Sue Storm’s Bloody Nose
Time to revisit another favorite topic: nosebleeds.
Susan Storm develops nosebleeds twice while projecting her forcefield in the “Doom” storyline in Ultimate Fantastic Four. She’s a young, healthy, and fit individual — so why is she bleeding?
Is it due to mental strain? Unlikely. Mental activity, strain, and concentration do not lead to nosebleeds. If they did, colleges and high schools would be filled with bleeding students during finals week.
Is it due to physical strain? Again, unlikely. Watch the Strongest Man in the World competitions on ESPN2. Those guys are physically straining as hard as they can for several minutes at a time. Veins are popping, eyes are bulging, but there’s no nosebleed in sight. On the other hand, people who have already have weakened blood vessels in their nose may be susceptible to bloody noses from strenuous activity, but there’s differing medical opinions about this.
What about elevated blood pressure? Possible, but unlikely. There’s also conflicting and unclear data about the relationship between nosebleeds and high blood pressure. As far as I can tell from a quick read of the literature, people with nosebleeds tend to have a higher blood pressure, but people with high blood pressure don’t necessarily have more nosebleeds.
What about trauma or infection? A definite possibility. Susan could have gotten clocked during a fight with the Mole Man and his subterranians in the previous storyline. She also could have caught a cold while down in the dank tunnels, which irritated the nasal mucosa leading to nosebleeds. (Or she could pick her nose enough to cause bleeding — now that’s a cover I’d like to see Greg Land draw.)
So if you must have a medical reason for Sue’s nosebleeds, I suggest that she got hit in the nose during the fight with the Mole Man, and the physical strain of projecting her forcefield was enough to burst an already weakened blood vessel.
Of course it’s far more likely is it’s yet another example of nosebleeds being comic book shorthand for a character “straining really hard using their mental powers.”
As others have pointed out, you’ll notice that in the recent Fantastic Four movie, Jessica Alba’s Susan Storm also develops a nosebleed while using her powers. Wonder if it was the same nostril?
For more thoughts on comic book shorthand and nosebleeds, check out the tags below…
February 2nd, 2006 at 9:46 am
Well. The cosmic rays actually imbued Sue Storm’s erythrocytes with special powers but the thrombocytes got shafted in the deal. Hence, she nose bleeds when projecting force fields.
Ok.
I got nothing.
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
maybe she picks her nose.
thats how you get nose bleeds.
duh.
February 2nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
I had a friend in high school that got nose bleeds, seemily at the drop of a hat. A cold dry winter day. Too much physical exersize. The combo of stress from a test combined with keeping his head down while taking it seemed to trigger it alot.
When he was about 17 or so, he had a procedure done to help it. If I understood it correctly, and remember still, they cauterized some of the inside of his nose.
Does this sound right, or have the years clouded my memory? If so, could Sue have the same problem?
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Um… what about the other use of nosebleeds as comic book shorthand?
In Japan, nosebleeds signify lust or embarassment.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Hm, I used to get nosebleeds quite easily in high school, sometimes getting them from sneezing. I have no idea what caused this, but it went away on its own as I got older.
February 2nd, 2006 at 12:50 pm
“Um… what about the other use of nosebleeds as comic book shorthand?
In Japan, nosebleeds signify lust or embarassment.”
Well, that has an established explanation. Firstly, observation of manga/anime violence and blood-letting indicates that manga/anime characters have at least 12-15 pints of blood in their bodies, all of it under high pressure. Secondly, the structure of the nose is much smaller and weaker, due to the need for the skull to accomodate much larger eyes. In moments of embarrasment or sexual arousal, the heart rate increases, forcing the blood around the body at an even greater pressure, resulting in the rupture of the weak blood vessels/membranes in the nose. Interestingly, it seems much less common in females, who usually only suffer a rush of blood to the area of the face in question. Possibly it may have evolved in males as a safety measure to counteract the rush of blood to, uh, other areas.
February 2nd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Like #3’s friend, I used to get nosebleeds a lot, especially in the winter. My doctor told me it was because of … yep, herpes. Apparently you can get cold sores in your nose, and when they burst (especially in very dry weather, so the winter is bad), your nose bleeds. Maybe Sue is doing all this work in the nasty New York winters, when the air is really dry. The FF should move to Miami and then the humidity would keep her nose from bleeding.
February 2nd, 2006 at 2:47 pm
It’s certainly not only a comic book convention…It’s used in movies and books all the time. Firestarter by Stephen King
pops immediately to mind, where the father character would get nosebleeds when using his mental “push.”
February 2nd, 2006 at 4:47 pm
Use of psychic powers obviously requires a “turbocharging” of the brain, accomplished by raising the blood pressure. The brain vessels of psychics seem to be reinforced, but apparently not nasal passages.
In _Firestarter_, it wasn’t just nosebleeds - the father character got small strokes from using his powers. And the more strongly he used them, the stronger the stroke.
February 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 pm
Count me in as well as a “drop-of-the-hat” nosebleeder. Up until about Junior year of High School, I’d get nosebleeds after the smallest impacts with the right part of my nose, and nearly every dry day in the winter. I saw an ear-nose-throat guy for an unrelated problem, but mentioned it and he cauterized the problem veins then and there. I haven’t really had the problem since.
February 3rd, 2006 at 7:17 am
Official Comment
You are all psychics and just haven’t realized it yet.
February 5th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
Perhaps Sue caught it from Max Lord…
March 17th, 2008 at 11:23 am
To be fair, some people really do have rather fragile blood vessels in their noses. For those people, it really doesn’t take much to develop a nosebleed; too much nose-blowing, too strong an allergic reaction, etc. (The first time I went to school in Downtown Dallas, my nose bled regularly for the first two weeks. Too much smog irritated my nasal passages, and the resulting nose-blowing to clear away the accumulated mucus wore a small hole straight through the outermost layer of that tender skin.)
If you really need a justification for “straining psychic” nosebleeds, consider this: As Ms. Storm expends additional energy to maintain and strengthen her forcefields, her blood pressure and breathing both jump. In addition, her levels of norepinephrine and acetylcholine levels will spike, due to the stress of combat and her intense focus. This will provoke a histamine response, both as a buffer and to increase the delivery of needed blood to her brain. Under this combination of circumstances, a single weakness in her nasal lining can readily provide the little trickle of blood you get to see.
What do you think, Doctor? Reasonable enough to patch the plot hole? ;)
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