Comic Book Transfusions: The Incredible Hulk #138 — Sandman and Betty Ross
The Sandman breaks into a private hospital looking for Dr. Marquand, who has developed a revolutionary new technique known as Total Body Transfusion designed to help accident victims. The Sandman is hoping the treatment will cure his crystalline condition (after a battle with the Hulk, his body was transformed to glass. The Wizard was able to cure him, temporarily, but now he is slowly turning into glass again)
Through a remarkable coincidence, Betty Ross happens to be admitted to the same hospital — and she also has the same blood type as the Sandman. She is forcibly recruited into donating her blood and hooked up to the transfusion machine next to him. A “total body transfusion” takes place, which apparently replaces his blood with hers, and hers with his. The Sandman is cured! Unfortunately, Betty isn’t so lucky…
The Incredible Hulk #138 is brought to you by Roy Thomas and Herb Trimpe.
In real life, there are situations where an exchange transfusion is used: a patient’s tainted blood is slowly drawn off and replaced with fresh blood. A common use of exchange transfusion is in infants with severe hyperbilirubinemia (high bilirubin levels). It is not uncommon to replace an infant’s entire blood supply with an exchange transfusion.
I can’t think of a good medical reason why this bad blood would then be transfused into another person. It doesn’t make any sense (except for a comic book plot device). Just give the Sandman an exchange transfusion with banked blood and be done with it; leave Betty alone. Or if her blood must be used for the transfusion, then give her banked blood and not the Sandman’s tainted blood.
I like the way Betty’s clothes turn to glass, too.
Don’t worry too much about Betty, she gets better in just 3 issues (The Incredible Hulk #141), the same comic (and same plot contrivance) which introduces everyone’s favorite green-haired psychiatrist, Doc Samson.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:10 am
I’m getting confused by the numbers here. Does she get the transfusion in #138, then transform in #139? You’ve used both above (as a result, the “in just three issues” comment is confusing me slightly, too).
June 28th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Official Comment
Sorry, it’s issue #138. I had it wrong at first and thought I corrected it all, but must have missed a few.
June 28th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I like how her clothes transform as well. It goes along with Hulk never, ever losing his pants and she-hulk managing to keep a semblance of a top covering her assets.
I think it would have been more disturbing to have Betty’s clothes on a immobile crystaline body.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Gosh I miss the days when comics looked like that…and when they were 15 cents/issue.
June 28th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Grammar nitpick here. “…after a battle with the Hulk, his bady was transformed to glass.” I’m assuming a slip of the fingers.
Also, that cop/doorman/whatever in the second picture looks very apelike.
July 6th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
I’m not quite understanding how someone whose entire body is crystalline even has blood. Isn’t Sandman sentient sand shaped like a person?
July 17th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Well, it gave Bruce an excuse to marry Jarella in “The Brute that Shouted Love at the Heart of the Atom,” which I guess was #140. Wow, so she was only glass for three issues? I’d assumed, reading the story from #140 out of context, it was an ongoing problem, more like three years!
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