lots and lots and lots of tests) to learn more. This episode there was a great deal of jumping to conclusions, but very little testing. There were also way too many overlooked issues. Assuming the 10 year-old had a heart attack, why? Was it due to clotting, a spasm of a blood vessel, or some other reason? No testing was done to find out, but this is a very important issue. Nobody bothered to figure out what diet pills the patient took, they just assumed “diet pills = bad” without bothering to learn what medications/herbs/placebos were in the pills. Later, an assumption was made that the patient was clotting, but no one tried to figure out why. Does the patient have a clotting disorder? Better run those tests before she starts on the anticoagulants they put her on (without checking for sure if she had a clot), because they’ll screw up the test results once she’s on them. Oh, and warfarin is a pill, not an injectable drug.

The soap opera aspects were much better than the medicine this week with House having to decide which of his three underlings he’ll have to fire. At the same time, the hospital administrator is busy playing games with people’s minds, both the young doctors and Dr. House. Who leaves? You’ll have to wait until the next (non-repeat) episode.

This episode deserves a B+ for the mystery and another B+ for the solution. Sadly, the medicine this week only receives a D+ (and that’s probably being generous). The non-medical soap opera aspects earn a solid A.

Reviews of previous episodes of House

Everett Kaser makes some of the best logic games out there. Start with Sherlock, then try Dinner with Moriarity. Knarly Mazes is also fun. The best is Honeycomb Hotel. The game a takes a few minutes to figure out, but once you do the gameplay is purely intuitive. For a good challenge, choose the largest size puzzle, set the handicap to zero and try to finish the game in under six minutes (five if you’re feeling very spry).

Check out the Kaser website and look at the games. Almost all have a free trial version.

For this week’s installment of Lois Lane Friday, not only is Lois Lane present (and super-powered), but Lana Lang as well! From 1960, I give you:

“Lana Lang Superwoman” The first story from Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #17 (also reprinted in 80 Page Giant #3)
Jerry Siegel, writer
Curst Swan, penciler

Out of the blue, Superman offers to give Lana Lang super-powers and flies her to Metropolis Hospital to get a transfusion of his blood. Hearing the news, Lois Lane is crushed. Later, as Super-Lana is showing off her abilities, Superman offers a transfusion to Lois as well. Now both women have superpowers and compete with each other over who can do the most good.

Superman still won’t tell the women why he gave them super-powers; all he tells them is that he must fly off to another galaxy for a while. A short time later, both Super-Lana and Super-Lois find themselves drawn to an abandoned mill. Just as the women enter the mill, it explodes without warning in “a tremendous explosion that no human being could survive.”

Superman arrives and tells them the full story. A week before, he had encountered the villainous robot Brainiac, who informed him that he would destroy the entire Earth unless Superman met his challenge. Brainiac’s challenge? He would lure Lana and Lois to a mill where he had hidden a bomb. When the bomb went off, Superman had to be in another galaxy. His Superman robots could not intervene, and he could not tell anyone about the challenge. If the girls somehow survived, then Brainiac would spare the Earth.

This explains why Superman gave the Lana and Lois superpowers, so they could survive the bomb. He also timed the transfusions precisely:

And I gave each of you just enough Krypton-type blood so that you would have super-powers, until…right this second! Girls, I’m sorry but you are no longer super!

As the story ends, Lois and Lana sadly hang up their costumes.

These Lois Lane comics are just filled with great Silver Age stories. Another super-transfusion, and a real one this time. Of course, no needle can penetrate Superman’s skin, so he has to puncture his skin with his fingernails for the transfusion to take place. Now, is only Superman’s skin invulnerable or are all of his tissues? Can normal needles puncture his veins or does he has to rip them open with his fingernails too? I sure hope not, because that would be extremely messy. (“Sorry about the blood on the floor and the walls Doctor, but it was an emergency.” “Dammit Superman, you know no Earthly cleaning supplies can get your Kryptonian blood stains out!”)

That was pretty clever of him timing his transfusion just right so the super-powers would wear off at precisely the right moment. Still, one has to wonder: Super-Lana and Super-Lois were both doing good and saving lives, would it have killed him to let them keep their powers just a little longer?

Black Widow #5 “A Field in the East”
Richard K. Morgan, writer
Bill Sienkiewicz and Gorlan Parlov, artists

In Black Widow #5, the use of the mysterious hormone Medusagen is finally explained. It seems that the immune systems of the Black Widows are so revved up that they can’t get pregnant because their own bodies will reject the pregnancy. Stefanya was taking the Medusagen to suppress her immune system so she could get pregnant.

This does make some sense once you realize that Medusagen is not so much a hormone as it is a steroid. Some steroids (like prednisone) are immune suppressants and might be able to suppress the Widows’ immunity enough to allow for a pregnancy, especially a strong drug like Medusagen is supposed to be. Far fetched but possible.

In Batman: Gotham Knights #60, Batman is trying to discover who kidnapped Alfred. He finds a drop of the “surgical grade quality anesthesia” agent Narcopropaline and deduces that it must be Hush (the “Greatest Neurosurgeon in the World”¹) who kidnapped Alfred.

Narcopropaline is an entirely imaginary drug². One question: at one point in the story it’s referred to as an anesthetic, and another time a narcotic. Which one is it?

The name “narcopropaline” is both good and bad. From an imaginary point of view, the name sounds medical and the “narco-” prefix lets you know what it does right off. In the real world, the name wouldn’t fly. “Narco-” has a strong negative connotation and no pharmaceutical company would name its drug that — pharamaceutical companies are very sensitive about names. The suffix “-propaline” makes it sound more like a synthetic fishing line than a drug. Still, as Hush stories go, this was almost palatable.

Notes:
¹The phrase “Greatest Neurosurgeon in the World” is ©2004-2005 Polite Dissent.
²I think it is perfectly fine for authors to make up their own drugs. If it’s imaginary, who can say what it can and can’t do? If more authors did this, I’d be out of a blog. Well, maybe…

Snit’s Revenge was the first Tom Wham game I ever encountered, and remains one of my favorites. This is the sequel to Snit Smashing, the game that H posted about last month. In this game, the Snits have had enough of the Bolotomi and attack en masse, sneaking inside and booting their internal organs about.

A friend of mine picked up another game of his, Awful Green Things From Outer Space, and loved it so much that he was moved to created his own “Advanced Awful Green Things: The Roleplaying Game.” Yes, he is gainfully employed nowadays — he’s actually a lawyer — why do you ask?

I subscribed to Dragon Magazine for most of junior high and high school. It was always a cause for celebration whenever a new Tom Wham game would be published. While there was always something to recommend about every game of his, my favorites were File 13 and King of the Tabletop. File 13 was a game about getting games published; the game play was very straightforward (and a little too random for my current tastes) but the humor was perfect (I’ll see if I can find the names of the games you were supposed to sell, they were hilarious). King of the Tabletop was a game where you had to marshal your resources, build your army and the wipe the other players out one by one. Looking back, it was in some ways a precursor of Magic the Gathering. Each player had certain terrain tiles and was could only form his army from creatures native to the terrain he owned. This was my gaming group’s favorite game through most of high school. Mayfair published this game later as Kings & Things*.

Two of Wham’s games are contained in the boxed set The Best of Dragon Magazine Games, which is usually available on e-Bay. Kings & Things* can be found on e-Bay quite a bit too, although usually it’s the German edition.

Links:
Tom Wham’s web site

UPDATE:
Here is the list of the game pieces from File 13.

I’ve spent most of the past three days playing Sid Meier’s Pirates!.

The original Pirates! was my favorite computer game of the CGA/EGA era. I first discovered it my freshman year in college, and it quickly became an obsession.

A few years later VGA debuted and Pirates! GOLD was released. It was a graphically enhanced version of the original. It never played as well, mostly because of the counter-intuitive use of the mouse. The graphics weren’t that much better, really. The same menus as before but now over a static pirate-esque picture instead of the previous blue background.

There have been several attempts at pirate games since then and none have been particularly good. So is it any surprise really that Pirates! was retooled and re-released recently?

The gameplay is as good as the original. That is the game’s single greatest asset, as well as its single greatest drawback. Players start out as a young pirate on the Spanish Main. They start with a few men and a single ship and sail the Main looking for other ships to capture or cities to raid. Along the way, the character hunts down wanted criminals, romances beautiful (and busty) women and searches for buried treasure. There is no official end to the game. At some point, the player retires his pirate and the game is over. There are no stated goals or objectives to meet; it is open ended game.

This was fine in the original, but that was back in the day of the 8086. Nowadays I expect to see more story. The original could be included as “Pirates! Classic,” but throw in some goal-driven scenarios as well.

There are some small changes. Land battles are now fought through an arduous and time consuming move-and-shoot method. Still, it’s better than the original’s murky land battles. The romance angle is better thought out as well, with a dancing mini-game simulating romance. Don’t worry if you’re not good at the dancing, there are items later on that will drastically enhance your character’s ability. I don’t like the new buried treasure system. I preferred the original version where you had to dig for treasure and hope you had chosen the right place instead of the glowing red marker in the new version.

The graphics are much improved in this version, though this highlights their repetitiveness as well.

This is a very good and fun game. I recommend it to anyone, particularly those who enjoyed the original. However, due to the limited nature of its gameplay, I think $49.99 is a little high, so I would wait until it reaches $20-$25.

Tonight’s guilty pleasure is the third in the trifecta of long-forgotten yet excellent comics from Dragon Magazine. Wormy had the best art and the deepest storylines. What’s New (with Phil and Dixie) has a wonderful cartoony style and an exuberant sense of humor, and was one of Phil Foglio’s earlier works. The third comic, and probably my favorite overall, was Yamara.

Yamara, by Barbara Manui and Chris Adams, was illustrated in a simple cartoon style, yet each character is clearly drawn and unique. The humor is funny and topical. Never has Dungeons & Dragons been mined for so many legitimately funny jokes. There are a lot of background gags too, with pun-filled books on the bookshelves and so on. The story was clever and actually had a plot. It never ceases to amaze me that despite being limited to only 4 to 8 panels a month, the strip’s authors still manages to tell a good story that progressed from issue to issue. If only today’s comic authors could learn from them.

The comic features several memorable characters. The title character Yamara Took (later Yamara the Undisciplined) is a halfling fighter/thief. She has a sense of morals, but just barely. Joe Holy is the local cleric. Fea is an elf sorceress who has had her alignment changed to evil, and likes it more than she should. Ralph is her unfortunate familiar. Blag is a dwarf, and probably the unluckiest character ever to be in a comic strip. And then there’s Ogrek (part orc, part ogre, part human, part elf and part pixie), he is rich and eccentric…and the bane of Yamara’s existence.

I’ve reproduced two strips here to give a feel for the comic. The first strip shows when Yamara is being hired to steal the jewelry of Frinn. Ultimately, to obtain the jewelry she has to marry the infamous Ogrek the Undisciplined. She gains the jewelry and it gives her deity-level powers…at least until her unfortunate run-in with Fea’s Flesh to Plush spell.

The second strip showcases Percy. She’s Joe’s wannabe girlfriend/stalker. She’s also a high level evil vampire. Here, she’s sharing dungeon quarters with a mummy and ghoul when Tim the Paladin arrives. General excitement and merriment follow.

Steve Jackson Games published a Yamara collection several years ago, and copies could be obtained until recently on the Yamara.com site (a site which sadly seems pretty defunct now).

click on either strip for a larger (readable) image

As my final Year in Review post, I’m taking a look back at all the “Monday Guilty Pleasure” topics I’ve posted about since I started this blog.

Books were the most common topic with 5 posts, followed by Snack Foods and Canceled TV Shows with 4 posts each. Comic Books had three posts as did Current TV Shows. Animated TV Shows, Comic Strips from Dragon Magazine and Music each earned 3 guilty pleasure posts. Comedians, Doctor Who Companions, Movies, Musicals, Restaurants, Video Games and Writers had one post each.

The results are pretty much what I had expected — although I thought I had posted about Snack Foods the most. Well, that gives me something to work on for this year.

As a last look back at the past year, I present the 2004 Polite Dissent Awards for the Best and Worst in Comic Book Medicine

Worst Depiction of Medicine:
There were way too many comic books to choose from in this category. A (Dis)honorable Mention goes to The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Wolverine 2004 for the single image of Wolverine that contains 6 blatant medical errors.
A second (Dis)honorable Mention goes to Strange #1 for its inadvertent revelation that Stephen Strange never attended enough medical school or residency to actually earn a medical license, let alone be certified as a surgeon of any kind.
The Worst Depiction of Medicine in 2004, without a doubt, was the interminable autopsy of Sue Dibny that spanned three comics (Identity Crisis #2, JSA #67 and Identity Crisis #6). From incorrect anatomy to bad science to gaping logic holes, this one wins hands down.

Worst Doctor:
Worst doctor not in terms of evilness, but in terms of apparent medical ability. This year’s winner is Dr. Mid-Nite. When he wasn’t bungling an autopsy, he was mistreating a heart attack (JSA #62), leaving stitches in a dirty wound (JSA #65) or handing out controlled substances like candy.
Dr. Mann from Y: the Last Man comes in a distant second with her botched diagnosis of botulism.

Worst Single Medical or Scientific Concept:
The façade virus, which can be transmitted by light, in Cable/Deadpool.

Worst Imaginary Medication or Treatment:
AVX, the is-it-a-narcotic-or-is-it-a-steroid patch from Captain America and the Falcon receives a (Dis)honorable Mention, but the award goes to Rick Tyler (Hourman II) for his revelation in JSA: All Stars #5 that the once addictive Miraclo is now a safe “homeopathic” patch.
While we’re on the subject of Rick Tyler, he has the single most logic-defying moment of the year, also in JSA: All Stars #5, for the 45 minutes it took him to run up the stairs of a building — while using his allegedly effective super drug.

Best Depiction of Medicine
While War Games: Act One had a lot going for it (and the medicine was well handled), the surprise winner in this category is Strange #2 for its excellent job of explaining Stephen Strange’s injuries.

Best Doctor:
Ironically, just as the Worst Doctor is a hero, the Best Doctor is a villain: Hush wins for his treatment of Prometheus’s injuries in Batman: Gotham Knights #53.

Best Single Medical or Scientific Concept:
The water breathing people (and dogs, but not pandas) in Sub-Diego from recent issues of Aquaman (even if it was handled a bit bluntly at times).

Best Imaginary Medication or Treatment:
From Sgt. Frog, Sergeant Keroro wins for his lifesaving CPR-performing Super Suction Space Octopus (Volume One). Corporal Giroro comes in second for obtaining a liver from a space keropes to treat Natsumi’s fever (Volume Three).

Special Mentions:
The following artists wins my heartfelt apprectiation for taking the time to draw the nasal cannula correctly:
Pete Woods (Detective Comics #797), Pia Guerra (Y:the Last Man #29) and Michael Choi (Witchblade #80)

Sleuth is a great family game. It is a fairly straightforward mystery game — basically an advanced version of Clue. There are 36 gems cards which are divided into four colors (yellow, green, red and blue), three gemstones (opals, diamonds and pearls) and three denominations (single, pair and cluster). One gem card is hidden and the rest are dealt out among the players.

Each player is also dealt four cards from the question desk. Each turn they can ask a question from one of their cards to another player, to determine which cards that player has. The questioner gets to see the cards (if any) which answer his question, while the other players simply hear the number. For example, Player A might ask how many “opal pairs” does Player B have? Player B would announce “one” and show this card to Player A. Thre rest of the players don’t get to see the card, but may be able to deduce what it is based on past guesses. Player A now draws another question card, and the play passes to next plater. Slowly, though logic, a player is able to determine which card is missing and win the game.

A new version of Sleuth has recently been released. I would recommend tracking down one of the original editions because the cards are less busy and easier to read.

Christmas Eve!! Let’s say that one more time: Christmas Eve!!

Today’s cover represents the second time that Greg from Raw Feed has beat me to the punch on a Christmas cover. I’m sticking with this one regardless. because it sums up my Advent Calendar pretty well: Christmas with the Super-heroes #1.

(Not all of my covers have been super-heroes. In fact just under half (12 of 25) have not been super-hero related. Tomorrow’s Christmas Day cover features no super-heroes, but does touch on another one of my numerous obsessions…)

Only 1 more day until Christmas!
click on image for larger view.

The entire Advent Calendar is available here

Make sure you check out NORAD’s tracking of Santa Claus as he flies around the world on Christmas Eve. If youhaven’t seen it, this site is incredibly clever and well done — and actually made by the people at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command, for all you non-military types out there. Remember the end of Wargames*? NORAD.

*That’s Wargames, the movie with Matthew Broderick; not the recent Batman cross-over event.

Short answer:

• I am opposed to labeling comic books.

Longer answer:

• Labels make it too easy to treat comics (or movies or music) as stereotypes, not as individual works. This is a “violent comic,” this is an “erotic comic” or this is a “foreign comic featuring characters with unnaturally large eyes.” People see the label and think they know they all need to about a book. This tendency to label creeps into medicine too, but I had it beat out of me at an early stage in my career.
• Labels are uninformative. Wanted and Watchmen both contain violence and sex and would undoubtedly be labeled as such, but they are as different as night and day.
• Labels are arbitrary. For example, the movie Angel Heart was originally given an X rating. The producers appeased the MPAA board and earned an R rating by cutting 10 seconds of a female backside during a sex scene. Ten seconds! How much did that matter — and it was her back, not even the most interesting part! I could see this quickly degenerating into a number scenario: two acts of violence earns this rating, three to eight violent acts earns this label, and anything over nine — look out!
• Labels serve as a crutch. Too many parents blindly decide that all works with or without certain labels are fine for their children. This is a breach of their parental responsibilities. It is imperative that parents should decide what works are right or wrong for their children. Labels, or some anonymous “label board” should not decide for them. It amazes me that any parent would purchase (or allow their child to purchase) a comic named Deadshot and be surprised that it features violence. These are probably the same parents who are shocked — shocked, I tell you! — that a game titled “Grand Theft Auto” showcases criminal activity.
  Not just parents use labels as a crutch, but businesses as well. Some stores won’t carry titles with a certain label, regardless of the actual content of the work and whether or not the label is actually deserved.
• Labels rarely work. How many news stories have been aired about kids being able to buy games and music rated “mature” without any age check or parents present?
• Labels are aesthetically unpleasing. Where would labels be placed on comic books ? The front is already crowded enough. The back is advertiser territory. The inside? There might be violence or sex on that first page! Who’s going to look inside to find a label, anyway?
• Labels are decided by someone who is not me. I am the most important arbiter of what is right, or not right, for me and my children. Not other people. My views are what count, not theirs.

In addition to the previously mentioned Wormy, Dragon Magazine has hosted various other excellent strips. The one that I looked forward to the most was What’s New, With Phil and Dixie. Written and drawn by Phil Foglio (now of Girl Genius fame), What’s New was a monthly strip hosted by the bowler-wearing Phil and top-heavy Dixie. They explored various topics in Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing and war games, all the while trying to get permission to do a strip on “Sex in D&D.” The comic ran in Dragon for several years, stopped, then started again in another magazine (the Duelist, I think), and then moved back to Dragon before eventually stopping for good.

There are 3 very worthwhile collected volumes of the strip that can be purchased from various merchants including Phil Foglio’s own StudioFoglio and Steve Jackson’s Warehouse 23.

Comic Book Trivia – In the original Dragon Magazine run of What’s New, there was a strip written about super-hero role-playing games. In addition to mentioning the awesome Gazebo Boy (“Whose single power of transformation does little good against the Mighty Termite”), a hero named Deus Ex Machina Man was introduced. Several years later, Phil Foglio did an Angel and the Ape mini-series (1991). In that series, the comic book that Sam Simeon was illustrating was Deus Ex Machina Man.

It was a busy week in the clinic. It seems that there’s a bronchitis mini-epidemic going on in town. Nothing too severe…more annoying for the patients than anything else. With all the coughing in the office this week, it sounded like there was a pack of seals in the waiting room (Is it pack? Or pod? What do seals hang out in? I’m fascinated by all the different names for groups of animals. My favorties are the gaggle of geese and the murder of crows.) Found this site on animal group names. Apparently there are several possible names for seal groups (including pod); the best is a harem of seals.

Some interesting medical news this week:

• Consumer Reports now rates prescription drugs on their Best Buy Drugs site. Their advice is pretty much right on the money on PPIs (Proton Pump Inhibitors) and cholesterol medications (statins). They’re right about the NSAIDs, except that high dose ibuprofen and salsalate can be difficult on the stomach frequently. Still good advice and it looks like a good site.
• More and more Americans consider TV news a good place to get health information. Well, it’s better than infomercials and spam — but just barely. Here’s an interesting article: Ten Troublesome Trends in TV Health News. I’m certain you will have seen most of these problems your self. (Link from KevinMD)

Have a good weekend! I’m going to relax, attend a Christmas party or two, be grateful I’m not on call this weekend, and catch up on some comics and manga (Sgt. Frog, Love Hina, and Planetes). Don’t worry, the Comic Book Cover Advent Calendar will be updated daily, both here on the blog and at the calendar itself.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for those who have not read War Games: Act Three

War Games: Act Three was a little better than Act Two, but still suffered in comparison to the generally good Act One. The first two parts (Detective Comics and Legends of the Dark Knight) act did a good job of building momentum in the disastrous meeting in the park. Just as tension was building, the storyline switched over to Nightwing and most of the excitement was lost. Robin also focused almost exclusively on one character, but it was full of action and it’s good to see Tim back as Robin. I particularly enjoyed the way he took down the Trickster without any trouble at all (the Trickster is easily my least favorite of the new Rogues.) Tension built again in the claustrophobic Batman: Gotham Knights where Tarantula and her gang were trapped in an old building. Once again, at the height of tension, the main story was derailed to visit solo characters (Batgirl and Catwoman) — not bad issues, but they added little to the overall plot. Batman existed mostly to tie up all the dangling loose ends, and by the way, Spoiler died (which was pretty much the way the story dealt with it).

War Games wasn’t a bad storyline, but it wasn’t particularly good. I’d rate it higher than Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive and Hush, but lower than the Batman Family storyline from two years ago. At several intances, the plot and action became mesmerizing. Unfortunately, every time this happened the solo books slowed the story down quickly and all momentum was lost. In future crossovers, DC should keep the plot in the Batman books. The solo books can supplement the story, but not be mandatory reading.

I spent the day with my partner and our nurse and office manager at the Peoria Women’s Lifestyle Show. To keep me sane, I dragged the poor Polite-Wife along. I also did something I rarely do: I wore a tie. Not just any tie, but a great one that shows the gameboard from Operation. If I have to wear a tie, it’s that one.

I think we did well and it looks like we interested quite a number of patients in our small-town practice. Many of the people in Pekin work in Peoria, and I don’t think that it ever occurred to them that Pekin actually has doctors and they don’t need to drive to Peoria for medical care.

We offered information on women’s health, plus handouts on pregnancy and pediatric wellness. We also offered blood pressure screenings and I offered a quick depression screen (I used a slightly modified version of the Zung screening form, an online version can be found here).

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the booth directly behind us was for the Peoria Civic Center’s “Broadway Series.” They played the soundtrack to Mama Mia over and over and over. If I never hear another Abba song, I’ll die a happy man.

Afterwards, the Polite-Wife and I went to Kelleher’s, a nice Irish Pub on the Peoria riverfront, and had an excellent meal. I was ecstatic to discover they carried my favorite beer Paulaner. I know it’s German and not Irish, but it’s simply the best hefeweizen available. Sadly, it’s hard to find in America. (Yes, Jon, I know you can get it in Indy.)

Warning. Soapbox begins here.
There were quite a number of people at the show who, unasked, came up and gave us their views on vaccinations. Personally, I think vaccines are one of the greatest medical advances of all time. I am fully behind all rigorously tested and approved vaccines. If they’re on the “required” vaccination list, I urge my patients to get them.
I understand that there are people who do not share this belief in vaccinations. In some cases, this is due to a religious objection. I can understand that. What worries me is the growing number of parents who do not vaccinate their children because they are misled or deceived by bad information and unscientific fear mongering.
Ironically, much of this can be blamed on our own success. Most people in this country have never seen a case of polio, or even measles or mumps. Iron lungs and a wheelchair-bound President are things of the past. Deaths from measles, birth defects caused by rubella, and post-mumps sterility are unknown to today’s parents. Sadly, as vaccination rates drop, the incidence of these diseases sky-rockets. Just ask Great Britain, which has seen a dramatic rise in the number of measles cases — and deaths — because of a decline in the number of vaccinated children. Thankfully, America is not to that point…yet.

Soapbox #2.
There was a group at the show selling the “nutritional supplement” Juice Plus. I was content to leave them well enough alone until one of them spotted my physician’s name badge and walked up to me. She asked: “Are you familiar with Juice Plus?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied.
“Then certainly, Doctor,” she said loudly. “You recommend Juice Plus in order to give your patients all the important vitamins and nutrients they need.”
“I do not recommend Juice Plus at all,” I responded calmly. “It is simply an overpriced supplement offering what can be more simply and cheaply obtained by eating a healthy diet. It offers misleading and unscientific evidence as so-called proof, and is really no more than a fancy pyramid scheme.”
I don’t think she liked my answer.
Hint: Don’t puts words in mouth, you won’t like the results.
</soapbox>

There’s something about this show that just grabs my attention. It’s like a car wreck (no joke intended) — you just can’t look away. I think it’s the grainy video and the over-earnest narration that gets me. Whenever I’m flipping through the channels and come upon this on Spike TV (where it’s apparently the only show they have, other than that over-dubbed bizarre Japanese gameshow), I find myself watching for the next 45-minutes.

The good-always-defeats-evil part of me wished they would tell what the ultimate sentence (if there was one) of the people involved was. The last show I watched had a 17 year-old girl who was pulled over for speeding/DUI who got out of her hand-cuffs, commandeered a police squad car and then played bumper-car for the next twenty minutes. I would love to know what happened to her.

And why does the copter pilot always have the same voice, no matter what part of the country the video is from? And why does he always say “narrowly missed an accident” when the two cars were at least half a block apart?

Unlike War Games: Act One, Act Two has very little medicine. Unfortunately, it also had very little of substance occurring at all. Compared to the generally well done Act One, Act Two was mediocre at best.

The first act had two important things that Act Two is lacking: a sense of action and a rewarding climax. In Act One, readers could feel the frantic sense of desperation as the outnumbered Bat-team tried to confront gang after gang after gang. There was a sense of frantic action that is missing entirely from Act Two. The main players in this drama – the warring gangs – are nowhere to be seen in this arc, which is a shame because their cross-purposes and double-crossing made for some entertaining reading.

Act One had a definite climax it was building toward: the showdown at Tim’s school. There was a sense of organized movement. Sadly, this is also missing from the second act. There is no big climax. The big villain reveal was halfway through the storyline – so much for any sense of drama (and the Black Mask – who really cared?). A group of gangs meeting at a park doesn’t sustain the interest like a pitched battle in school hallways, and it doesn’t even happen until the next act.

There were also some moments that stretched believability too far. For instance, I can see Catwoman successfully defeating the Ravens – she has style and ability. But Tarantula handily defeating villains that Batman and Flash have a hard time with? Maybe she could have taken down the new Trickster and that caped guy from last year’s Batman Family crossover, but Killer Croc and Deadshot? No dice.

In terms of supporting characters, it was nice to see the Tim Drake Robin back in on the action. Both Batgirl and Catwoman had two of the better stories this time around. On the other hand, Nightwing has become such a psycho-whiner recently that I wouldn’t care if he did end up as the killer in Identity Crisis. Spoiler? I didn’t like torture being shown in Long Bow Hunters and it hasn’t improved with age. Plus the art in Robin was really ugly, which didn’t help. Speaking of spoilers, I’d like to thank the DC Comics Encyclopedia for giving away too much about certain characters in this storyline.

I hope that Act Three will be able to regain the momentum that this month lost, but I have little hope. DC should have ended War Games after the first month and it would have been a great success.

Space Hulk was an excellent computer game. Fun, yet haunting at the same time. Could you complete the mission with your Space Marines before the Genestealers ate them all? (You knew you were going to lose some, the goal was getting at least one to survive).

Chaos Gate was also a good computer game. It was a good simulation of the Warhammer 40K rules and a lot of fun to play. Even after you finished a mission, you’d play it again and again just knowing that you could do better.

These games are over five tears old now. Whay hasn’t there been a good Warhammer 40K game since? Rites of War – Horrible. Fire Warrior — Boring and predictable.

I have high hopes for the new Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War. Anybody given it a try?

H of the Comic Treadmill wanted to know the S.C.R.U.B.S. score for War Games. For those of you who don’t remember, S.C.R.U.B.S. is a numerical system designed to quickly indicate how likely a particular Batman storyline is to be bad. The higher the number, the more likely that it’s a bad story. Just remember, you asked for this…

Rules of Engagement

1. Basic S.C.R.U.B.S. scoring is used (as of Act One, no Advanced S.C.R.U.B.S. modifiers apply…yet)
2. As this is a 25-part crossover, each comic has a starting score of 13
3. A character’s appearance in their own book does not count against the book (For example, Nightwing appearing in Nightwing is not worth S.C.R.U.B.S. points)
4. All secondary characters play substantial roles, so their reduced point value is used (for example Batgirl is +3 instead of her normal +5). The exception to this is the Spoiler who only has a peripheral role in Act One so is still worth her full +6 points (the exception to the exception is that she plays a major role in Batman: The 12? Adventure, so is only +3 there).
5. The Tarantula is counted as equal in annoyance to Batgirl, Spoiler and Orpheus and as such is worth +5/ +3 (your mileage may vary).
6. Each gang is counted as a villain, not each person in the gang. There are eleven gangs total, but not each gang appears in each issue. Also, Orpheus’s gang is not counted as a villain and nor are the Latin Unifieds once the Tarantula takes control of them. (The stories get confusing sometimes, so I may have lost a gang or two somehwere along the way)

The scores:

• Batman: The 12? Adventure
  13 + Spoiler (+3) + Catwoman (+2) + Orpheus (+3) + Nightwing (+1) + Tarantula (+3) + 11 gangs (+9) + Kobra (+1) = 35
• Detective Comics #797
  13 + Oracle (+1) + Orpheus (+3) + Batgirl (+3) + 5 gangs (+3) = 23
• Legends of the Dark Knight #182
  13 + Orpheus (+3) + Oracle (+1) + Batgirl (+3) + 3 gangs (+1) = 21
• Nightwing #96
  13 + Nightwing (0) + Oracle (+1) + Tim Drake (+1) + Tarantula (+3) + 2 gangs (0) = 18
• Batman: Gotham Knights #56
  13 + Oracle (+1) + Nightwing (+1) + Batgirl (+3) + Tarantula (+3) + 6 Gangs (+4) + Hush (+1) + Prometheus (+1) = 27
• Robin #129
  13 + Tim Drake (0) + 2 gangs (0) = 13
• Batgirl #55
  13 + Batgirl (0) + Oracle (+1) + Spoiler (+6) + 1 gang (0) = 20
• Catwoman#34
  13 + Catwoman (0) + Spoiler (+6) + 1 gang (0) + Mr. Freeze (0) = 19
• Batman #631
  13 + Tim Drake (+1) + Oracle (+1) + Nightwing (+1) + Batgirl (+3) + 6 gangs (+4) = 23
• War Games Act One (as a whole)
  13 + Oracle (+1) + Tim Drake (+1) + Nightwing (+1) + Batgirl (+3) + Catwoman (+2) + Orpheus (+3) + Tarantula (+3) + Spoiler (+6) + 9 gangs (+7) + Kobra (+1) + Hush (+1) + Prometheus (+1) = 43

War Games, Act One, parts 1-8
Detective Comics #797, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #182, Nightwing #96, Batman: Gotham Knights #56 , Robin #129, Batgirl #55, Catwoman #34, Batman #631

In War Games, a meeting between gang bosses has gone awry and the various gangs are hunting each other across the streets of Gotham City. The first five issues of the series were good, building momentum that lasted through Robin. Unfortunately, the story momentum faltered during the Batgirl and Catwoman issues, and by the time the story returned to the high school siege in the final part, it was almost too late to salvage the storyline.

Given the gang war scenario, much of the Act One storyline dealt at least indirectly with medical care ( and trauma care in particular).

Realizing the potential scale of the medical needs of the gang war (Detective Comics #797), Dr. Leslie Thompkins tells her assistants to call in all her favors and order “all the plasma and whole blood anyone can supply”.

• Having extra blood on hand makes good sense, but whole blood is rarely used when packed red blood cells are available. Fluid overload is a significant concern with whole blood and there is a greater chance of transfusion reactions when whole blood is given. Packed red cells are the best choice.
• I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: plasma is not used for traumas; its use is limited to patients with clotting disorders.
• On the positive side, it’s nice to see that at least one penciler (Pete Woods, in this case) knows how to draw a nasal cannula correctly.

Later, when Nightwing visits the Thompkins clinic (in Nightwing #96), this bizarre exchange occurs:

Nurse: “Dr. Thompkins, we’ve got four new penetrating traumas and we’re out of cervical collars.”
Dr. Thompkins: “Exsanguinated?”

Exsanguinated is the past tense of exsanguinate, which means to drain of blood. So Dr. Thompkins is asking if the patients were drained of blood. Since this isn’t a vampire flick, that really doesn’t make any sense. I can see her asking if they are bleeding or were bleeding (especially given the penetrating trauma), but not if they were drained of blood. I chalk this one up to the writer (Devin Grayson) incorrectly using a big medical-sounding word. (Or maybe the vampire crime family from Bite Club has moved to Gotham City.)

In Robin #129, Tim Drake and his friends are caught in the crossfire when several different gangs try to abduct their classmate Darla.

• When his friend Jimmy is shot in the leg, Tim correctly tells a bystander how to place direct pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. He reassures Jimmy, though he should have been more concerned about the fact that he was slipping into shock (“Tim? I feel cold.”).
• Tim does an excellent job of calming potential panic among bystanders and directing them to call 911.
• Later in the issue when Darla is shot, Tim immediately begins performing CPR on her. He is using the correct ratio of 15 compressions to 2 breaths. However, his first concern should be whether Darla even needs CPR. She was shot in the right shoulder/upper back. Based on anatomy, she may have a lacerated subclavian artery (and/or subclavian vein) and a lung injury. The heart was not injured, so the only reason it would stop beating would be lack of blood. Tim needs to stop Darla’s bleeding first and then worry about rescue breathing and chest compressions.

In Catwoman #24, a neighborhood child is shot and Selina brings the patient in to Dr. Thompkins. Thompkins chides her about moving the injured child. As a general rule, it is best not to move an injured patient. If the spine or spinal cord is injured, moving the patient has a chance of worsening the injury. In some other situations (such as a pelvic fracture), moving the patient may increase the bleeding. There are certainly occasions where the patient needs to be moved immediately (a burning car or building, for instance), but this doesn’t seem to be one of them. On the other hand, it’s never mentioned where the child was shot, so it may have been safe to move him after all.

Finally, in the conclusion to War Games Act One (Batman #631), Tim has managed to move Darla to the nurse’s office where the nurse is putting direct pressure on the still bleeding wound (no CPR this time – good!). If Darla’s still bleeding that bad after all this time, it’s definitely not a good sign. According to the nurse she keeps slipping in and out of consciousness which is consistent with shock and the amount of blood she’s lost. It’s really no surpires when she ends up dying of her wound.

It’s that time of year again: the Pekin Marigold Festival. Pekin, like most mid-west towns, has an annual local festival complete with carnival rides, midway games, greasy foods, and local cover bands. The Marigold Festival also has an impressive Arts & Crafts fair. Being the dutiful husband I am, I escorted the Polite Wife to the craft fair and carried lugged her packages back to the house. At least I got paid in kettle corn (mmmm, kettle corn).

Thank goodness the Marigold Festival is over for this year. Sadly, the next town over is having its Pumpkin Festival next weekend. Then there are festivals scheduled in small town after small town every weekend through Halloween. Will the madness never end?

Over at A View From the Ham, Kerry looks into the Political Machine computer game. It’s a game that lets you run either the Kerry or Bush (or even other candidate’s) campaign for President. I saw it on the shelf last week when I was at Best Buy, and briefly glanced at it (OK, I just looked at the cover art). I thought it looked kind of schlocky. Now, reading Kerry’s post and looking more into the game, I find myself intrigued. I just may have to pick it up.

Back in high school, a group of us would get together and play games on Friday night (well, at least until we got our drivers licenses and/or started dating). Usually we played D&D or Call of Cthulhu, but then one day one of my friends brought out this old presidential campaign game of his father’s. It was a great game! Four people played, and each person took the role of one of the presidential or vice-presidential candidates. Over the next several “months”(game turns), your character would travel the country trying to rack up electoral votes. It was a fun game with some clever mechanics. It took about 2 hours (or 1 deci-Risk) to play. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the game, I just know it was old in the mid-to-late 80s, when I was in high school. I think it was Mr. President, but I certainly could be wrong.

If the Political Machine is anything like that game, I’ve got a new time-killer on my hands.

For fans of H.P. Lovecraft, the latest issue of Dragon Magazine (#324, October 2004) contains an article detailing the influence of Lovecraft’s writings on the game of Dungeons & Dragons. A brief synopsis of his life and works begins the article, and then it details adventures, monsters and concepts that the author feels are based on the work of Lovecraft.

The author does a concise job covering the convoluted history of the Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia, especially the much sought after first edition. The Deities & Demigods Cyclopedia was a Dungeons & Dragons reference book that contained statistics for various gods and mythological monsters so that they could be incorporated into the game. In addition to the more common mythologies, there were several chapters based on the works of fantasy authors. One of these was a sizable section with creatures from Lovecraft’s writings. Shortly after publication, Chaosium obtained the rights to Lovecraft’s works (for their Call of Cthulhu role-playing game) and so the later editions of Deities & Demigods did not contain this section. Similarly, Chaosium also obtained the rights to Michael Moorcock’s Elric series and so the Melnibon顮 section of the book was also missing from later editions (though this is not mentioned in the article).

Several extensive quotes culled from some of Lovecraft’s voluminous correspondence are included in the article as well. In particular, there is an interesting quote about the origin of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser that I’ve never seen before (and for the record, the Lankhmar section remained in the later editions of Deities & Demigods).

While there are passages where it feels like the author is reaching too hard for connections, it is a well written piece overall and worth reading for any Lovecraft or D&D fan.

Another must for any fan of H.P. Lovecraft is Pok鴨ulhu: The Adventure Game. Written by S. John Ross and illustrated by John Kovalic, this game somehow manages to combine the classic works of Lovecraft with Pok魯n. The results are a short hilarious game that is worth every penny of its $5.95 price tag. There are enough inside jokes for both Pok魯n players and long time Lovecraft aficionados to keep the reader in stitches for hours (check out the map on the inside front cover). Now they even make Pok鴨ulhu miniatures!

Unfortunately, Lovecraft does not always get good press. In 1987 Baen Books published a collection of Robert E. Howard stories entitled Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors. Being a fan of both Lovecraft and Howard, I picked it up the minute I saw it. Reading the introduction by David Drake, you would think that Howard was the sole creator and writer involved in the weird tales genre. Lovecraft is only mentioned once, and then in a derogatory fashion. This is despite the fact that his creation Cthulhu is the first word in the title and a picture of Cthulhu adorns the cover.

In no way am I maligning Howard’s work. He wrote some excellent stories in this genre, and most are collected in this book (including the incredible “Pigeons From Hell”). It just irks me the misleading way that Baen published this otherwise excellent collection.

With most doctors in comic books, it is unclear what they are actually doctors of. Some seem to be an uber-doctor, such as Reed Richards or Henry McCoy, who are capable of doing anything vaguely medically- or scientifically-related. On the other hand, there are several who call themselves doctor who never seemed to have earned the title.

Of those doctors with declared specialties, the most common seems to be a “doctor of the mind.” In this situation, I’m using the term to refer to both psychiatrists and psychologists. A psychologist is an individual with a degree in psychology (a doctoral degree if they claim the title doctor), while a psychiatrist is a medical doctor who specializes in the diseases and conditions of the mind. Unfortunately, many comic books have used the terms interchangeably, making for unclear origins of some characters.

Why the fascination with psychiatrists and pyschologists? First, they fit well into the super-hero mythos. With most villains — and many heroes — neurotic if not psychotic, there’s a good fit for these doctors. Dr. Samson, Dr. (Hugo) Strange, and Dr. Quinzel all started out as professionals and then became heroes/villains later. Second, there remains a negative stigma to “shrinks” that gives an instant (albeit superficial) depth to their characters. This is a real-life stigma in that no one likes to admit that they are seeing a “counselor” lest others think poorly of them. More importantly, it is a stigma left over from too many B-grade movies, soap opera plots, bad books and pulp magazines where the nefarious psychiatrist always has an agenda of their own. By having a character be a psychiatrist or psychologist, the writer warns the reader that “this character is up to something.”

The following is a list of prominent comic book psychiatrist and psychologists:
Psychiatrists:
Dr. Leonard Samson Gamma-endowed green-tressed adventurer and doctor.
Dr. Psycho Wonder Woman villain and all around…umm…psycho.
Dr. Wolper Deluded psychiatrist from the Dark Knight Returns.

Psychologists:
Dr. Blink Shrink to the Super-Heroes, featured in Dork Stork Press’s FCBD book.
Scarecrow Jonathan Crane, former Gotham University professor turned super-villain (and soon to be a movie star in Batman Begins)

Unclear:
Brother Voodoo Generally understood to be a psychologist (his entry in the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe reads that way), but he has been referred to as a psychiatrist as well. Brother Voodoo is the only one on this list (with the possible exception of Dr. Blink) who doesn’t have some underlying psychiatric disorder.
Dr. Harleen Quinzel Better known as Harley Quinn. She has been referred to as a psychiatrist, graduate student, psychologist, psychoanalyst, and intern. Part of this confusion is due to the multiple versions of Harley including Batman: The Animated Series, the regular DC Batman family of books, and the Birds of Prey television show.
Dr. Hugo Strange A Batman villain described variously as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or psychoanalyst. Whatever, he’s nuts.

*Nope, Dr. Wolper and Dr. Samson both have decidedly Narcisstic personalities, and Samson has some significant Histrionic traits as well.

Remember back in 1997, when an episode of Pokemon was accused of causing seizures in Japanese children? Recent follow-up research has shown what was suspected: the show caused seizures only in people who were already prone to seizures, but not in the general population.

A certain percentage of individuals have always been susceptible to seizures caused by lights flashing in just the right way. This is nothing new. There are instances during the Vietnam War of seizures being triggered by the light flickering through rotating helicopter blades.

The Pokemon episode was simply another one of these situations. Similarly, this is why videogames carry seizure warnings.

These situations do not cause epilepsy as much as they uncover a susceptibility to seizures that was already there.

(I’ve seen that episode at a convention, and all I can saw is “Wow, that was actually painful to watch.” Not because of the script, but because of all the bright flashing lights…no seizures for me, though!)

My first issue of the new monthly Comic Buyer’s Guide arrived today, horribly mangled by the postal service. I haven’t read it front to back yet, but I’ve read enough of it to form some definite opinions.

At 290 pages, the magazine has a definite heft to it, and the binding is nice. It’s clearly designed for the magazine rack. The title is large and there’s a prominent picture of Spider-Man on the front. The front cover blurbs were a little “magazine-y”. Examples: “Are comics shrinking? Analysis inside!” and “The Purr-fect Guide to Screen Catwomen.”

The interior layout is improved with cleaner fonts and better graphics. About half the pages are black and white newsprint, while the rest are a heavier color stock. Page numbers are prominently displayed, and the ads – even the cheesy ones – are better looking than ever.

Nearly every columnist has migrated from the weekly edition to this monthly one, with an appropriate increase in page count. Tony Isabella does well with his pages, and Peter David’s column, while interesting, would have been better served at half its length. It’s particularly nice to see “Mr. Silver Age” on color pages, but it seems a waste for Captain Comic’s “Canceled Comics Cavalcade” to be in color while the rest of his column is in black and white. The letter pages are still included, but are now located in the back. I guess that’s more traditional for comics, but I always liked them up front. The comic strips are back, for better or worse, though I didn’t see any Fred Hembeck.

The review section has increased in size. With nearly instantaneous reviews available online, monthly reviews strike me as archaic. In general the reviews online are longer and more in-depth than the blurbs available in the CBG. I’d rather see the space used for more columns or historical articles. The manga/anime section has also increased in size, but should still be several pages longer.

There were several interesting feature articles. The best concerned the actresses and voice actresses who have played Catwoman, while the one relating the history of Catwoman was far too superficial. The section on comic book movie trailers also struck me as too superficial and uncritical.

My biggest concern with the monthly magazine is the inclusion of the price guide. Do we really need this on a monthly basis? A price guide just reinforces the idea that comics exist mostly as a collectible item. It also takes up nearly one-third of the magazine. And is a price guide for super-hero collectible card games really necessary?

Overall it is an impressive looking magazine. Production values are clearly improved, and content essentially the same as the weekly incarnation, only more so. There seems to be a concerning trend toward the superficiality in articles; I’d rather have fewer longer articles than more short ones. At this point I can’t recommend it over the weekly version, but I’ll certainly give it a few more months to catch its stride before I decide for sure.

The Polite-wide and I had a nice time in St. Louis with my parents. It was their anniversary, so we took them out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, The Blue Water Grill, and had an excellent meal. My mother and wife split this enormous chocolate-sampler dessert, and both reported that they could not eat another bite of chocolate (which is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, I believe). We returned to my folk’s house after dinner and caught the end of the NASCAR Pepsi-Cola 400. It was a surprisingly good race. I’ve never been a fan of the restrictor plate races (Daytona, Talladega), because the tracks seem to favor pure chance over skill. The new aero packages and smaller gas tanks seemed have allowed skill and strategy to return, and the race was exciting to watch (plus Bobby Labonte finished in the top 10, keeping him near the top overall).

Managed to stop into a comic shop near my parents yesterday. I was pleased and disappointed. I was pleased that they were plainly offering the FCBD comics (well, the gold ones) — plus what seemed to be some left over from last year. I was disappointed by their selection of comics overall. They had Marvel, DC, Dark Horse and Image. Not much else. Their idea of an independant was Thundercats. I asked for Demo #7, because I didn’t see it on the shelves. I had to patiently explain what it was and who published it. And no, they didn’t have it, because (and I quote here): “Those artsy books don’t sell.” Well, if you don’t offer them, they won’t sell! Buying comics off the internet doesn’t seem so bad now.

This morning, I got up before the crack of dawn and drove to the St. Louis waterfront to run a 10K (6.2 mile) race. It was the fourth 10K I’ve run in downtown St. Louis, and every one has followed a different route. I was pleased with my effort, and my (nearly) daily runs seem to be paying off. Not once during this race did I my usual “Now why did I think this was a good idea?” thought cross my mind. All participants received a commemorative medal too, which was a nice touch.

We drove back to central Illinois tonight, and have been watching the city foreworks from our porch for the last 45 minutes. I can hear them outside the window and they’re still going on now. Pretty good fireworks for such a small town.

Sunday Blog-o-Bits:

1. Check out the CDC’s infectious disease trading cards. (Brought to my attention by the Steve Jackson Games’s Daily Illuminator, the source for interesting links of all sorts.)
2. There is an excellent new illustrated Solomon Kane book out. It collects all of Robert E. Howard’s Kane stories, plus it contains some material I’ve never seen before, such as an alternate version of Solomon Kane’s Homecoming. If you are a Solomon Kane fan, a Howard fan, or just interested in classic pulp fiction, you need to check this book out.
3. It’s Independence Day. When’s the last time you watched 1776?
   My favorite line from the movie: “I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a Congress! “

I love video games. I have been playing video games for close to two decades now, and own a few (ahem) game systems. As I get older, however, I find that fewer and fewer games are appealing to me.

In some cases, the subject matter itself, or the way it is portrayed, is offensive. Some genres and titles just don’t interest me (football games, for example). Most of the problem is that I’m just not getting my money’s worth out of games anymore. Ironically, it’s not because they’re too short, but instead they are too long. When I was in school, or even residency, I had a lot more free time. When I was off duty, I was free. No “home call”, no family, no house to take care of. Then, I could spend 90+ hours finishing Final Fantasy VII. Now, that’s no longer practical. I need games that don’t go on forever. Games that don’t require a hint book. Games that I can finish before I lose interest.

The industry needs to pay more attention to the desires of mature gamers. We need games that are playable, fun, and finishable. Mature gamers may not be as numerous as younger gamers, but I suspect we have a great deal more money.

I would like to see games that:

• Can be finished in a few good weekends (around 30 hours of gameplay).
• Have a gentle learning curve and a logical control scheme.
• Are replayable (hidden areas, power-ups, etc.)
• Have good graphics and a good storyline.
• Are divided into manageable areas and have a good save system.

True, some companies make “budget games” that are shorter, but they generally are of shoddy quality all around. I want to see big budget games that can be enjoyed by people with limited time (and in some cases, limited abilities).

The two Ratchet & Clank games are good games. The basic game takes just about 20-30 hours, but there are many areas to go back and explore after the game itself is finished. Saves are logical, and finishing a level is a good nights play. The graphics are good, the voice acting excellent, and the story line in engrossing with lots of humor.

Primal is also a contender. The game is longer, but allows you to save anywhere. The graphics are excellent, and it has the best voice acting I’ve ever heard. The captivating story is easy to follow yet captivating.

The new Pitfall games does not come close. The control scheme is awkward and the save game scheme poorly thought out. The levels vary from simplistic to near-impossible-to-figure-out-what-the-designer-had-in-mind. The story and graphics are childish.

The score…. Ratchet & Clank 1 & 2: good. Primal: good. Pitfall: Bad. A game industry that listens to mature players: Important and needed.