Polite Dissent

The science, while a little sketchy, wasn’t half-bad in this episode of Fringe. Despite this, I found the story itself rather lackluster.

The Plot:In Seattle, Greg, a businessman, walks through his office, late for a meeting with his boss. As he moves through the office, he notices that everyone he sees has the heads of demons rather than their proper heads. When he enters the conference room, he sees that his boss is also a demon, so he bludgeons him to death with his briefcase. The co-workers who wrestle Greg to the ground notice that his eyes are cloudy and twitching.

The Fringe team is called to Seattle to evaluate the case. They interview Greg at the hospital and he tells them what he saw in the office. Suddenly, he begins thrashing wildly in bed, his hair turns completely white, and he collapses, dead. Walter assists that local medical examiner with the autopsy and determines that Greg died of “acute exhaustion.” He arranges for the body to be sent to his lab at Harvard for a more complete, Walter style, autopsy.

Talking with Greg’s wife, Dunham and Peter learn that he had a history of sleep walking, but it hadn’t been a problem for several months since visiting some specialists.

A second incident has occurred: a woman driving a mini-van told her husband she saw a monster and drove her car into an innocent cyclist. She died at the scene and was found to have the same white hair Greg did.

Back in his lab, Walter finds a microchip implanted in Greg’s midbrain. A quick look at the body of the second victim shows an incision on the neck suggesting she had the same operation. Broyles takes the microchip to Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamics who identifies it as a chip designed to work on the thalamus to promote sleep. She identifies its creator as a Dr. Nayak, also in Seattle.

Dunham and Peter pay Dr. Nayak a visit. He identifies both victims as patients of his who are taking part in a clinical study on the brain chip. He takes Dunham and Peter to his office only to finf there has been a break-in. Nayak’s office has been trashed and the computers containing all the patient data are missing.

Walter and Peter hypothesize that someone is using the chips as a rudimentary form of mind control. Meanwhile, in a dark room, we see shadowy someone access the clinic’s computers and select a patient — a waitress at a local Greek restaurant. Soon she begins hallucinating before attacking the chef and then collapsing, dead. Nayak identifies her as one of his patients as well.

Back on the east coast, Walter has been experimenting with the chip and discovers that it siphons the patient’s dreams away so that they never dream. The chips can also be used to place the patient in a dreaming state while awake. Finally, he discovers that whoever is on the receiving end of the chip gets an incredible high from the stolen dreams. Olivia realizes that they are looking for someone addicted to the dreams. A brief amount of detective works reveal that Dr. Nayak himself is the perpetrator. He has a dream-addicted dark side that is causing all the problems. They track him to his home just as he is using his machine to activate the chip in an airline pilot’s head. Dunham destroys the computer, saving the pilot (and his crew and passengers), but killing Dr. Nayak in the process.

Overall this week, I felt the science was not entirely implausible, a step up from the usual. So most of what follows are probably best regarded as “nit-picks”

1. Wherein I Make Some Concessions
I agree that exhaustion/stress can cause high cortisone levels and dehydration. For the sake of the story, I will also accept that it can cause sudden loss of hair pigment (a la Jean Valjean) and thyroid disorders. However, I am at a loss to explain how it can cause the sudden appearance of large patches of thickened flaking skin. Sure, dehydration and low thyroid can cause skin problems, but it is the entire skin, not just large discrete patches.

2. We Solve the Problem by Breaking the Space-Time Continuum
Let me get this straight: the brain chip is used to correct non-REM sleep disorders. It does this by siphoning off dreams. Now, dreams generally occur in REM sleep, which comes after non-REM sleep. So the chips fix the sleep by removing something that hasn’t even occurred yet.

3. Department of Redundancy Department
“Blood CBC” is hopelessly redundant. CBC stands for complete blood count, so a blood CBC is a blood complete blood count.
A CBC looks at the blood cells (white, red, platelets). It doesn’t look at hormones like thyroxine and cortisol, that’s a different test entirely.

4. OMG, n00b
Yes hackers steal passwords. They also mount DDOS attacks, but these are two separate things. Claiming the lack of DDOS attack means that a hacker couldn’t be involved means the FBI (or the Fringe writers) need much better forensic computer experts. (And what would a DDOS attack against a single clinic server accomplish, anyway?)

5. It’s Not Brain Surgery — Wait, Maybe It Is
The thalamus is located deep in the center of the brain. Any surgery to reach it, let alone implant a chip in it, is going to be a major undertaking — a hole in the skull needs to made after all — and wouldn’t be performed as an outpatient clinic procedure.
The thalamus is part of the diencephalon, making it forebrain, not midbrain.
And good luck getting the clinical trial approved by the IRB.

6. Your Suspicions Are Suspicious
Hearing that one of his employees was suspected, one would think that Dr. Nayak would have volunteered the information about his assistant being missing earlier in the day, rather than waiting until the end of it (or was that the effect of Hyde-Nayak?).

7. A Shot In The Dark
Peter, Dunham and the other FBI agent can’t find an on/off switch or a plug or a circuit breaker between the three of them? So the next logical step is shooting the server?

It’s the reverse of last week. This time, I found the science acceptable, but the story tepid — so they cancel out and the clock stays at 11:55

A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.

Tags: television medicine fringe sleep rem hacker adrenalin

Famed actress Miss Senter¹ has been injected with the Ugly Serum, and in the climactic scene of her new play the serum takes effect. In the space of just a few seconds, she goes from stunning beauty to complete ugliness².

A mysterious note turns up demanding $50,000³ for the antidote to the serum. The actress decides she must pay up to save her career and heads off to exchange the money for the antidote. Silver Scorpion⁴ — legal secretary by day, super-hero by night — follows along and manages to capture “Mr. Black” a.k.a. “The Beauty Butcher,” but better known as:

Notes:
1. Miss Senter apparently does not have a first name — or if she does, it’s “Miss.” In the eleven times she’s spoken to or even mentioned in the story, it is always as “Miss Senter.”
2. Assuming you equate ugliness with old age, as author/artist Harry Sahle apparently does. To me, it seems more of an Aging Serum than an Ugly Serum.
3. $50,000 may not seem like that much to extort an actress for, but remember, this was published in 1941. In today’s money (or 2008, the latest year I could find the information for), this would be equal to about $725,000.
4. Surprising few, this was Silver Scorpion’s third and final Golden Age appearance.

This episode seemed to have potential — strange creature from lab released by animal rights activists that proceeds to terrorize the countryside. But then the bad science and awkward storyline kicked in.

The Plot: A group of animal activists break into a research lab and frees all the animals from their cages. They also release a particularly nasty creature hidden in the back of the lab. The monster shows its gratitude by promptly killing one of the activists and a scientist who tried to stop them. It then hunts down and kills the other activists as they are fleeing in an SUV.

Agent Dunham and her team are called in the next morning when the wrecked car and shredded bodies are found. One of the dead bodies is moved back to the lab where Walter performs and autopsy and finds a stinger of some sort buried in the body. He also finds hundreds of larval worms in the body, apparently implanted by the creature. Unfortunately, by this time Charlie has encountered the monster and been attacked. He survived, but has become implanted with the larvae as well.

Walter has deduced that the monster is a transgenic animal — composed of the genes and attributes of multiple species. He is worried that it may be based on his work because he experimented with transgenics years before. For once, the “science” turns out to be unrelated to his research.

Walter theorizes that the only way to kill the larvae inside of Charlie is to transfuse him with some of the monster’s blood so that the larvae will get confused and stop feeding on him. The team traps the monster in the sewers and kills it, but they collect enough blood to transfuse Charlie and save his life.

1. Worry Wart
After all the other episodes where the plot was based on Walter’s research, why is he suddenly worried about the morality of it. Plenty of people have died because of his work already this season.

2. Blue Genes
Transgenic animals have been used in research for years. They are animals that express genes from other sources, or express specially modified genes. Walter seemed to be talking about transgenics taken to a whole new level — plus he was confusing it with xenografting (transplanting parts from different animals) with his talk about rejection.

“Accelerated Darwinism”
A nonsense phrase and a particularly stupid one at that. The theory of evolution applies to natural selection, and the selection here was man-made, pretty much the opposite of natural..

3. Keep the Needle Away From Me
Astrid is told to draw 25cc of blood from Charlie and she sticks the needle in the belly? She might get some peritoneal fluid, but the big blood vessels are deep in the abdomen. Why not just draw blood from the arm like a normal person?

4. Lucky Shot
Where was the incendiary part of the incendiary 50 caliber rounds? And wouldn’t incendiary rounds have made it that much more difficult to get blood from it.

5. Ultra-Special
That was impressive resolution on that out of date ultrasound machine. Even more impressive was how the picture stayed perfectly still despite Walter waving the wand all over Charlie’s chest. (That last sentence should get some interesting Google searches)

6. The Belly of the Beast
So the idea was that by giving Charlie some of Mama Monster’s blood, the baby monsters would get confused (in that “can’t tell self versus non-self” way), and thus miraculously die off (cause of death? Confusion.) So how did the proteins on Mama’s blood cells get into Charlie’s peritoneal fluid so fast, if at all? Why not just inject an anti-parasitic into the peritoneal fluid, thus bypassing most of the side effects Charlie would suffer.

7. Random Thoughts
Apparently the monster has either blue curaçao or Windex for blood.
Johnathan Swift?
Clearly Walter missed Aliens when he was in the asylum or he would have known to look up.

Another week of bad science, and characters acting, well, out of character. The Fringe Doomsday Clock gains another minute and stands at 11:57 (meaning that all the gains from the good episodes before the break have been lost).

Bruce Banner is lured to Europe by Victoria Frankenstein, the great grand-daughter of the infamous Victor Frankenstein. She has brought Banner to Europe to help her revive her great grandfather’s creature, who has been steadily decaying over the years. Using his superlative knowledge of medicine and anatomy (which is all the more impressive because he is a physicist), Banner helps her repair the creature. One stormy night, the full extent of her plans becomes clear when she sedates Banner and hooks him up to a machine to transfuse his gamma-irradiated blood into the creature. It is his blood, along with about a gazillion volts of lightning, that will revive the Frankenstein monster.

Her plan is a success. Not only is the monster reborn, but now he is gamma-irradiated as well. As for how the story ends, you’ll have to read the comic for yourself…

Scene from the first story in The Monster-Sized Hulk Special, by Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman. It’s a good, fun story — but in terms of classic monster transfusions, I still think the one where Batman transfuses a vampire is the best.

Other Comic Book Transfusions

Otorrhagia — bleeding from the ear canal — seems to be a recurrent theme in recent comics. It’s been showing up for at least twenty years, but it seems to have become more common lately.

Otorrhagia is not a very common symptom; I see maybe one or two cases a year (and most of those are self-inflicted Q-tip-related trauma). There are a variety of causes, including (in no particular order): basal skull fracture, trauma to the ear canal, tumors of the auditory canal, certain aneurysms, infections of the ear canal, and ruptured ear drums (especially from barotrauma – i.e. pressure).

Comic books add several more causes of otorrhagia:
1. Psychic attack
Not as common as the psychic nosebleed, which it usually accompanies. Here is a classic example of the psychic ear bleed, from the X-Men graphic novel God Loves Man Kills.

2. Sonic bombardment
Another common cause of comic book otorrhagia.
This example is from Cyborg #2

3. Extreme Vertigo.
Poor Invincible, not only does he have so dizzy he can’t think straight, but his ears are bleeding. It turns out the vertigo is caused by an implant in his ear, so that could be the cause of the bleeding (but if that’s the case then the surgeon who put it in should lose his license for sloppiness). Neither can explain the nosebleed he gets a few panels later though.

4. Possession/Reincarnation by a New God.
I’m not sure what the proper term is in this case, but whatever it is, Turpin’s ear is bleeding pretty heavily (from Final Crisis #2).

The good old days — when candy was considered a health food!

RICH IN DEXTROSE
The sugar your body uses directly for ENERGY!

Or if that hasn’t convinced you:

Have more fun and more energy, too! Eat a Baby Ruth Candy Bar whenever you need an energy-boost to speed up your efforts. Its wholesome ingredients are rich in Dextrose to give you a delicious, nutritious treat. Baby Ruth tastes so good — it’s so good for you!

Just for fun, let’s compare some basic nutrition information for a Baby Ruth candy bar and today’s energy source of choice, a Monster Energy Drink (both standard sized). I’ll also throw in an apple for comparison:

Click on the ad to the right for the full image

	Baby Ruth	Monster	apple
Calories:	275	200	65
Carbs:	39g	52g	17g
Sugars:	32g	52g	13g

Ad from Captain America Comics #24, March 1943

Pappy posts a lot of great Golden Age stories, and he’s recently posted a classic evil scientist (or at least “misguided scientist”)/monster story from Chamber of Chills Magazine #5.

In this comic we learn:

1. If you touch the wrong part of the brain, you can turn your patient into a monster. Not just figuratively, but literally, with sharp fangs, pointed ears, and green skin (well do I remember that first day of my surgical rotation, when the Chief Resident sat us down as a class and taught us the four basic lessons of the rotation: “Eat when you can”, “Sleep when you can”, “Pee when you can”, and “Don’t touch the wrong part of the brain or your patient will turn into a monster”.)
2. For God’s sake, let the nurse carry the syringe and give the injection. She’s better at giving shots than a doctor anyway.
3. On the other hand, that same nurse will abandon her patient to the monster without batting an eye.
4. It is never a good idea to store a large bottle of acid on the top shelf. If you do decide to store a large bottle of acid on the top shelf, at least put a lid on it.
5. If said acid just happens to fall and splash on someone’s face, they too will gain an instant monster-like visage, including blue skin and fangs.

(For once, I will not complain about the surgical team’s lack of eyewear because eye protection was not required back when the story was written.)

Head over to Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine and check out “Operation Monster”.

A Casper the Friendly Ghost PSA about brushing your teeth and visiting your “friendly” dentist. It also features Wendy, the Good Little Witch, as well as two random passerby kids, a happy tooth, and some anthropomorphic toiletries (so the floss is alive but not the toothbrush? It’s a little creepy when you think about it…take the toothpaste, is he going to say, “Kid, I want you to squeeze my innards onto that toothbrush and then clean your teeth. Do it every day, repeatedly. And don’t worry, when I’m empty, just throw me out in the trash with the empty cat food cans!”) Plus there’s the plaque monster painting the tooth yellow(?).

All in all, I think I prefer Crest Team, who defended Toothopolis against the Cavity Creeps…

Click on the image for a larger version of the ad

More PSAs

Tags: comics psa casper teeth dentist

A map of Kamandi’s post-apocalyptic world, courtesy of Jack Kirby and Kamandi Archives, Volume 1.

Click on the Image for the Full-Sized Map

I tried to superimpose an actual map of North America (or at least the United States) over the image, but Kirby is using such an uncommon map projection that it was impossible to achieve a map that was not grossly distorted. Near as I can tell, I’m living at the point where the Gorilla Communes, the Tiger Empire, and the unnamed area just south of the Monster Lake all converge. Gives new meaning to the term “Gateway City.”

Kirby’s story doesn’t follow the map all the precisely anyway. In the comic, he has the Las Vegas area populated by members of the Gorilla Commune when the map shows it should be firmly in the area of the Lion Tribes.

Tags: comics kamandi jack kirby apocalypse

Here’s a scene from inside the mysterious icosahedron (“Have In”) from The All New Atom #13 that features a parade of deceased heroes (with jet packs!). In the lower left corner you’ll notice Hawk flying along*.

But is it Hawk, or a mis-colored Dove? The costume has some features of both of their outfits, but doesn’t quite match either — although it seems closer to Dove’s to me. Plus I can see at least two other coloring errors on the page. Since Hawk died as Extant, you’d think he’d come back as a villain or in a different costume, but then there’s already been one appearance of dead Hank in Hawk’s costume in Teen Titans. Just a little food for thought from an unrepentant Hawk and Dove fanboy…

SPOILER TEXT: Of course, they’re all ultimately exposed as artificial constructs, so it’s a moot point.

*As far as I can tell, the parade consists of — from roughly right to left — a Flash, a Rocket Red, Frankenstein’s Monster Frankenstein Jr., Isis, Crimson Dynamo Crimson Avenger, Vigilante, Skyman, Red Bee, Hawkwoman, Phantom Lady, some distant female figure (I’m guessing Terra, but that doesn’t seem quite right), Hawk, Judo Master, and Starman (another guess as the costume doesn’t quite match). On the ground watching are Donna Troy, the Atom, Jason Todd, a Monitor, and Ted Kord.

This nice example of a psychic nose bleed — and accompanying eye bleed — comes from Ms. Marvel #16, where S.H.I.E.L.D. psychic Agent Locke fires a “neural blast” to incapacitate the various members of A.I.M. and their monsters that she is fighting. It worked incredibly well, but also knocked her down for the count. I’m a little behind on my S.H.I.E.L.D. history — I remember that there were S.H.I.E.L.D. psychics (“ESPers”) shown during the the original Micronauts series (issues #25-28, the return of Baron Karza), and now Agent Locke and other psychic agents have been introduced recently. Was their any mention of S.H.I.E.L.D. psychics in the intervening twenty-five years? All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts Tags: comics medicine nosebleed ms marvel shield

The Fountain of Youth has long been a staple of stories and legends. It should come as no surprise then that the legend has made its way into comic books as well. Not always the fountain itself (though it does show up from time to time), but the concept of restoring youth to an older or aged character. In comic books, there are many ways this can occur, and regaining one’s lost youth is rarely a good thing.

Magic is the most common method of de-aging characters, at least when one considers the number of individuals affected For example, Klarion used his powers to de-age the entire JLA and JSA during the Sins of Youth storyline. Monster Girl of the Guardians of the Globe (as seen in Invincible) grows younger because of a curse whenever she uses her powers. Superman was turned into Superbaby by a mystic potion (labeled “Ye Youth Potion,” of course) in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #32.

Alien Super Technology is another common method of de-aging characters. It was used notably on Magneto and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants by Alpha the Ultimate Mutant* in Defenders #16 and the Atom (Ray Palmer) during Zero Hour. Mojo used the superior technology of his Mojoverse to change the X-Men into the X-Babies in X-Men Annual #10.

Plain old American Mad Science can make characters more youthful as well. Lois Lane found this out when she decided to expose herself to Professor Lockhart’s Youth Rays in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #10 and ended up as a bawling baby.

Mutant powers can also lead to the de-aging of a character. This can be a mutant whose powers affect others (like Nanny, who regressed Storm in the Uncanny X-Men), or a character whose powers affect themselves (Sally Floyd’s daughter Minnie, as mentioned in Generation M).

Surprisingly, there is no mention of any de-aging medication (unless one counts Ye Youth Potion) in any comic book that I can find. (Slightly off topic, but as far as I’m concerned, the best scene with youth-restoring medication in literature of any sort occurs in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator).

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You’ll notice that I’m only considering situations where a character actually becomes younger, not ones where lifespan and youth are preserved (like, Steve Rogers and Nick Fury) — that’s a post for another day.

I’m also not considering cases where the youthful characters are explained away as clones or denizens of an alternate universe (Batch SW6 in Legion of Super-Heroes, or the younger Tony Stark in Avengers: The Crossing)

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*This could also be considered de-aging due to mutant powers, but since Alpha was bio-engineered by Magneto using alien technology, I’m classifying it as “alien super tech.”

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Other Comic Book Diagnoses:
Frozen Solid
Brains! Brains!
Hypertrichosis
Xenografting

Tags: comics medicine youth jla jsa superman lois lane atom magneto x-babies

Armageddon 2001 was the big DC “event comic” of 1991. There were two bookend comics, Armageddon 2001 #1 and #2, at the beginning and end of the summer. In between, all the annuals (back with every series had an annual) tied into the storyline: in the not too distant future of 2001 (remember, this was written in 1991), the villainous Monarch has taken over the entire world and slaughtered all the super-heroes. The kicker is that he used to be a super-hero himself before becoming evil, but no one knows which hero. One of the citizens of the dystopic future uses experimental equipment to gain time-based superpowers. As “Waverider,” he can travel through time. He can also look into a person’s future just by touching them. He resolves to use his powers to travel back to 1991, the year when Monarch first appeared, and discover Monarch’s identity by looking into the future of each hero.

In Hawk & Dove Annual #2, Waverider appears just as Hawk and Dove have broken up a mugging. First he touches Hawk. He sees a future where Hank has become a member of Monarch’s Peacemakers, his powerful Brownshirt-like police force. Hank is unhappy because he realizes that the Peacemakers are no better than thugs and Monarch just a tin-plated despot. His attitude has already gotten him in trouble once when his superiors decided that Hank needs a little “re-education.” Hank takes this as an opportunity to turn into Hawk, for the first time in years, and face Monarch mano a mano. He explains to Monarch that he hasn’t been in hiding, but slowly and carefully building up his powers to become more powerful. Hawk transforms into a more powerful version of Hawk (who looks ridiculous, like a thick-waisted chicken-headed monster) and attacks Monarch. Despite all his added power, Hawk is still losing the fight when Dove rescues him by bringing him over to another dimension where she’s been hiding and building a resistance against Monarch.

Next, Waverider touches Dove — but unlike other heroes, her link to Order allows her to sense him and she realizes what he is doing. She takes control of Waverider’s powers and shows him three futures, which may or may not be linked. First, there is a council of war on a distant planet. Encouraged by an aged Dove, they agree to attack Monarch before he becomes an intergalactic problem. Second, on another planet (which looks to be Gemworld), Dove mourns a dead Hawk. She is also raising her child, who has some sort of magical powers. For the third future, Dove brings Waverider back to his own world of Armageddon 2001. In this future, Hank is married to Ren and Dawn to Captain Arsala. Hank and Dawn have realized that it is time to confront Monarch one last time. They realize that they are likely to die in the battle, and ask Ren and Arsala to raise their child (Hank and Dawn’s — or is it Hawk and Dove’s) in secret.

Finally, Waverider touches both Hawk and Dove together. In this vision of the future, a young, female, first-nameless Dr. Arsala is the top neurosurgeon of the time, good enough to catch the eye of Monarch. She is also a friend of Barter’s, and he gives her two special gifts that he says comes from her “real parents” who died fighting Monarch. He gives her a vial of Chaos (the essence of Kestrel he took from Ren back in Hawk & Dove #17) and a gem of Order (the blue gem Hawk fought in Hawk & Dove #25) and tells her to remember “unity.” Puzzled, Dr. Arsala talks to her father, the former Captain Arsala, who tells her that Barter was right — Hawk and Dove were her parents. He explains a little about her real parents to her, and how they gained powers by speaking a certain word. She remembers what Barter told her and speaks the word “unity” — and she is instantly transformed into Unity, who seems to have the powers of both Hawk and Dove. Her costume reflects both of her parent’s costumes, in color at least (purple instead of red or blue), though the actual design leaves much to be desired. She confronts Monarch and decides that she will use her super-powers combined with her neurosurgical skills to physically and literally change his mind.

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This comic, published shortly after Hawk & Dove #28 (the official “last issue”) is a fitting epilogue to the series. It follows the themes presented in the series, particularly after Hawk and Dove’s return from Druspa Tau, to their logical conclusion. The annual ties nicely into the continuity of the regular series with such things as Barter, the essence of Kestrel, and the Order gem. It also manages to fit into the Armageddon 2001 storyline in a logical fashion, better than any of the other annuals, and as far as I can tell it was the only annual that actually dealt with Monarch.

Sadly, the art was sub-par for most of the issue. The connecting sequences were by Curt Swan, and while better than his work on issue #28, I still don’t care for his take on Hawk and Dove. The Dove sequences were drawn well, but the Hawk and Hawk-and-Dove sequences could have used better pencils. The character designs, particularly of the supposed-to-be-impressive über-Hawk and Unity, were more silly than awe-inspiring.

All Previous Hawk and Dove Reviews

Tags: comics hawk dove armageddon 2001 monarch waverider unity barter

From Adventure Comics #397 (September 1970)
Click on the image for the full sized ad

How do they know the Moon Monster is “life size”?

Tags: comics monster fan club

Continuing my series of medical annotations of Naoki Urawawa’s excellent manga Monster.

There is barely any medicine in Monster Volume 5, but it’s my favorite volume of the series so far because of the well-realized characters within it. There is Dr. Rudi Gellen, a former classmate — really a former competitor – of Tenma during medical school. He is now a respected clinical psychologist and when Tenma ends up on his doorstep, will he help him or turn him over to the police? (He should really be a criminal psychiatrist and not a psychologist, so I wonder if that’s a translation mistake or just another appearance of a common error — confusing psychiatrists and psychologists).

Nina Fortner appears again, chasing Michael, one of the ex-cops who murdered her foster parents. Johann, Nina’s brother and the monster of the title, doesn’t appear in the book directly but does influence most of the action and underlying conspiracies. Finally, Inspector Lunge arrives and sets a trap for Tenma, but in the end he is the one who is injured.

In the first chapter of Monster Volume 6, it is up to Tenma to repair Inspector Lunge’s injuries despite the inspector’s distrust of him, not to mention the fact that he is handcuffed.

While I am usually impressed by Tenma’s medical skills, I don’t agree with his choices here. Inspector Lunge has an open abdominal wound and it would be a very bad idea to introduce contamination into the wound — contamination such as thread taken from an old cloth bag left in an abandoned warehouse. I agree that the bleeding needs to be stopped, but there are better ways Tenma could be going about it (for instance using thread pulled from his or the inspector’s clothes; or even direct pressure while driving the inspector to the hospital).

Subsequent chapters focus on Eva, Tenma’s former fiancé. It seems that she’s had her own run in with Johann and now stumbles across one of his associates while searching for Tenma.

Meanwhile, Tenma is once again operating as an “underground surgeon.” His patient this time is the number two man in a criminal organization who was injured in an assassination attempt. One bullet “grazed his skull.” The other “went clean through the leg, and the anterior tibial artery was undamaged.”

The anterior tibial artery is one of the two main arteries of the lower leg (the other, naturally, is the posterior tibial artery). It sounds like the bullet went through the front aspect of the calf. It must have done a fair amount of damage for Tenma’s surgical skills to be required, but since the bullet missed the important artery the patient should recover fully.

The final chapters concern students at the University of Munich and a mystery surrounding a wealthy recluse. It’s probably not much of a spoiler to mention that one of the students is Johann…

Previous Monster Medical Annotations:
Volume 1 (Chapter 1 – part 1, Chapter 1 – part 2, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6)
Volume 2
Volume 3 (part 1, part 2)
Volume 4

Tags: comics medicine naoki urasawa monster manga

One of the better issues of the series, and not just because it accomplishes the nearly impossible: it manages to fit the horribly out of continuity Brave and the Bold #181 logically into the main Hawk and Dove storyline. For those of you who don’t remember, that issue of The Brave and the Bold featured a middle-aged Hank and Don Hall being stripped of their powers because they didn’t fulfill their destiny and they fought with each other too much. It did have nice art by Jim Aparo, though.

Hawk & Dove #25starts just as the story from The Brave and the Bold is ending: Batman is swinging away and Hank and Don are discussing the loss of their powers. Hank returns home to his estranged wife Linda, who welcomes him with open arms…

…but then before his eyes she morphs into Ren. Not quite the same Ren we know and love, but a hippie version of her, including bell bottoms, tie-dyes, and psychedelic posters on the walls. Confused, Hank stumbles outside…

…and finds himself back on the Georgetown campus. There’s a crime in progress, but Hawk and Dove are already there. Only it’s his late brother Don, the original Dove, and a female Hawk. They capture the criminals, make snide remarks about the SCU, and then change back into their civilian identities. Hank confronts the two of them, protesting that he is supposed to be Hawk. You get the feeling this is an old argument between the brothers. Don sadly reminds Hank that while he was saving the children’s lives during the Crisis he was crippled, and subsequently stripped of his powers and a new Hawk chosen. Hank keeps protesting, “I’m Hawk,” over and over again…

…and he wakes up in bed, apparently a victim of nothing more than a bad dream. Then his wife appears, and it’s Dawn. He panics, but Dawn reminds him that they lost their powers on Druspa Tau. They returned home and subsequently married. She pushes Hank into the shower…

…and he finds himself back in the real world as Hawk, punctured by spear growing from a giant blue gem (just like on the cover). Hawk thinks back: he remembers entering the Smithsonian, changing to Hawk, and stealing the sapphire his brother needs to return to life. He remembers dodging the Smithsonian security and heading to roof to hide. He also remembers being puzzled when he didn’t immediately change back to Hank — but then he realized the gem had started glowing. The gem suddenly exploded in size, piercing him with several of its blue crystal arms.

Now that he’s awake, Hawk realizes that the gem is magic and somehow related to Order (the opposite of the Chaos that gives him his powers). It is purposefully warping his mind and memories. He is able to summon the willpower required to break the gem’s hold on him. Then he smiles because the gem has transformed into a giant blue crystal golem, and he realizes that he has something to hit.

Meanwhile, Ren is at the hospital visiting the still recuperating Rodger. She is concerned that she hasn’t been able to get in touch with Hank for a few days, and even more worried that it might have something to do with Dawn and Dove. Rodger does his best to reassure her.

Speaking of Dawn, she is on a date with Captain Arsala. They are sitting in his car, watching the sunset and eating burgers when his pager goes off. Hawk is robbing the Smithsonian and Arsala and the SCU are needed there. He offers to drop Dawn off at home on the way, but she declines and tells him she’ll get a ride home once they get to the Smithsonian.

The SCU team arrives at the museum grounds to find Hawk battling a blue crystal monster. He defeats it, and it reverts back to the sapphire he stole from the Smithsonian. Arsala orders him to surrender. Dove appears and asks Hawk what happened. He is surprised to see her, and tells her that he can’t explain, but asks for her just to trust him. He runs off, gem in hand. Arsala demands that Dove fly after him, but she refuses, saying that Hawk must have had a good reason for his actions.

The issue ends with Hawk alone in an abandoned warehouse, staring at the gem he stole, and wondering out loud if it was worth it.

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The writing was very good this issue, and the Kesels manage to weave action and soap opera together seamlessly. The opening alternate histories of Hawk and Dove are extremely well done, and each story has a distinctive voice — but then I’ve always been a sucker for alternate history stories. Each of the different versions has art by a different team, with the regular Guler/Hannah team handling the art on the main story.

It was clever of the Kesels to reconcile the Brave and the Bold story by explaining it away as one of the alternate histories shown by the gem. I’m not sure who provided the art on this section (the comic only all the artists involved, not who did each section), but they did a good job replicating the Aparo art from the original story. The second alternate history basically serves as a segue from the counter-culture late ’60s, when Hawk and Dove debuted, to their reappearance in the ‘90s. It sets up the most powerful of the alternate histories, the third one, where Hank has lost his powers. In this version of events, Hank went back to save the kids during Crisis on Infinite Earths instead of Don. Since Don didn’t die, he’s still Dove. Unfortunately, Hawk was crippled saving the children and a new Hawk appointed. Trivia buffs should note that this is the first appearance of a female Hawk, though I doubt she is anyway related to the current female Hawk as she goes by Kath and not Holly. The art is very somber The final alternate history presents Hank and Dawn as a married couple. In this reality, they lost their powers after the death of T’Charr and Terataya, but returned home from Druspa Tau to fall in love and get married. I did recognize the art on this section — it’s by Kevin Maguire, who also drew Hawk & Dove #20. I like the little touches like the wedding pictures on the wall with Hank in a blue tux.

Sadly, this is the last really good issue of Hawk & Dove. There are great moments in the remaining three issues (and one annual), but no single issue stands out.

All Previous Hawk and Dove Reviews

Tags: comics hawk dove jim aparo kevin maguire

After looking at the Worst Comic Book Medicine of 2006 yesterday, today I’m going to celebrate the Best Comic Book Medicine of 2006:

Best Depiction of Medicine:
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #200 has some of the best hospital scenes ever shown in a comic book. I know I picked on it for the use of an English trade name instead on an American one, but don’t let that fool you: it was an excellent comic from a medical point of view (and quite good from a comic book point of view as well).

Best Doctor:
Doctor Mid-Nite wins for his return to form as the premiere physician of the DC Universe. He stumbled a little in 52 #5, but was outstanding in JSA Classified #19-20.

Best Single Medical or Scientific Concept:
Monster is generally right on the money in terms of its depiction of neurosurgery in the ’80s and ’90s. Admittedly, it is a reprint, so if you want to disqualify it because of that, then Robin wins for being the only hero in Gotham City who actually has useful C.S.I. skills.

Best Imaginary Medicine or Treatment:
Xenografting was big this year. It was the theme of Dr. Mid-Nite’s story arc in JSA Classified, and the recent transplantation of Skrull organs into super-villain in Heroes for Hire is a clever concept.

Special Mention:
Most Over-the-Top Depiction of Medicine: Ray
Best Medically Accurate Art: Valentine DeLandro, penciler of Marvel Knights 4 #26, who correctly drew a doctor using a head mirror. They’re usually thrown in as an artistic shorthand for “physician” rather than a useful (if outdated) piece of equipment.

Welcome to the Class of ‘06! Best new physician characters introduced in 2006, presented starting with my favorite:
1. Soranik Natu (Green Lantern Corps: Recharge and the ongoing Green Lantern Corps series)
2. Night Nurse (Doctor Strange: The Oath)
3. The Accomplished Perfect Physician (52 and Green Lantern)

Previous “Best of the Year”: The BestComic Book Medicine of 2005 The BestComic Book Medicine of 2004

Speaking of annotations, there really aren’t any medical scenes in volume 4 of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster so thre’s no sense in me posting a medical annotation of this volume. The series remains a thrilling read so I suggest you pick it up if you haven’t already. Medical annotations will return as the medical content warrants.

All previous Monster medical annotations.

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I will soon be taking a look at the manga Ray by Akihito Yoshitomi and published by ADV Press. According to the back cover copy, Ray is “a dark thriller of an underground surgeon out for revenge.” That really says it all, doesn’t it?

Superman #656 “Men and Monsters”
Kurt Busiek, writer
Carl Pacheco, penciler

Interesting scan of Superman’s internal anatomy, courtesy of Subjekt-17. For some reason, I always assumed Superman had a more human arrangement of organs.

That certainly looks like a large heart in the center of his chest, though with more blood vessels entering/leaving than a human heart — but I have no idea what the small red organ just over his heart is. The lungs appear to be behind the heart, but again have many more vessels coming off that human lungs. Speaking of blood vessels, those are some freakishly large vessels looping in the abdomen and going down the leg. There appears to be a small liver or a kidney in the chest. There is some large yellow spiculated organ where I’d expect his bladder to be. The rest of the chest and abdomen seem to be a random assortment of organ and blood vessels.

Superman is an alien, so it would be unlikely for him to have the same anatomy as us, though we know it’s close enough for heart monitors and other medical equipment to work. Still I always pictured it as a little closer to human than this.

I’d love to know what Pacheco used as his reference ot if he was just winging it.

Click on the image for a full-sized scan.

Tags: comics medicine superman

Finishing up the medical annotation of Volume 3 of Naoki Urasawa’s excellent manga Monster. In these chapters, Dr. Tenma and Dieter are hiding out in a small village in the German countryside. True to form, Tenma cannot resist helping others and before long is assisting the local physician, Dr. Schumann.

I. The Drunk (pp. 133-137)
A drunk patient has been hit by a car. There are two main medical concerns with this situation: First, the injuries inflicted by the accident itself. Second, the patient is so drunk that he could choke on his own vomitus or suck it into his lungs, leading to a fatal aspiration pneumonia. To prevent this, Dr. Tenma has suctioned the patient’s airway and then intubated him in case he vomits again. He has also set his injured leg as well as placed a band-aid or two. (Personally, I’m just impressed that such a small clinic has its own ventilator — not to mention it’s own operating room).

II. The Old Lady (pp. 150-168)
Petra has an aneurysm (a bulging weak spot) in the middle cerebral artery, a major blood vessel in the brain. This aneurysm is leaking blood which has collected in the tissue surrounding the brain (the subarachnoid space) and caused a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Blood is very irritating to the tissues around the brain and spinal cord, and this irritation makes it extremely painful to bend the neck. That’s why Tenma is paying attention to Petra’s neck — he’s seeing how much she can move it. She can barely move it and that scares him. If this aneurysm is not treated it can burst, causing a massive stroke which can lethal. Even if patients survive the aneurysm, there can be complications afterward — this is actually one of Dr. Tenma’s specialties as suggested in the first volume of the series.

Read more…

In my years of reading comics, I’ve read my share of bad comics, and sometimes really bad comics.

Rarely, however, have I found a comic so bad that I find myself needing to burn it until nothing remains but ashes, then bury those ashes and salt the earth afterwards. That is a Godwaful Comic. These are the comics that companies should be ashamed of publishing. They should apologize to their readers and pay us money for having suffered through them. These are the comics that all but guarantee that I will never purchase any title involving those responsible ever again.

I used to stumble upon these books maybe once every two or three years. Sadly (and painfully), I have encountered two of these comics recently. Both have been from DC, and both have been part of the “One Year Later” storylines.

Battle for Bludhaven #5 has, without a doubt, the worst art that I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing in an (allegedly) professionally published comic. At what point does the editor have the responsibilty to say, “Stop! This sucks! Do it over!” It’s not like this is Civil War — it’s not like anyone was waiting with bated breath for this comic. If if had come out a month or two late, I doubt anyone would have noticed, and I sure whould have appreciated it. Of course, the story would have still been terrible, but at least the art wouldn’t require me to claw my eyes out anymore.

Nightwing #122. I’m not sure I can put the sheer horribleness of this comic into words. Just let me highight (or low-light) a few key moments.

• The repeated mentions of “Cleveland” as if it has some deep meaning. This might have been effective had it been brought up from the beginnig of the storyline, but to abruptly and awkwardly inject it into the “climactic” fight scene? It was unbelievably awkward and halted the momentum every time it occurred.
• The deus ex machina of having Jason Todd suddenly turn into a bizarre monster that swallows and then regurgitates his opponent. Where the hell did that come from? And why? Just having a random meteorite fall from the heavens and crush the bad guy would have been more logical, believable, and been less insulting to the reader.
• Jason Todd saying “so long good-bye” by telegraph. After nearly two years of Jason Todd being a focus of the Bat-Books, he just suddenly decides to leave and announces it, not in person, but by a technology that was abandoned two years ago amid multiple news reports discussing the demise of the telegraph.
• Ending the book on a stupid pun/joke. This isn’t Scooby Doo — though that clearly was the comic I should have bought.

Tags: comics godwaful comics battle for bludhaven nightwing

Continuing the medical annotation of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. This time, I’ll take a look at the first half of the recently released Volume 3, chapters one through four.

Nothing medical happens in the first chapter, so the annotation begins with:

Chapter Two
Tenma is taken to treat a terrorist injured in a gunfight with the police. He realizes that the man was shot through his axillary artery and is bleeding to death.

The axillary artery is an important artery. It starts off as the subclavian artery, coming off the aorta. As it dives under the shoulder it is known as the axillary artery. It then becomes the brachial artery (the main artery of the arm) as it leaves the shoulder. It’s a large enough artery that an injury to it could lead to death from blood loss, and fairly quickly.

Tenma apparently* stops the arterial bleeding with direct pressure, a valid approach, but he succeeds conveniently quickly. Next he announces that he needs to close the injury to the skin which he proceeds to due with a handy stapler. This makes little sense. I have no problem with the use of the stapler — it’s nearby and it works — I’m just not clear on why he closed the wound in the first place. Tenma knows the patient will require a surgical repair of the artery, so the doctors will just have to open the wound up again. The closed skin may provide a little pressure which will help keep the artery from bleeding, but a simple pressure dressing would do the job much better.

After closing the wound, Tenma places the injured arm in a sling, picks the man up fairly roughly (especially considering he is nearly dead already) and moves him outside for the police to find.

Read more…

There is only one medical scene in Monster, Volume 2. It occurs roughly three-quarters of the way through the book, at the beginning of Chapter 7.

In this particular scene, Dr. Tenma is surgically removing the patient’s cerebral arteriovenous malformation (AVM).

Operating Room conversation:
Cutting all arteries.
There are many vessels in this arteriovenous malformation.
Nidus extraction complete.
Now the veins.

The arteries that carry blood from the heart and the veins that return blood to the heart are connected by capillary beds. Arteries branch off into smaller and smaller arteries that eventually connect to capillaries which in turn connect to small veins which join together to make larger veins which join together to make larger veins…and so on. The capillaries are key because they are where the exchange of nutrients and chemicals between the blood and body tissue (such as muscles, lungs, intestines, etc.) takes place. They are also important because they allow a safe connection between the high-pressure arteries and the lower pressure veins.

In addition to the normally capillary beds, some people have one or more arteriovenous malformations. These can be thought of as a short circuit between the arteries and veins, bypassing the capillaries. They appear as a tangle of blood vessels, known as a nidus. Because they are bypassing the capillaries and connecting the high pressure arteries to the low pressure veins, they have a tendency to leak or bleed. If one of these AVMs is in the brain, it can lead to a stroke.

There are several treatment options for AVMs of the brain. Radiation therapy can often resolve small lesions. Larger lesions require surgical removal. A more recent technique is the embolization of the AVM — a tiny catheter is advanced through the body until it reaches the tangle, and then the AVM is clotted off using metal coils, miniature balloons or a special glue. This can be done in addition to surgery or as the primary treatment in certain cases.

In the scene from Monster, Dr. Tenma is surgically removing the AVM by clipping off the arteries, removing the tangle, and then clipping off the veins.

Previous Monster Annotions: Chapter 1 (part 1), Chapter 1 (part 2), Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, and Chapter 6.
Coming later this week, Volume 3, so pick yours up and get ready…

Tags: comics medicine arteriovenous malformation avm stroke naoki urasawa monster

Princess Mari (a.k.a. Marionette) is never at a loss for words, particularly when those words are some permutation of Dallan and Sepsis. Whether it is running from the enemy, stepping out of the shower, leading a polital committee, or being attacked by dogs and monsters, Mari always knows what to say:

Read more…

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.

Tags: comics medicine karla sofen moonstone thunderbolts psychiatrist .

Continuing the medical annotations of Naoki Urawawa’s Monster. We’re now up to Chapter 6.

Previous Annotions: Chapter 1 (part 1), Chapter 1 (part 2), Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5.

The narrative picks up nine years later. Not much has changed for Dr. Tenma. He remains Chief of Surgery at Eisler Memorial Hospital in Düsseldorf and still doesn’t have much of a social life because he always puts his patients and medical practice first. As the chapter starts, Tenma is operating on a complicated patient with a parasellar meningioma¹. Meanwhile, a brutal murder has taken place across Germany in Kõln. The police have their eye on a suspect, but he is hit by a car trying to flee. He suffers a skull fracture and an epidureal hematoma². Dr. Tenma is brought in to operate on the suspect to save his life. While in Kõln, Tenma runs into Inspector Lunge, who all but accuses him of murdering the other physicians at Eisler nine years before.

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Notes:
¹A meningioma is a very slow growing tumor of the meninges, the thin membrane that covers the brain. “Parasellar” refers to a tumor near the sella turcica, a protusion of bone on the inside base of the skull. It is located several inches behind the eyes. To remove this tumor, Dr. Tenma is going to use a pterional approach — this means that he will be going through the pterion, an area at the side of the skull where several of the bones join together. It is one of the thinner areas of the skull and it makes since to use it as an entry point. Once the brain is revealed, Tenma retracts the Sylvian fissure and proceeds to the deeper portions of the brain to remove the tumor. Finally, “extirpation” refers to a surgical removal.

²The injured suspect has suffered a skull fracture. This has torn one of the blood vessels supplying the brain and led to an epidural hematoma (a blood clot between the brain and its thick outer covering). This hematoma is so large that it has increased the pressure on the brain enough to cause the brain to herniate — in other words, the increased pressure is forcing the brain down through the posterior of the skull toward the spinal column. This has damaged the third cranial nerve on the right side of the brain and caused a dilated right pupil (better known as a “blown pupil”). If untreated, a brain herniation can rapidly lead to death.

Tenma performs a craniotomy (basically, he drills a hole in the skull) to drain the hematoma and take the pressure off the brain. It is a successful operation though the patient continues to have some paralysis on the left side and a dilated right pupil afterwards. The left-sided paralysis is residual damage from the hematoma, which caused damage to the right side of the brain (remember the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and vice versa). Cranial nerves are different, and damage to one side is reflected on that same side, hence the right-sided herniation leading to a right dilated pupil. Both the paralysis and papillary dilation should improve as the brain recovers, but may never recover 100%.

A final note: while the medicine remains sound, there are several misspellings in this chapter. It’s not really a surprise as these are complex medical terms and spelling them correctly is never easy. Furthermore, remember that the book is translating from Japanese to English a story about a surgeon in Germany, so it’s frankly impressive that this hasn’t been a problem before now. Anyway, Terional should be Pterional and Optic Chasm should be Optic Chiasm.

NOTE: Chapters 7 and 8 of Monster have no medical scenes, so this post is effectively the final Medical Annotations of Volume 1. Stay tuned for annotations of Volume 2 soon.

Tags: comics medicine meningioma epidural hemorrhage herniation naoki urasawa monster

This is the a look at the medicine in the fifth chapter of Naoki Urawawa’s Monster. Annotations for chapter one can be found here and here, chapter two here, chapter three here, and chapter four here.

There are three major plot events in this chapter: the police look into the murders of the three senior physicians at Eisler Memorial Hospital, the twin children escape from the hospital, and Dr. Tenma finds himself promoted to Head of the Surgery Department.

Medically, it was fairly uneventful except for these two (unrelated) items:
1. A patient was noted to have suffered a brain contusion¹.
2. The police revealed that the dead physicians had all been poisoned with nitrate².

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Notes:
¹ A brain contusion is essentially a bruise of the brain. It can be caused by either a direct (coup) or indirect (contrecoup) injury (which I discussed when taking a look at Jack Cross). Brain contusions are associated with swelling of the brain and a subsequent increase in intracranial pressure. If the pressure goes high enough, it can cause coma or death. About one fifth of patients with a brain contusion also suffer a hemorrhage, such as a subdural hemorrhage (this is what killed the Turkish construction worker in chapter one).

2. Dr. Tenma identifies nitrate as a muscle relaxant, but that’s not quite true. There are two types* of muscle in our bodies. First, there is skeletal muscle (also known as striated muscle). This is what most of us think about when we hear the word muscle. These are the muscles that we voluntarily control, and they are the muscles that help us move our arms, legs, mouth, etc.

The second type of muscle is smooth muscle. We have no conscious control over these muscles, and that’s why they’re also known as involuntary muscles. Smooth muscles are important for the inner workings of our body. For instance, they surround blood vessels and the gastrointestinal tract. They are controlled by the autonomic nervous system.

The class of drugs known as nitrates relaxes smooth muscles. By relaxing the smooth muscles surrounding the blood vessels, nitrates cause vasodilatation — the drug relaxes the blood vessels and allows them to open wider and carry more blood. This lowers the blood pressure, and in fact nitrates were some of the first effective medications for high blood pressure. In addition, this relaxation of the blood vessels allows more blood to get to the heart muscle itself, and that’s why nitrates are used to treat heart attacks and angina. However, too high a dose of nitrates can drop the blood pressure too low. This can lead to loss of consciousness and even death if the dose is high enough. Common nitrate medications include nitroglycerin, isosorbide mononitrate, isosorbide dinitrate, and nitroprusside.

*technically cardiac muscle is considered a third type of muscle as it shares characteristics of both the smooth and skeletal muscles.

Tags: comics medicine brain contusion subdrual hemorrhage nitrate naoki urasawa monster

Chapter Four of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster only has two brief medical scenes in it, but it is a key chapter with a murder (or two, or three).

In the previous chapter, Dr. Tenma found himself demoted from Head of Neurosurgery for choosing to operate on a young boy rather than the mayor. In this chapter, the police try to question Anna, the boy’s twin sister, but with no results. Meanwhile, the Hospital Director, his crony, and the recently promoted Head of Neurosurgery decide to milk the situation for all the PR they can, and decide to stage a photo-op with the two siblings, even though disturbing the boy is contrary to what his physician — Dr. Tenma — has ordered. The boy wakes up, the sister screams and collapses, and Tenma is forced off the case. This combined with seeing his ex-fiancee Eva going out with one of his colleagues drives Tenma to a long night of drinking. That same night, three of his superiors are found dead.

• Medical annotations of the previous chapters of Monster

I disagree with the doctors here: dissociative hysteria is an incorrect diagnosis. First, it is an out-of-date (and somewhat sexist) term. Second,it applies to people with dissociative identity disorder (formerly called multiple personality disorder). Anna simply has none of the symptoms of identity disorder.

I agree that she is suffering from some form of dissociation. In dissociation, a person who has suffered some form of trauma mentally distances themselves from their own body and personality. The Mayo Clinic describes it well: “People with dissociative disorders chronically escape their reality in involuntary, unhealthy ways ranging from suppressing memories to assuming alternate identities. These dissociative patterns usually develop as a reaction to trauma and function to keep difficult memories at bay.”

Anna is suffering from dissociative amnesia and what appears to be a dissociative catatonia (a state of limited — if any — motor activity and no response to external stimuli)

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Anticonvulsives (more commonly called anticonvulsants) are medications used to prevent seizures. They are given to people who have a history of seizures (as in epilepsy), but are also sometimes given to people who do not any prior history of seizures but are at risk of developing them in the near future. Brain trauma, brain tumors, and other brain injuries can cause seizures, so these patients are sometimes placed on medication to prevent them, just in case. Some neurosurgeons place their patients on anticonvulsants after brain surgery for six to twelve months because seizures are more likely while these people are healing from their surgery (though still rare).

Hypotensive is another term for blood pressure medicine (“hypo” = low, “tensive” = pressure). Dr. Tenma wants to keep Ms. Hankel’s blood pressure low. This will put less strain on the blood vessels in her brain. He is most likely concerned about a stroke or aneurysm. I suspect Mrs. Hankel had an aneurysm that bled. He managed to repair it, but wants to keep her blood pressure low so it is unlikely to bleed again, and wants to keep her on seizure medications while her brain heals, just in case.

Tags: comics medicine amnesia catatonia dissociation seizure blood pressure naoki urasawa monster

Continuing the medical annotations of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster with Chapter Three (the annotations for Chapter One can be found here and here, and Chapter Two can be found here). Chapter Three is when the story really begins to pick up speed. The cocktail party scene is so masterfully written it still gives me chills. Pick up your copy of Monster and follow along.

As the chapter begins, Dr. Kenzo Tenma is struggling to remove the bullet from the boy’s brain.

Dr. Tenma: Make use of the gunshot wound when cutting
Dr. Tenma: Make sure the debridement is done thoroughly.

NOTES: Tenma is starting his incision at the wound site to provides less trauma to the patient. It also makes it easier on him. As I mentioned in the previous installment, it is a dirty wound. Tenma and his team are debriding the wound, removing all the dead tissue and foreign matter from the wound so that it has less chance of infection and a better chance of healing.

It is a delicate operation, but Tenma successfully removes the bullet and repairs the damaged blood vessels.

NOTES: Proline is a brand of suture (the “thread” used in surgical stitches). It is a non-absorbable (permanent) monofilament (single-stranded) suture made of polypropylene. The “8-0″ denotes the size of the suture, which in this case is very small, about a hundred times less than the diameter of a single hair. Wikipedia has a good article on sutures, if you would like more information.

The boy survives, but remains in a coma. The mayor is not so lucky, he dies during the operation and the other neurosurgeons blame Dr. Tenma for not helping them. The Director shares the bad news at a press conference.

NOTES: “Emphraxis,” one of the words the Director uses is just an old fashioned word that means “clot.” The Director is saying that part of the Mayor’s brain did not get enough blood flow because of a clot and died off. Enough of the brain died that the Mayor did too. Basically, the Mayor had a stroke. As the Director points out, the Mayor’s Inner Carotid (we Americans would say “Internal Carotid”) Artery was clotted off. Because this artery supplies most of the blood to the brain, this was a very serious condition and it is likely the Mayor would have died even if Dr. Tenma had been there.

At work Dr. Tenma is distracted. The nurse has to ask him multiple times for some simple orders.

NOTES: Halcyon is the European spelling for the drug Halcion, generic name triazolam. This drug is a type of drug known as a benzodiazapine that works as a relaxant and a sedative. Valium is probably the best known drug in this family.
A book very critical of Halcion was published in the early ’90s, and whether the books complaints were justified or not, the sales of Halcion suffered in American and have never fully recovered. It is used more in other countries.
You’ll notice that Dr. Tenma does not give a dose for the Halcyon — not a good idea. It’s likely that he has an algorithim the nurse will follow, but it’s always a good idea to give a dose when ordering any medicine, let alone a powerful sedative.

Tenma attends the Director’s cocktail party in an attempt to redeem himself, but the damage has been done. While the Director seems friendly at first, Tenma quickly discovers he’s been demoted and is no longer head of the neurosurgery department. The Director also makes sure that he understands that he no longer has any chance of advancement at Eisler Memorial Hospital and that the Director does not intend to make it easy for him to leave to practice medicine elsewhere. On the way out of the party, his fiancée returns the ring and all but laughs in his face. The cocktail party scene is chilling, and the best scene of the book so far.

Tags: comics medicine suture stroke carotid artery naoki urasawa monster

Picking up the medical annotations of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster with Chapter Two (the annotations for chapter one can be found here and here).

Since last we left Dr. Kenzo Tenma, he has been appointed the Head of Neurosurgery at the prestigious Eisler Memorial Hospital. He and Eva, the daughter of the hospital’s director, have become engaged. At tea one night with Eva and her father, Tenma is stunned to learn that the director wants him to give up on his own promising research¹ and instead write a paper for the director to give at an important European medical conference. The director seems to feel that money and prestige come before research and patient care. Tenma disagrees but doesn’t say anything. Thoughts of that conversation flash though Tenma’s mind as he rushes to the hospital to treat an emergency patient.

A young boy and his twin sister are the only survivors of an attack that killed their parents. The girl is physically fine, but in a state of mental shock. The young boy, on the other hand, is in critical condition with a bullet through his forehead. He is brought to the emergency room where the x-rays and CT scan show the bullet deep in his brain next to the vital left middle cerebral artery². Dr. Tenma chooses to perform a frontal craniotomy to remove the bullet and repair the damaged artery³. As the surgical team begins to prep the patient for surgery⁴, Dr. Tenma is called out of the room.

It seems the mayor has suffered a stroke and is being brought to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove a suspected clot⁵. The hospital director orders Tenma to operate on the mayor and let another team handle the dangerous surgery in the child. He reminds Tenma that the mayor has promised an increase in funding to the hospital. Tenma is conflicted but ultimately decides to go against orders and returns to his original operation; he performs surgery on the injured child instead of the mayor

---

Footnotes:
¹Dr. Tenma’s research is on vascular spasms after subarachnoid hemorrhages, a subject we beat to death last time, so I’m going to spare you and not repeat it here.

²The x-ray (though it looks more like an angiogram as x-rays don’t show blood vessels this well) shows that the bullet has gone in straight and lodged resting against the middle cerebral artery on the left, one of the key arteries in the brain.

Now, I haven’t read enough of the story to know who shot the boy, but let’s play forensic scientist for a second. First, note the bullet’s path: it’s at a slight angle, almost straight down. He must have been shot by someone above him. In addition, the bullet is still remarkably intact, providing important ballistics information about the power behind the shot.

³Dr. Tenma has chosen to perform a frontal craniotomy. He is going to go through the frontal bone of the skull to access the brain. He has two concerns with the injury the patient has sustained. The first is the bullet itself. It needs to be removed and any damage it might have caused to the middle cerebral artery repaired. Second there’s the danger of contamination. The area around the wound is filled with small chips of bone and other debris from the gunshot shattering the skull. These can lead to delayed healing and infection. Dr. Tenma is cognizant of these facts andfeels that his first priority is to remove the bullet and check the artery for damage.

⁴The patient is intubated and ready for surgery. Dr. Tenma has marked out his incision. He is utilizing the bullet hole because it makes access easier and provides less additional trauma to the patient.
The patient’s vitals are strong and appropriate for someone his age.

⁵The mayor has suffered a “cerebral blood clot” — in other words: an ischemic stroke. A clot has cut off circulation to part of the brain, and that part is dying from lack of oxygen.

Hospital Flunkie: There’s a possibility that his internal carotid may be blocked.

The internal carotid artery provides most of the blood to the brain, so a clot stopping its flow is very serious. Narrowed carotid arteries are an unfortunately common sign of atherosclerosis (cholesterol deposition and hardening of the arteries), and if they get narrow enough a surgery called a carotid endarterectomy can be performed to clean them out. Sounds like it’s too late for this for the mayor.

Tags: comics gunshot wound medicine stroke carotid artery cerebral artery naoki urasawa monster

Chapter Synopsis (continued)
After another brain surgery², Kenma bumps into Dr. Becker who warns him not to get involved in hospital politics. He talks briefly to a nurse³, and then has an unsettling encounter with the Turkish wife who accuses him of letting her husband die. Apparently, Tenma was originally supposed to operate on her husband, but was shifted at the last minute to the celebrity patient. She blames Tenma for the subsequent death of her husband.

Later, while eating dinner at a fancy restaurant with his girlfriend, Tenma is mulling over what the Turkish woman said. He has read the chart and thinks that he could have saved the man’s life had he been the surgeon⁴. He suspects he was pulled away from the original case because the singer was more famous and would bring more prestige to the hospital. His girlfriend gets upset that he is obsessing about this during their dinner, and pointedly tells him that “not all people are created equal.”

As the chapter ends, there has been a brutal murder of an East German expatriate family. The mother and father are dead. The daughter survives but the son has sustained a bullet to the brain and is in critical condition. Dr. Tenma is paged…

---

Footnotes:
^2. Dr. Tenma is performing more brain surgery here, but the exact nature of the surgery is hard to determine. It is safe to assume that it involves the area of the brain known as the cerebellum because that is where the pyramis is.

^3. Dr. Tenma tells the nurse to increase the patient’s Inovan 3 gammas. Inovan is one of the brand names for the drug Dopamine. Dopamine is a class of drugs known as a pressor and it is used in critically ill patients to keep their blood pressure high. It is given by an intravenous drip in tiny amounts. A “gamma” is a term some doctors use for a microgram. In the United States, Tenma would have told the nurse to increase the Dopamine drip by 3 “mikes.”

^4. The Turkish construction worker suffered a blow to the head during a construction accident. This tore open one of the blood vessels in the head leading to a large subdural hemorrhage (a subdural hemorrhage occurs outside the membranes surrounding the brain, while a subarachnoid hemorrhage occurs between these membranes and the brain). The pressure from this large hemorrhage herniates the brain, pushing it down toward the spinal column. This injures the brainstem, which is unfortunate as the brainstem controls many of the basic functions of life including breathing and heart beats. A severe injury to this area of the brain is fatal.

Tenma feels that if he had been the surgeon, he would have been faster at drilling a hole in the skull (craniotomy) to relieve the pressure and would have been able stop the brain from herniating.

Tags: comics medicine herniation dopamine naoki urasawa monster

Get your copies of Naoki Urasawa’s Monster out because this is the first of a series of medical annotations of the manga. This first post addresses chapter one of volume one — well, chapter one actually has a great deal of medicine in it, so I’m splitting it into two posts. The second part will be posted later tonight.

I’ll start with a brief synopsis of the plot, and then provide the medical footnotes. As always, questions are welcome

Chapter Synopsis:
Dr. Kenzo Tenma is the star neurosurgeon at the Eisler Memorial Hospital in Germany. He is a brilliant young doctor, who emigrated to Germany from Japan to benefit from working in a larger hospital with better equipment and staff.

As the chapter opens, Tenma is congratulated by his team upon a successful surgery. As he walks into the hospital corridor, he sees the wife and children of a Turkish man who was brought in at the same time as his patient. Unfortunately, the Turkish patient was operated on by the less skilled Dr. Becker and died.

Tenma is catching up on sleep at his apartment when his girlfriend — the daughter of the hospital’s director — stops by. While there, they watch a press conference by the director explaining the surgery that Tenma just performed on a famous singer¹. Of course, the director takes full credit for the operation and doesn’t even mention Tenma. Later on, it comes out that the director is even publishing Tenma’s papers under his own name.

---

Footnotes:
^1. A cerebral aneurysm occurs when there is a weak spot in one of the arteries that supplies the brain with blood. Arterial pressure causes this weak spot to bulge out like a balloon, forming an aneurysm. Some aneurysms are so small that nobody knows that they even exist. Sometimes they can become large enough that they press against a nerve or a vital part of the brain and cause symptoms such as pain, numbness, or weakness. Aneurysms can also leak or burst, sending blood into the area surrounding the brain (the subarachnoid space, hence this is known as a subarachnoid hemorrhage).

This is precisely what has happened in the case presented: the patient’s aneurysm burst causing a subarachnoid hemorrhage.

This is where a neurosurgeon like Dr. Tenma comes in. He and his team remove part of the skull and retract the tissue layers surrounding the brain. The hematoma is drained and a small metal clip is placed on the base of the aneurysm to stop it from bleeding.

Even with quick surgical treatment, complications can follow a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Vasospasm (“cerebrovascular spasm”) is a common complication. In this situation, one or more of the large arteries at the base of the brain narrow and reduce the blood flow to the brain. This restricts the supply of oxygen (“cerebral ischemia”) to the brain and — despite maximum therapy — leads to stroke or death in about 15-20% of patients. The exact cause of the vasospasm is unknown. It generally starts 3 days out, peaks around day 10, and resolves in 2-4 weeks.

The ventricles of the brain produce and recycle the cerebrospinal fluid. When the ventricles become blocked (or otherwise stop working), they swell leading to a condition known as hydrocephalus. When this follows an injury (such as a subarachnoid hemorrhage) it is known as secondary hydrocephalus.

Compare the sizes of the ventricles

Tags: comics medicine aneurysm subarachnoid hemorrhage hydrocephalus naoki urasawa monster

On the advice of David Welsh, I picked up Monster, a “Viz Signature” manga. Flipping through the comic, there looks to be something for everyone: murder, suspense, politics, and cute girls (and guys). There’s also quite a bit of medicine involved as the lead character, Dr. Kenzo Tenma, is an upwardly mobile neurosurgeon.

Starting next week, I’m going to take a close look at the manga — a chapter or two at a time — and provide medical annotations (and corrections, if necessary). If you enjoy manga, murder, medicine, or just a good story, pick up a copy of this book and follow along.

Tags: comics medicine manga monster

Having trouble getting girls to dance with you? It could be that you’re too Brainy, Emotional, or Muscular. Girls don’t want any of that! What they want is a BEM (which surprisingly does not stand for Bug-Eyed Monster).

Click here or on the panel to the right to see the full PSA

This helpful 1967 PSA is from Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #74 (as well as Superboy #138 and The Inferior Five #2). The art is by Sheldon Moldoff working from a script by Jack Schiff.

This PSA was provided by the National Social Welfare Assembly, the same group that not only brought us the Mysterious Unnamed Doctor™ PSA, but also seemed to sponsor most of the Silver Age single page PSAs.

Tags: comics psa national social welfare assembly jack schiff sheldon moldoff

UPDATE: Error found and fixed. The pop-up image should now work in both IE and Firefox.

This final part of the four-issue Hawk and Dove origin storyline starts where the previous issue left off. Hawk and Dove have followed Kestrel to the far off world of Druspa Tau. This world is the dimension their powers originate from and therefore their abilities are greatly increased here; both are near invulnerable and Dove can fly. There is also an ongoing war between the forces of Order and Chaos. Dawn helps the side of Order while Hawk finds himself the warlord of the Chaos army. After a brief battle, the Chaos forces succeed in destroying the Order citadel. At that moment, Unity — the combined form of the Lord of Order Terataya and the Lord of Chaos T’Charr — breaks through into the sky above and takes up the battle against the Lord of Chaos M’Shulla. T’Charr and Terataya are the entities who created Hawk and Dove and who grant them their power. Unfortunately, most of their own powers have gone into creating the pair, and they are quickly defeated by M’Shulla. Mortally wounded, they retreat to their lair.

Hawk and Dove go looking for Terataya and T’Charr but encounter the petulant Lord of Order Child and his monster companion Flaw. As usual, Child and Flaw provide little challenge as Dove quickly bests Child and Hawk shatters Flaw.

Next they encounter Kestrel, who has taken possession of Hank’s girlfriend Ren. Dove realizes that Kestrel is no more than a pale imitation of Hawk. Like Hawk, Kestrel’s powers come from a magical link to Chaos, but unlike Hawk who links to the entirety of Chaos, Kestrel is just linked to the violent portion. Using her newfound powers, Dove is able to separate Kestrel from Ren. Since Hawk’s link to Chaos already encompasses and overshadows Kestrel’s lesser link, Hawk is able to absorb Kestrel, destroying him.

Leaving Ren behind, Hawk and Dove reach the cave where Unity has hidden away to die. On their death bed, T’Charr and Terataya tell the pair that an eon ago the unthinkable happened: a Lord of Order and a Lord of Chaos fell in love. In order to prove to others that Chaos and Order can successfully work together, they created the spell that created Hawk and Dove, linking Hawk to Chaos and Dove to Order. However, with the death of Unity, the spell will end and Hawk and Dove will cease to be — unless Hank and Dawn absorb the dying essences of their respective Lords. Dove quickly absorbs Tertraya’s essence and Hawk, after some unsubtle coercion, absorbs T’Charr’s.

The dying Lords share a short conversation as their essence fades. There is a brief mention of “completing the experiment” and then a kiss. As they kiss, the Hawk and Dove of Druspa Tau revert to the Hawk and Dove of Earth, and then back to Hank and Dawn — still kissing. They break off the embrace and realize they are back in Dawn’s bedroom on Earth. As the issue ends, Hank and Dawn are left wondering what happens now that they’ve absorbed not only the powers of T’Charr and Tertaya, but also their feelings for each other.

Random Thoughts

• Don’t worry about Ren. Barter is provides her transportation back to Earth in exchange for her memories of Kestrel and the last of his essence.
• Have Child and Flaw every presented a challenge? Even back in Amethyst they were more laughable than threatening.
• It’s good origin story, particularly in the fact that it builds on the Silver Age origin instead of completely ignoring it. There are some flaws though. For example, it doesn’t explain why Don was originally chosen as Dove if the ultimate goal was for Hawk and Dove to have a child. It just doesn’t work that way. (The same argument can be made for the current Hawk and Dove team of Dawn and Holly Granger — that is if they’re still around after Infinite Crisis)
• Speaking of Infinite Crisis, how were T’Charr and Teratraya still alive to be killed in the Days of Vengeance Special since they died here?
• More Hawk & Dove, from the beginning

Tags: comics hawk dove kestrel .

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

Tags: animals card games nessie

While reading through some issues of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, I was astounded by how fickle Lois was. Allegedly in love with Superman, she seemed to be getting engaged to someone else almost every other issue. I decided to count how many time Lois had been engaged or married, and these are the results I came up with. You’ll notice that I’m not counting imaginary or future stories; only canon stories are listed (though admittedly most were pre-Crisis and pre-reboot). Also, I only have slightly more than half the issues of Lois Lane and a few scattered Superman titles so I’m sure there are many more engagements/marriages that I’m missing.

Engagements:

• Engaged to Dino Del Monaco in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #10 (July 1959). Lois met Dino while on an assignment in Italy. She broke the engagement when she discovered he was a con man. Reprinted in 80-pg Giant #3
• Engaged to the super-powered Native American Strong Bear in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #49 (May 1964). It turns out he was really an ugly little blue alien. Reprinted in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #113.
• Engaged to Epimetheus in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #56 (April 1965). Sent back in time, Lois becomes the Pandora of legend.
• Engaged to Titanman in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #79 (November 1967). Lois found herself in a bizarre alternate dimension where she was thrown in jail. She was rescued from prison by the super-hero Titanman and agreed to marry him only to discover that she would be his seventh wife. Luckily Superman was able to return her to her correct dimension before the wedding could take place.
• Engaged to astronaut Rand Kirby in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #80-81 (January, February 1968). After Superman misses her birthday party, Lois starts a new life in Coral City where she fallis in love with Kirby. (My reviews of these issues.)
• Engaged to Kryptonian scientist Dahr-Nel in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #90 (February 1969). After Superman’s upsets her with a fake wedding, Lois agrees to marry Dahr-Nel and escape to the future. (My review)
• Engaged to the demonic Satdev in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #103 (August 1970). I really can’t explain this one except to say that Lois’s curiosity manages to get her engaged to a satyr-like man from another planet.
• Engaged to Clark Kent in Superman (Second Series) #50 (December 1990) — engagement broken in Action Comics #720 (April 1996)
• Engaged to the criminal Naga in Superman: The Wedding Album (December 1996).
• Re-engaged to Clark Kent in Superman: The Wedding Album (December 1996).

Marriages:

• Marries Superman in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #82 (April 1968). The marriage was part of a plan to capture some criminals from the future. Superman offered to stay married, but Lois declined, wanting Superman to marry her for the right reasons.
• Marries death-row convict Johnny Adonis in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #105 (October 1970). Lois owes him a favor for saving her life, so she marries him shortly before he is to be exectured.
• Marries Clark Kent in Superman: The Wedding Album (December 1996).

Near-Misses:

• Lois is nearly engaged to Mark Benton in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #3 (July/August 1958). Mark Benton is suave and rich and looks exactly like Clark Kent. Lois is in love with him and Mark is going to propose, but her snooping makes him change his mind. Reprinted in Lois Lane Annual #1 and Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #99.
• Lois may or may not be engaged to Roger Warner in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #24 (April 1961). Lois is dating the rich and very accomplished Roger Warner. They may even be engaged (the script seems to hint at it). They call it quits after a gust of wind blows off Roger’s toupee revelaing him to be completely bald. To be fair to Lois, Roger is the one who is ashamed and calls it off. Reprinted in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #88.
• Almost Engaged to Petronius in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #33 (May 1962). Sent back to the ancient days by a “time bomb,” Lois becomes involved in a slave revolt. The leader of the revolt Petronius has asked her to marry him and she is in the middle of saying “yes” when she is whisked back to her own time. Reprinted in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #95.
• Atlantean scientist Ron-Thul wants to marry her in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #42 (July 1963). She refuses to marry him when she discovers that he is evil — though the fact that he looked exactly like Luthor and his name was a near-anagram of Luthor should have given it away. Reprinted in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #104.
• Lois is forced to marry Clark Kent by a tribe of lost vikings in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #53 (Novemeber 1964). Luckily Superman rescues them before the ceremony can take place. Reprinted in Superman Family #177.
• Engaged to Herko in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #57 (May 1965). Lois travels to the dimension where her monster friend Herko lives. Herko wants to get married and tells everyone that they’re engaged, but Lois doesn’t share his sentiment. She escapes, dignity intact, when it turns out that Herko is allergic to her make up. Reprinted in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #113)
• Marries Superman in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #90 (February 1969). Superman stages a fake wedding with Lois to draw out some criminals. Unfortunately, he forgets to tell Lois that it’s fake and she flounces off in a huff to marry Dahr-Nel (see above).
• Biron wants to marry Lois in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #92 (May 1969). Lois and Biron are in love, but there’s a problem. You see, Biron is the human identity of Comet the Super-Horse. He asks the goddess Circe to make him permanently human so he can marry Lois, but an evil magician intervenes and turns Lois into a super-horse. This issue is more than a little creepy (and not in the good “Halloween creepy” way, more in the “I-need-a-shower-right-now creepy”).

1. The Count
As a young child, I was always scared of the Count.

Cookie Monster? Not scary. Grover? Not scary (more pathetic really.) Big Bird? Well, he was a little creepy. Elmo? Way before my time. But the Count…he was scary.

I think the main reason was a recurring nightmare I had as a child that I can still remember to this day. In the dream I was chased down a long hallway by the Count and a Grandfather clock with arms and legs. When they caught me, they wadded me up like a piece of paper and through threw me down a stairwell. (Well, it was scary to a four year-old…)

I’m not sure what the dream meant (if anything). Maybe deep down I’m scared of math and promptness? All I know is that I still don’t trust the Count to this day.

sesame street count monster

2. The Giant Ants from Them!
I loved to read about the classic horror movies, but the first one I actually managed to see in the theater was Them! It was a late night showing at a small out-of-the-way theater of what was then a twenty year old movie, and I recall that I watched most of it scrunched down as small as possible in my chair. The movie may have been black and white, but those ants gave me nightmares for months.

(For those of you unfamiliar with Them!, it was one of the better horror films of the ’50s. Atomic testing in the American Southwest causes a nest of ants to grow to giant size and develop a taste for human flesh. The initial colony is destroyed, but some ants escape. These ants are eventually cornered in the streets and sewers of New York LA. Them! was one of the classic Cold War post-nuclear cautionary tales including such other movies as The Deadly Mantis, Godzilla and Yentl.)

3. Max

The monsters from Where the Wild Things Are were fine. Max though, he was creepy…

4. That Tentacled Monster from Space: 1999
It’s one of those weird situations. I’ve only seen one episode of Space: 1999, but I’ve seen that same episode several times. Whenever I tried to watch the show as a kid, it was always the same episode. I soon gave up on trying to watch the show altogether.

All I remember about the episode (“Dragon’s Domain“) is that among all the low-bid “futuristic” sets and smoke-machine fog, there was this nasty tentacled monster that would devour people and then spit out their dessicated corpses. That’s the part that really creeped me out: the shriveled mummy-like corpses.

About the same time (thanks to a local TV station’s Creature Feature movie week), I also ran across the black-and-white groaner The Creeping Terror. In this grade-Z horror film, a shambling alien mass that looked like it was pieced together from carpet remnants would attack and devour nubile young teenage girls, leaving behind shriveled corpses. Of course, the effects were so bad that the monster couldn’t “devour” anything, and its victims had to throw themselves into its mouth to be eaten. Unsurprisingly, The Creeping Terror got the full MST3K treatment, though I’m proud (ashamed?) that I saw it pre-MST3K. With the horrible special effects, the shriveled corpses in Terror were not scary, but they did remind me a little too much of the nightmare-inspiring corpses from Space: 1999.

• The Creeping Terror earns a 1.8 review on IMDB. Yes, it was that bad. (Manos, The Hands of Fate, considered by many to be the worst movie ever made, only scored 0.1 lower with a 1.7)
• Forget Land of the Lost, where’s my Space: 1999 comeback comic? (Granted, of course, that it’s now 2006).
• Speaking of Space: 1999 comics, here’s the full comic book version of the very episode (“Dragon’s Domain”) that I mentioned above. While it was scanned in from the German Space: 1999 comic, it’s been translated into English.

space 1999 creeping terror monster

As a child I loved to read about monsters and watch the classic Universal and Hammer horror movies. I could talk for hours about penny dreadfuls, Varney the Vampire and possible origins of lycanthrope. I could name the stars, explain the plots, and describe the special effects of any horror movie made in the fifties or sixties. Despite this love of things scary, there were still a handful of monsters that gave me nightmares as a child. In celebration of Halloween, I’m going to count down my Top 5 Childhood Monsters…

5. Sleestaks
The scariest monsters on TV and the only remotely coole thing to come out of The Land of the Lost. Everything about the Sleestaks scared me, from the way they walked to their sibilant speech. Those glowing skulls were the creepiest though.
With the recent comic book nostalgia boom, I’m surprised (and a little grateful) that there wasn’t a Land of the Lost comic book.

At the end of the previous issue, Lois “Lorne” had decided to stay in Coral City and Superman returned to Metropolis. Now don’t feel sorry for Lois — she’s already engaged to her new boyfriend, “hunky” astronaut Rand Kirby¹.

On the other hand, Clark Kent is having a tough time. He can’t take his mind of Lois. He changes into Superman and decides to go back in time and fix everything that got Lois mad at him in the first place. He fails spectacularly².

Meanwhile, Lois is assisting her boss Dr. Culver with a new experiment. He’s testing a new “mind gas” that is supposed to turn criminals into upstanding citizens. Either that, or it kills the person. The local prison has allowed Dr. Culver to test the drug on four death row criminals³. The death row prisoners escape and hold Lois hostage. Superman arrives and captures the escapees. During the struggle, Lois is exposed to the experimental mind gas.

The gas doesn’t kill Lois⁴, but it does give her a monster headache and she passes out. When she wakes up, she discovers that she’’s gained the ability to read minds. Peeking into Superman’s thoughts, she discovers that he truly loves her. She realizes that she still loves him and resolves to break up with Rand.

Rand’s parents are in town and are taking the couple out for dinner. Lois decides not to break up with him then, because that would just be tacky. At dinner, she discovers that her telepathy has disappeared but now she has gained the ability to predict the future. She receives a vision of Superman trapped in space by a kryptonite-laden satellite. She knows Rand is the only one who can save him, but Rand’s superiors don’t believe Lois’s story. Then their telescope reveals that Superman is indeed trapped by the satellite, so they decide to send Rand into space to rescue him⁵.

Lois sneaks into the space capsule shortly before lift off and takes the place of the robotic co-pilot.

Lois: I’ve learned all about these space ships while covering launchings for the Planet!

As the space capsule nears the satellite, Lois spacewalks out to the satellite and saves Superman. Rand also leaves the capsule to help Superman. Their air hoses get tangled and now Superman has to save the two of them. Once again, Lois passes out⁶. This time when she wakes up, Rand tells her that he know she really loves Superman and sadly lets her return to Metropolis.

This story deserves an award just for its use of tired plot devices. Death row criminals. Holes to China. Experimental medication. Telepathy and precognition that conveniently resolve by the end of the story. A new fiancee and an old boyfriend. They don’t make comics like this anymore (and that may not be a bad thing).

The “medical experiment” aspect is ludicrous. No respectable doctor or scientist would ever attempt such an experiment. First of all, there are strict requirements for any experiment that uses human subjects. The hospital review board would never approve this experiment — the risks are too high and the benefits too low. Second, the test only involved four subjects; that’s not enough to prove anything positive or negative. For very rare diseases and conditions, small experiments may be a necessity –– but this is a test on “criminal thoughts” — an all too common condition.

---

Notes:
¹How many times has Lois been engaged? I’d be interested in seeing a list. I bet she’s had at least a dozen fiancées at one point or another. I doubt any other woman (or character) in comics has had more.

²This is one of the stupidest things Superman has ever done. In the previous issue he missed Lois’s birthday party because he was smashing junked cars and lost track of time.
Now if you or I had the power to travel in time, it would be a no-brainer: go back and attend Lois’s party. Easy, right? Wrong. Superman decides to go back and smash the cars faster this time. Then he smashes too hard and knocks one of the cars clear through the Earth to China. This sets him behind schedule so he misses the party again. (So what happened to the Superman from that time? Why didn’t he make the party? He wasn’’t smashing cars, because that was the Superman-from-the-future.)

³The leader of these criminals is named “Strangler.” Here’s a hint: never trust someone named “Strangler.”

⁴Nor does it cure her criminal tendencies, as Lois is breaking and entering within just a few pages.

⁵So Lois’s precognition didn’t matter at all. Rand went up in the space capsule anyway.

⁶She does this a lot, doesn’t she?

Starting a weekly look at some of the classic medical PSA comic books published. for starters, here’s Captain America:

Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster

1988 brought us Captain America and his deep dark secret — he was once an asthmatic. The Super Soldier Serum not only turned him into Captain America, but also cured his asthma (although with asthma, he probably shouldn’t have been allowed in the military in the first place).

Proving that once is never enough, the Asthma Monster returned the next year in the appropriately titled Captain America: Return of the Asthma Monster. This means that Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster was the only medical PSA comic book that earned a sequel.

Captain America: Return of the Asthma Monster

(I hear that somewhere out there is Captain America vs. The Asthma Monster. I suspect this is the same comic as Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster, just under a different cover, though I’m not certain).

Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster reprinted Cap’s origin and then included a new story bu Louise Simonson with art by Alex Saviuk. Captain America: Return of the Asthma Monster featured a story by Howard Mackie with art by Mark Bagley. Both comics were produced by Marvel Comics along with the pharmaceutical companies Allen & Hanbury’s (in the UK) and Glaxo (in America). Glaxo eventually purchased Allen & Hanbury’s. The comics were given out free in doctor’s offices.

Hank and Dawn, along with Hawk and Dove, take a trip to Paris in Hawk & Dove #6 and #7.

The mysterious businessman Barter nabs the duo and asks them to perform a favor for him. In return, he will tell them the names of their benefactors: the entities who granted them their power. Hank wants no part of it, but Dawn has a strong desire to know more about their background so she convinces Hank that they should help Barter.

In a well-guarded chateau in Paris, an alchemist count has an old family Bible that Barter wants. He knows that it’s well hidden, but he thinks that Hawk and Dove will be perfect for this job because the Count won’t expect such a potent combination of Order and Chaos. He does recommend that they stay in human form as long as possible because changing into Hawk and Dove will set off the Count’s mystical alarms.

Once in Paris, Hank and Dawn climb over the wall and slip onto the grounds of the estate. They subdue the guard dogs and then sneak into the chateau itself. As a roomful of suits of armor comes to life, Hank changes into Hawk to act as a decoy and draw them away. Dawn sneaks further into the chateau to find the Bible but stumbles into a trapped room. She is able to escape, but not without losing a little blood — blood that is found by the Count and his assistant, an enigmatic woman known as Kali. Kali takes her two tigers and begins stalking Dawn.

Meanwhile, Hawk has disposed of the suits of armor and is attacked by a giant magma monster. He defeats the monster by submerging it in a fountain on the estate grounds. When a mystical barrier prevents him from re-entering the chateau, he climbs to the roof where he is attacked by a flock of gargoyles.

Dawn is still making her way through the mansion. Pursued by Kali and the tigers, she is cornered in a storage room. She dumps a shelf of chemicals on her pursuers and then scrambles into a dumbwaiter. Climbing up the shaft, she emerges in the Count’s laboratory and is quickly captured by Kali. In a weird moment of contradiction, Kali first stops Dawn from talking (telling her that “names have power”), but then convinces the Count to let her talk and explain why she’s there. Unsurprisingly, Dawn uses the chance to turn into Dove and fight back. At that moment, Hawk crashes through the skylight into the laboratory. Looking at a painting on the wall, Dove is able to deduce that the Bible is hidden beneath the courtyard fountain.

The duo escape outside and Hawk topples the fountain. Underneath, nestled in a cache of jewels and gold, is the Bible. They grab the book but are pursued by a giant snake. Hawk fights the snake while Kali confronts Dawn.

Barter’s shop reappears at just the right moment and Hawk and Dove dive through the doorway. They hand the Bible over to Barter. In return, he tells them the names they wanted: Tcharr and Tetraya. It’s clear that he knows more, but he won’t reveal it as the bargain was for the names only. He returns the Hank and Dawn to Washington D.C.

Speaking of D.C., workers are cleaning up the abandoned warehouse that Kestrel used as a hideout. When one of the workers notices a mysterious doorway in the wall, a strange purple and black energy emerges and engulfs him. This worker later shows up at Suds, the bar where Ren works, and passes this energy on to her boss Dugan.

Other Notes:

• Names and Transformations: Because Barter does not represent a danger to them; Hank and Dawn are unable to change into Hawk and Dove while in his store. Later, while sneaking onto the count’s estate, Dawn stops Hank from even saying “Hawk” casually, so apparently just saying the words “hawk” or “dove” in the presence of danger initiates the transformation, there does not need to be any intent.
• Barter mentions that his shop cannot open into magical doorways such as the Count’s chateau, Dr. Fate’s tower, or a “certain sanctum in Greenwich Village.” You just gotta love a comic that includes little fanboy in-jokes like this.
• As of issue #7, this series outlasted the original The Hawk and the Dove series.

I don’t do a great deal of link-blogging, but as I was sitting around donating blood yesterday, I decided it would be a good time to look once again upon the wonderful world of comic books and …well…blood. Here’s a selection of fun reads, from blood being responsible for super powers, to blood in comic book ink (and the inevitable demonic possession that follows), to Superman and “alternative medicine,” and finally a look at what our government talks about in offical meetings.

• I know I’ve posted this one before, but it’s too good to pass up. Is Superman’s blood responsible for every super-hero ever? This author thinks so.
• In a similar vein, here’s an article looking at Clark “Hugo” Kent and Superboy and Supergirl. It tries to tie together Siegel and Shuster Superman, Wylie’s Gladiator and much of the Silver Age superbooks.
• From Snopes, is the blood of the band KISS really mixed in with the ink in their first comic book? (No mention of the late Mark Gruenwald and the Squadron Supreme TPB at Snopes, though here it is mentioned in the sidebar of an HBO article on Six Feet Under). According to the conspiracy-minded Jack Chick wannabe Last Trumpet Newsletter, these comics are occult and pure evil!
  

  This nation has developed an insatiable appetite for the occult. One example is the popular demand for a special edition comic book printed with ink that was mixed with the cremated ashes of the author, Mark Gruenwald. The Canton Company made the special ink for the printing of “Squadron Supreme.” (12) This is reminiscent of the 1978 comic book published by Marvel Comics printed with ink mixed with a vial of blood from each member of the rock band, KISS. (13) The name KISS is an acronym for “Kings In Satanic Service.” These comics are read by millions of young people, and the special ink mixed with the ashes of cremation or the blood of the living, devil possessed people attracts evil spirits and gives them the right to stay in the homes of those who buy the books.

• Here’s an article from a homeopath claiming to have cured Superman’s “allergy” to kryptonite. (Makes sense: Superman is an imaginary character and the benefits of homeopathy are all purely imaginary)
• A transcript from a Health and Human Services meeting on “Blood Safety and Availability” where they discuss the poor transfusion techniques at Metropolis Hospital.
  

  Well, as part of my due diligence, I pursued to see what other hospitals in the United States were doing as well. And I came across this photograph in the newspapers which showed Superman receiving a blood transfusion. One of my colleagues, upon seeing this, said, “Well, there’s your answer. Superman doesn’t get leuko-reduced blood. There’s no filter in the line.”

  I was chagrined. So I actually called the Metropolis blood center, spoke to the director, my good friend, Jarriel [ph], and I asked him about this, and he said not to worry, pre-storage leukoreduction.

  [Laughter.]

  DR. SNYDER: So that clearly explains why there is no filter. But ever mindful of the FDA guidance, 606.122, paragraph B, to use a filter in the administration equipment, if you look closely, there are 270 micron filters right over there.

  Lest you think, however, that I am biased by my friendship, let me point this out, that this photograph also shows Lois Lane donating double the usual amount of blood and her saying that she’d gladly give it all. She doesn’t want to go on living. So I bring to the FDA’s attention that the Metropolis blood bank may have some conflicts as far as the validity of the donor screening and also their SOP for blood donations.

Update (14 Sep 05 0830): Broken links fixed.

The Micronauts were a team of heroes from a microscopic universe known as (wait for it) the Microverse. It was really not another universe as much as it was a microscopic solar system. However, unlike a normal solar system consisting of several planets orbiting a sun, the Microverse consists of about two dozen planets strung together like a molecule. Through an intricate process, people from the Microverse could cross over into our universe, but were only six inches tall.

The Micronauts were led by Commander Rann¹, a hero from a previous era who was able to wield the powerful and mysterious “Enigma Force” – said to be the power of the Microverse itself. Their other leader was Marionette², a princess of Homeworld, the ruling planet of the Microverse. Other members of the team included Acroyear³, the king of the warrior planet Spartak, and a bipedal insect named, um, Bug⁴. Acroyear’s wife Celicia⁵ sometimes joined them on missions. There were also two robots, Microtron and Biotron (though Biotron had been destroyed by the time these stories took place).

The “Keys” storyline takes place immediately after the Micronauts’ defeat of Baron Karza and Hydra⁶. During that storyline, Rann had been captured by Karza and had the Enigma Force stolen from him. To defeat Karza, Acroyear had sacrificed his planet. At the end of the battle, Commander Rann was in a catatonic state and Acroyear was a traitor to his people.

In Micronauts #29, the remaining Micronauts journey into Rann’s brain under Doc Samson’s direction. For some unknown reason, the two sides of his brain have stopped communicating. Inside, the team encounters the cause for Rann’s condition: Nightmare. They break down the wall between the two sides of Rann’s brain, driving Nightmare away, but leaving behind an obelisk inscribed with a strange verse.

A time of darkness will there be; Of great distress on land and sea! Find thyselves and thou wilt find me — The secret lies in these keys three!

In Micronauts #30 the team takes care of some business on Homeworld. Acroyear leaves the team to track down his people and Pharoid, king of a desert planet, joins in his stead. The Micronauts then journey to the aquatic world of Oceania to investigate the strange happenings in their main city of Seazone. Lady Coral, the daughter of the leader of Seazone tells the ‘Nauts about the earthquakes that have been striking Seazone and the sea monsters that have been appearing in increasing numbers. She also mentions her brother Aquon, who disappeared mysteriously. While exploring the area, Commander Rann and Marionette are swallowed by a giant fish.

The team continues the search for the missing Rann and Marionette in Micronauts #31. Along the way, they battle sea monster after sea monster. They also encounter Aquon, now changed into a merman and seeming leader of the sea monsters. He explains that a mysterious stranger changed him into his current form and gave him a mystic key. This stranger charged him with protecting the inhabitants of Seazone. It turns out that the sea monsters were not attacking the city, but trying to help. Just then, a devastating quake hits Seazone and Aquon uses the key to change everyone into mermen and mermaids⁷. Once the quake is over, Aquon changes the Micronauts back to their original form and gives the key to them so they can continue their quest.

Micronauts #32 takes the team to the ice world Polaria. Like Oceania, Polaria is also being racked with natural disasters. A mysterious large white polar bear has been seen prowling around the city recently as well. The queen of Polaria is quiet, subdued, and recommending no action. This doesn’t sit well with one of her nobles, Prince Peacock, who is convinced that the strange bear is responsible for the disasters. He hunts it down and manages to slay it, only to discover that the bear was really his beloved Queen. Like Aquon, she had been given a magical key by a mysterious stranger, but unlike Aquon, she was unable to save her city. Leaving the doomed city behind, the Micronauts take the key and continue on their journey.

Acroyear takes center stage in Micronauts #33. He’s still wandering around the Microverse, looking for his refugee people. Along the way, he’s not only burned a “T” in his forehead (for traitor) but become blinded by a comet. He stumbles into a strange city in the jungle world of Tropica, a city populated by a race of pink-furred satyrs. These creatures are obsessed with the which-cup-is-the-pea-under game. It turns out that many years ago, a mysterious stranger arrived and taught this game to them, telling them that the future of the Microverse was revealed in the game. They’ve been playing nonstop ever since. Acroyear and his new found pink-furred friend Devil discover three giant cups hidden on top of the city. True to his warrior heritage, Acroyear doesn’t try to solve the game, but instead smashes the cups and discovers the third key.

The team returns to Homeworld in Micronauts #34 only to discover that the ruler of Homeworld and bother of Marionette, Prince Argon has become evil and wants the power of the keys for himself. This sets up double-sized Micronauts #35 where the Micronauts battle Prince Argon and his dog soldiers on an abandoned cemetery world. Doctor Strange appears and assists the Micronauts in defeating not only Argon but also the mysterious wraiths which have been behind all the natural disasters. Millennia ago on Earth, the heroes of a remote land were under attack by these evil wraiths. These people, who bore a strong resemblance to the gods and heroes of Hindu legend, realized that they could not defeat the wraiths outright. They used the power of the mystic Sunsword to magically create a new universe – the Microverse – to which they fled. These heroes became the founders of the different planets of the Microverse and the magic of Sunsword became the Enigma Force. With the help of Dr. Strange, the Micronauts reactivate the Sunsword and restore balance to the Microverse, averting the disasters. They then flee to Earth to escape Argon, setting up the next (extended) Micronauts storyline.

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NOTES
¹Commander Rann was based on the Space Glider figure. It was a metal figure that came with a removable plastic helmet and a backpack with wings that would spring out when the button was pushed. It makes sense he was the leader because he was one of the coolest toys, mostly because of the wings.
²Sorry, there were no females in the Micronaut toy line.
³The toy Acroyear was “The Enemy of the Micronauts” so as a loyal toy collector I was incensed that the comic had made him a good guy. I have to admit he was a good character though; a proto-Worf. There was also a toy known as “Acroyear II” – this character was represented in the comic as Shaitan, the evil brother of Acroyear. I had an Acroyear II once but it disappeared. Months later I found it (and several other missing toys) on a shelf in a friend’s room. On second though, make that “friend.”
⁴The writers of the Micronauts gave Bug the annoying speaking habit of making a “tik” sounds every few words. Sample dialogue: “Pharoid! Microtron! –tik– Help! Fish-ridin’s even worse than –tik– flyin’!” They explained it away as the clickingof his species’ vocal cords. That didn’t explain why he still said –tik– in though balloons!
A few years ago, there was a Bug one-shot. In it, Bug battled a miniature Annihlus and managed to inadvertently cause the origins of every Marvel super-hero (for instance, he caused the truck carrying radioactive material to swerve, leading to Matt Murdock becoming Daredevil).
⁵No toy for her. No female Micronaut toys, remember.
⁶Remember when Hydra used to be a threat?
⁷Are older mermaids (or married ones) known as mer-matrons?

Growing up in Virginia, my favorite show to watch after school was The Krofft Super Stars. This was an hour show that was really two random half-hour shows from the prolific Sid and Marty Krofft. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the episodes shown. It could be two episodes of the same show or episodes of two different shows. Even if the episodes were from the same show, they were undoubtedly shown out of order.

The Krofft Super Stars included the following shows:

• Land of the Lost. The best of the bunch, and therefore shown rarely. The sleestaks were still creepy, but not as scary as when I was five. Chaka though, he (it?) was scary.
• Far Out Space Nuts. Stupid but funny.
• The Lost Saucer. With Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi as androids. Again, stupid but fun. Probably my favorite show, as the humor was perfect for a nine year-old.
• Electra-Woman and Dynagirl. This one only showed up in the rotation rarely and I think only three of four episodes were made. I tried to like it because it featured superheroes, but it was hard not to be astounded by the low production values and inane scripts.
• Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Or was it Sigmund the Sea Monster? I can’t remember. It was about a couple of boys who lived near the beach, their sea monster friend, and his family of less-than-friendly (though very inept) sea monsters. It was funny with the above average Kroft production values (second only to Land of the Lost).
• H.R. Puffinstuff. Huh? What were thinking? Even as a nine year-old I knew this was a drug show and I had no hope of understanding it.
• The Bugaloos. My least favorite. Tiny whiny hippies with wings — but that’s not all: they sing!

I know that Land of the Lost is out on DVD, but I haven’t seen any of the others.

UPDATE (24 May):
Other Krofft shows I forgot (some I can barely remember at all): Wonderbug (kind of a live action Speedbuggy), Bigfoot and Wildboy, Dr. Shrinker, and Lidsville.
Here’s the TV Tome link for the Krofft Supershow/Krofft Superstars

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.

Firestorm #55 and #56 occur during the “Legends” cross-over event. These are the only Legend books I’ve read, and it doen’t appear that I’ve missed much. When even the talented John Ostrander can’t make the comics exciting, the crossover couldn’t have been that good.

As the story starts, Firestorm is battling the atomic monster Brimstone, and doing a very bad job of it. The monster drops a building on the Justice League (the Vibe and Gypsy League, so no great loss), shrugs off everything Firestorm throws at it and flies off into space, but not before flattening a city block, killing thousands of people. Flying home, Firestorm discovers that Pittsburgh is full of protestors and the President has ordered all superheroes to stand down. Professor Stein is happy to oblige, but Ronnie isn’t going to give up being Firestorm that easily.

The next day, a group of fanatics are burning super-hero books outside the Vandemeer library. Ronnie wants to change into Firestorm and stop them, but the Professor refuses. Ronnie changes into Firestorm anyway and finds that while he may be Firestorm, he doesn’t have access to most of his powers. He falls into the bonfire and becomes an easy target of the rioters.

Luckily , Hank Hall just happens to be inside the library. According to the story, he’s at Vandemeer University with the Eldon University football team to play a football game. Sure, Eldon University is in Oregon and Vandemeer is in Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t matter when you’re a member of the FCAC*. Still, Hank in a library, voluntarily…the mind boggles**.

Hank changes into Hawk and rushes out, dispersing the fanatics and giving Firestorm the chance to save himself. Professor Stein is incensed and vows never to become Firestorm again.

That evening, Hawk breaks into the ROTC building and helps himself to a bunch of guns and live ammunition. A group of pro-hero fanatics is there with the same idea, so they join up with Hawk and head out to the library.

The anti-hero fanatics are attacking the library, but Hawk and his fanatics are defending it. Both groups are well armed. The police move in as well and a deadly gun battle is just minutes away. Across campus, Ronnie apologizes to the Professor and they agree to become Firestorm once again, but only for passive activities. Firestorm uses his powers to change the guns into water pistols and the bullets into flowers. Next he uses his powers to turn the standoff into one giant slapstick pie fight. No, really; I’m not making this up. The police arrest the anti-hero fanatics and Hawk stalks off, furious at being embarrassed. Firestorm retires for the evening, a job well-done.

A good use of Hawk, showing his fanatacism without beating the reader over the head with it. The pie fight was pure genius, but I keep coming back to the scene of Hawk in a library — that part just seems out of character for Hank.

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*FCAC…The Fictional College Athletic Conferece, featuring such athletic powerhouses as Empire State, Metropolis University, Faber, Vandemeer, Eldon University and Knox State College (UC Sunnydale was dropped from the conference due to a precipitous decline in enrollment).

**Hank makes up for it in the Hawk & Dove mini-series (1988) when he blows up the Georgetown University library and no one bats an eye.

A superstar baseball player suffers a sudden fracture of his right upper arm. X-rays show a generalized osteopenia (thinning of the bones). Since the most common cause of osteopenia in younger individuals is cancer, other (very expensive) tests are run, but no cancer is found.

Other symptoms this patient is suffering include kidney failure, liver damage, hallucinations and hypogonadism.

Now, this player admits that he was once a drug abuser — of the hallucinogenic and stimulant variety. He denies steroid use, though under duress admits he may have used something his trainer gave him once. As the story goes on, it turns out that he hasn’t given up drugs entirely and has been using some marijuana “to relax” now and again. It seems that this marijuana was grown in ground contaminated with cadmium, and his symptoms (and his wife’s anosmia) are due to cadmium poisoning.

Cadmium poisoning is nasty, and can certainly cause the symptoms mentioned — except the hallucinations. In addition, cadmium poisoning usually has respiratory symptoms and lung and prostate cancers are common. (It was probably the morphine causing the hallucinations; I’ve seen patients with similar hallucinations — talking to people who aren’t there — on morphine. )

(Please note that this is different from Cadbury Poisoning, which is an overdose of chocolate. This condition seems to be most common around Easter.)

Dr. House initially believes that the patient is lying about not using steroids, and that those steroids are the cause of his hypogonadism. He starts to treat this with Lupron (leuprolide acetate). Admittedly, this area of medicine isn’t my specialty, but this makes no sense. Lupron suppresses the production of sex hormones, something the patient is already low on. He is causing hypogonadism in a patient who already has that problem. Furthermore (according to the story), since steroid-induced hypogonadism wasn’t the cause, the Lupron knocks the patient into respiratory failure. This also makes little sense as Lupron is not associated with respiratory failure (but it is a good example of a common theme on House: a treatment will either save your life if the diagnosis is correct, or kill you if the diagnosis is wrong).

Other side issues in this episode include transplant ethics, digitalis toxicity, ex-girlfriends, sleeping with drug reps, and monster truck rallies.

This episode earns a B+ for the mystery and an A- for the solution. The medicine earns a D (the cadmium was clever, but the Lupron was ludicrous). (I give the minor side plots a B+ because they almost salvaged the bad medicine.)

When I was a kid, the two things that scared me the most were Sleestaks and Scooby-Doo. To a kid of 5 or 6, Sleestaks were scary. Giant lizard men loping around the set of Land of the Lost with a lot of hissing. And crystals. And those big vacant eyes. This is the stuff little kid’s nightmares are made of.

Now, Scooby-Doo himself didn’t scare me, it was his show. All those ghosts and phantoms and monsters were frightening. I knew they weren’t real and the “meddling kids” would figure it out sooner or later, but it still creeped me out. I would watch the first five minutes of the show (to see the set-up), and the last five (to sese who done it).

I’m better now, and I can watch the whole Scooby-Doo episode (but not those hour long shows with “guest stars” – those were horrible! Especially the episodes with Batman and Robin and the Harlem Globetrotters). I’m still not a big fan of Land of the Lost, but it’s Chaka now — what an ugly costume.

Anything that scared you as a child that seems ridiculous now?

• The dental adventure chapter in Sgt. Frog, Volume 4 is really nothing more than a Japanese update of the Crest Team. Of course, if Marvel had published the comic, it would be Crest Team Mangaverse
• Laura brings up some good points in regards to Aquaman and his lack of great villains. I think the whole “great villains make great heroes” statement is overused and oversimplified. It would be better phrased as “great threats” or “great challenges make great heroes.” Think back to some of the great early classic Spider-Man tales. When Spider-Man has to summon all his strength to lift that heavy block or when he throws his costume in the trash, it’s not because of a super-villain. Good heroes face threats from within as often as without. More recently, most of the Vertigo series lack “great villains” but are still captivating comics with compelling heroes. Too many writers try to create an iconic villain too soon in their run on a character, and it never works.
• She’s also right about the damage done by the Superfriends cartoon show. Let’s not forget Aquaman’s own Filmation series, though. Heroes with flippered sea-mammals as sidekicks have a hard time with credibility.
• I spent the last couple of nights catching up on some trade paperbacks and graphic novels.
  • I had picked up the first issue of Killer Princesses when it came out and enjoyed it, but moved and missed the rest. Last night, I read the trade cover to cover in one sitting. It is a perfect fusion of Gail Simone’s writing with Lea Hernandez’s art. But be warned: there are simply too many laugh-out loud lines and situations in this book to read it in public.
  • The third volume of Hopeless Savages is my favorite so far. The plot is more down to earth and believable than the previous volumes. There are some excellent character moments, particularly for Arsenal. As a bonus, there is less Skank Zero, which is good, because I can only tolerate her in small doses. I would like to see more Rat Bastard though. (That should bring me some interesting internet searches.)
  • Metabarons Volume #1 and Volume #2. Beautifully painted. Very European feeling science fiction, like it stepped out of Heavy Metal. There is a little too much “tell” rather than “show”, and sometimes when they do show instead of tell, it’s difficult to understand what’s going on. Still, it’s epic science fiction, something we don’t see enough of anymore. I’m looking forward to the new edition of The Incal
• Captain America: The Return of the Asthma Monster. Must. Read. This. Comic. (Link courtesy of the Precocious Curmudgeon)
• Battlestar Galactica begins tonight.

Since David Welsh is giving us some of his favorite mystery writers this week, I thought I’d chime in with some of my own overlooked mysteries that are worth the time to track down and read.

• The Brother Cadfael series, by Ellis Peters, is a captivating mystery series set in the England of the late 12th century*. Its main character is Brother Cadfael, a former crusader who is now a Benedictine monk. The mysteries themselves are well written and the history is fascinating. The first book is the probably the weakest, but still well above average. Brother Cadfael was turned into a BBC series, shown on PBS’s Mystery, that is supposed to be very well done.

• Malcolm Shuman has written a brief series of mysteries focusing on professional historian and archaeologist (but not in the Indiana Jones sense) Alan Graham, who finds himself involved in a variety of mysteries mostly around the Baton Rouge area. All of the books have a historical tie and topics covered include Meriwether Lewis (of Lewis and Clark), Jim Bowie, Indian burial grounds, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Mayans.

• Tonya Huff has a five-book series involving Victoria Nelson, a former police detective now P.I., her ex-partner and sometimes-lover Mike Celucci, and Henry FitzSimmons, a vampire “romance novelist” around since Tudor England. The books combine mystery with horror, and each book addresses a classic horror staple (i.e. demons, mummies, Frankenstei’ns monster, werewolves, etc.). A sixth book was recently published focusing on Henry and minor character Tony.

• G.K. Chesterton’s series of books and stories involving Father Brown, a quiet shabby priest who solves mysteries in an almost “by the way” manner remains a wonderful read well over a hundred years after they were written. Inexpensive because of that whole public domain thing. As a comic book reference, G.K. Chesterton is who Gilbert (aka Fiddler’s Green) is based on in the Sandman “Doll’s House” storyline.

Warning! Footnote involving a small history lesson:
*Historically, the Brother Cadfael books take place in the period of time when both Stephen and Matilda were fighting for the throne of England. Ultimately, Stephen wins, though to preserve peace Matilda’s son Henry is named as his heir. To put this is in a historical perspective, Henry is better known as Henry II, husband of Eleanor of Aquitane and father of Richard the Lion-Hearted and King John (or Magna Carta and Robin Hood fame), and murderer (albeit indirectly) of the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket — which leads down the line to Chaucer’s Canturbery Tales. Clear as mud?

This game for the X-Box is the perfect video game guilt pleasure. First of all, the graphics are superb. Watch the smoke undulate or the water ripple and be awed. The game play is addictive; the game plays like a cross between Diablo and the original Gauntlet. Up to four people can play at once and remember, the family that plays together, stays together. Best of all, it includes all the great classic AD&D monsters I’ve always loved: Yuan-Ti, Mind Flayers, a Beholder and a Bulette! When’s the last time you saw a bulette?

All this, and it was only $6 on e-Bay!

Another week, another good JLU episode. This one was primarily about Booster Gold, who stayed true to his comic book roots as a shallow “hero” interested mostly in fame and fortune. The humor quotient was high, with the recurring joke that everyone thought Booster was Green Lantern. His sycophantic robot pal Skeets was worth the price of admission all by himself (his best line: “I got nothing.”).

The backdrop of this episode was a battle with the supremely powerful Mordru. Hero after hero was called in to help, including – reluctantly (to J’onn that is, Booster was ecstatic) – Booster Gold. The episode was strongly reminiscent of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Zeppo” which focused entirely on Xander while the rest of the gang was off fighting an apocalyptic monster in the background. Similarly, this episode focused on Booster while the rest of the Justice League was in the background fighting the big baddy. While Mordru was beaten in the end, his defeat was just a minor part of the plot.

Elongated Man had a nice role in this episode as well. Initially he was assigned to help Booster with crowd control because Plastic Man was already in the front lines and they “didn’t need two stretchy guys.” He ended up saving the day in the end, though.

Heroes shown included Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Elongated Man, Booster (but sadly no Beetle), Fire, Ice, Hawk, Dove, Vigilante, Aztek, Vibe (!), Stars, S.T.R.I.P.E., Captain Atom, the Shining Knight, the Huntress and Plastic Man (mentioned, but not seen).

I also managed to catch the new Batman series this morning. It was not anywhere as good as Batman the Animated Series, but much better then the Batman cartoons from the 1970s. It was an enjoyable show, though clearly aimed at a less sophisticated audience than Justice League Unlimited. The way that Bruce Wayne was drawn reminded me too much of Jackie Chan from the Jackie Chan Adventures. The new Joker was quite imposing and much more physical than previous incarnations of the character; he was the first Joker to actually seem frightening. I liked the new look for Wayne Manor in the way it resembled a medieval fortress as opposed to the previously pictured stately manor.

The plot was fairly straightforward. Batman has been prowling the streets of Gotham for three years. The Joker, a previously unknown villain, breaks into Arkham Asylum and frees most of the inmates. He and Batman tangle but the Joker escapes. Batman tracks down Joker to his lair, but the Joker flees in a hot air balloon filled with Joker gas. Batman catches him, they fight, and Joker ends up back at Arkham, this time as an inmate himself. Meanwhile the Gotham City police are trying to track down this urban legend known as Batman…

I’ll certainly watch The Batman again, but I’m looking forward to the imminent arrival of my Batman the Animated Series DVDs more.

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.

I was going to write a cutting and insightful critique of the Marvel Comics mini-series Witches. But then I read it. So instead, I think I’ll just sum up my thoughts about the comic by simply listing the important things I learned from Witches:

• The fewer clothes you wear, the better a witch you are (the opposite holds true for males, where the more clothes the better).
• Your worst enemies are always relatives.
• By quitting the team and striking out on your own, you’ll manage to stumble upon a major plot point before anyone else.
• Reading books is dangerous.
• Tattoos are cool.
• People named Illyana have common Russian last names like … Kale.
• Capes and scarves do not need to obey the laws of gravity.
  (Or: Sorcerers and Witches always have a wind blowing from behind them.)
• You can shoot someone dead by just pointing a finger at them.
• Satan’s first name is Lou (though anyone who watched Angel Heart should already know this).
• Evil magic is pink. Good magic is yellow. Lesbian magic is purple.
• Condescension never goes out of style.
• Monsters breathe loudly.

We arrived early again for the final day of WizardWorld as we learned that was the best time for hitting the Dealers’ Room and Exhibition area. I picked up some copies of Invincible and had Robert Kirkman sign them at the surprisingly small Image Comics booth. I also gave him two words of advice regarding his upcoming Marvel Team-Up series: Brother Voodoo.

We swung by the NC Soft booth and I managed to win a copy of City of Heroes and the accompanying strategy guide by proving that I know way too much about Black Goliath (thanks to a misspent youth of reading Marvel Two-In-One). I had been hinting that I wanted the game for Christmas, but now I get to play it sooner. We also picked up some Love Hina and Princess Ai at the TokyoPop booth for the Polite-Wife, and Planetes for me.

The first panel we attended today was the Marvel X-Men panel. Joe Quesada was emceeing and most of the X-creators were there including Mark Millar, Chris Claremont, and Joss Whedon. There were no real surprises at the panel: Wolverine is everywhere and Phoenix is returning. There was a promise that inter-universe continuity will be stressed more not only in the X-titles, but the entire Marvel Universe.

The Vertigo panel was fairly brief, since much of it was taken up with an extended clip from Constantine and a Q&A session with its director. There was mention of a new Grant Morrison Bollywood-based mini-series to be illustrated by Philip Bond. Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere story will be out as a nine-part mini-series adapted by Mike Carey. Lucifer will apparently end at issue #75, with the third of three “acts” just starting now. Issue #30 of Y: The Next Man will explain why Yorrick survived the plague, and then the characters will travel out of the United States. Several Hellblazer projects were announced to coincide with the February release of Constantine, including a Papa Midnite miniseries and an original graphic novel.

In terms of Constantine, the movie definitely has style. The clips certainly intrigued me, and Keanu Reeves actually held his own. The only part I really didn’t like was the scene when Constantine was shooting a combination cross/shotgun at a roomful of demons; the Constantine in the comics would never get his hands dirty in actual combat and the scene was too reminiscent of a first-person shooter. Otherwise, the clips mostly focused on his encounters with demons, conversations with Papa Midnite and his coping with the realization that he has lung cancer. In addition to the variety of demons shown (including one composed of swarming insects), there was also a scene with a slightly-feminine-but-mostly-androgynous archangel (I don’t remember which one. Michael? Gabriel? Airwolf?). While there were a few too many instances of monsters popping into the screen suddenly to startle the audience, there was a genuine feeling of dread and suspense instilled by the movie. It surprises me to say that I am now looking forward to seeing this movie, but I don’t think it will be for everyone.

Overall, we had a very good time at WizardWorld. I was able to find some hard-to-find comics and meet some nice people. I wish the panels had been more mixed and topically diverse rather than company presentations and I wanted to see more independent publishers in the exhibition room and on the panels. Still, it was a well-spent weekend and we’ll undoubtedly be back next year.

Detective Comics #795 Monsters of Rot, part 2: Knee Deep
Andersen Gabrych, writer
Pete Woods, penciler

In Detective Comics #795, Batman and the Tarantula are investigating a particularly nasty disease known as the mugre. Batman ultimately determines that it is a bacterial infection from the rainforests of Central/South America.

To treat the Tarantula for an exposure to the infection, he injects her with Cipro. He also gives some of the same drug to Commissioner Akins to administer to any sanitation plant employee who may have come into contact with the disease.

Cipro (generic name: ciprofloxacin) is a potent antibiotic and is effective against a wide variety of bacterial infections.

However, I am concerned that:

1. Batman administers it by intramuscular injection. Ciprofloxacin is only supposed to be administered orally or by IV, not by injecting it into a muscle.
2. Batman only used one dose. Bacterial infections need several days of antibiotics to clear up.