Comic Book Diagnosis: Can’t Get You Out of My Mind

October 18th, 2007

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

With all the characters with shrinking powers in comic books, it was only a matter of time before they started shrinking small enough to enter someone’s brain. Most of the time, the miniaturized character enters the brain to cause damage, but sometimes it is done to heal. While most common in the comics, this concept can also be seen in movies (Fantastic Voyage) and television (The Simpsons in their spoof of Fantastic Voyage, Futurama, Astroboy).

Once the shrunken character enters the brain, there are four basic “Styles of Attack”:

1. Crude and Deadly
This style occurs when a miniaturized character blunders haphazardly through the brain itself, doing as much damage as possible along the way. This is best exemplified by Jean Loring’s murder of Sue Dibney during Identity Crisis.
A more recent example had Micromax take out a leader of the Jihad in a similar manner in Marvel Comics Presents #1 (see the image below — that’s Micromax climbing out the ear; I’m not sure what that line is in the background - heart monitor? brain waves? biothythms?). Symptoms he caused included headache and seizure as well as the ubiquitous nose and ear bleeding (and death).

scene from Marvel Comics Presents #1

2. Surgical Precision
This style is most often utilized in a curative manner rather than as a weapon. The best example is actually a movie, not a comic book. In Fantastic Voyage, five adventurers and their submarine are shrunken so that they can remove a clot in a Soviet defector’s brain. A good comic book example would be Micronauts #30, where Acroyear, Bug, and Marionette are miniaturized and enter Commander Rann’s brain to cure his coma. They battle and defeat Nightmare and are able to physically unlock hidden areas of the commander’s brain.
Conceivably, precise strikes by a tiny character could also be used to damage specific parts of an enemy’s brain…but I can’t recall any good examples of this.

3. Vague but Effective
This is the most common style. A menacing villain looms up behind the heroes, ready to strike. Suddenly, they collapse in a heap and the Atom/Shrinking Violet/other-tiny-character jumps out of their ear. It’s never explained exactly what they did inside the villain’s brain (Squeezed the blood supply? Caused a seizure? Kicked something important?) — but it sure knocks them out quickly.

4. Haney-style
cover, The Brave and the Bold #115In the destined-to-be-classic Brave and the Bold #115 (written by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo), Batman is electrocuted and rendered brain dead but the Atom is able to enter his brain through the ear and control Batman like a puppet. Sure, it makes no sense anatomically, but then, Haney written titles always followed their own unique science. The Atom also manages somehow to kick-start Batman’s brain again after capturing his murderer and saving the day.

Other Comic Book Diagnoses:
Frozen Solid!Frozen Solid
Brains! Brains!Brains! Brains!
HypertrichosisHypertrichosis
XenograftingXenografting
XenograftingDe-Aging

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14 Responses to “ Comic Book Diagnosis: Can’t Get You Out of My Mind ”

  1. mike.
    October 19th, 2007 at 4:28 pm

    “Conceivably, precise strikes by a tiny character could also be used to damage specific parts of an enemy’s brain…but I can’t recall any good examples of this.”

    HAR. I love you, man. There’s no other way to put it.

  2. Oliver Townshend
    October 19th, 2007 at 7:08 pm

    The Atom destroys Darkseid’s brain in JLA 15 (or so) by shrinking to get inside his brain, but he shoots the lot. I also have a memory of Shrinking Violet blocking a blood vessel to cause a stroke (picture by Keith Giffen) but can’t remember when or where. I suppose in both cases it isn’t quiet what happened in Fantastic Voyage.

  3. Jon
    October 19th, 2007 at 7:31 pm

    Conceivably, precise strikes by a tiny character could also be used to damage specific parts of an enemy’s brain…but I can’t recall any good examples of this.

    How about Ultimate Wasp zapping a specific section of Ultimate Hulk’s brain, causing him to transform back to Ultimate Banner? His brain wasn’t damaged per se, but it did have a debilitating effect on him.
    Oh, and didn’t the Atom (Ray Palmer) fight Mr. Mind inside of Black Adam’s brain in the previous run of Justice Society, having gone in with the original intent of taking out a tumor?

  4. Jon
    October 19th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    Oh, and the Shrinking Violet causing a stroke thing was in The Great Darkness Saga. Spoiler Alert (Just in case, even though the stoy is a classic and is 20+ years old) She was taking out the clone of Shadow Lass’ ancestor, who was a servant of Darkseid.

  5. Carl
    October 19th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

    Vi stopped the Servant of Darkness based on Lydea Mallor during the Great Darkness Saga by shrinking into a cerebral artery, then expanding and causing a stroke. And yes, art by Giffen.

  6. M
    October 19th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    Surgical Precision - I know a great example of an attack along those lines. There’s an episode of the cartoon Invader Zim, where Zim does the Fatastic Voyage bit to erase Dib’s memory of where he hid a disc of evidence exposing Zim. Lotsa collateral damage when Dib and his sister Gaz battle mini-Zim with a remote-controlled nano-drone inside Dib’s body.

  7. Carl
    October 19th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

    … although, thinking about it, that was actually a Durlan spy pretending to be Shrinking Violet who defeated the Servant.

  8. Jon
    October 20th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

    There was another Legion story in which Violet went into Colossal Boy’s neck to remove a device implanted there from a distance by a sharpshooter. Said device, if I recall correctly, caused the Legion cruiser the two of them were in to malfunction, forcing Violet to abandon CB on an asteroid while she headed back to Earth to get help. It’s been a while, so my memory on that one is really spotty. I’m thinking Cockrum did the art chores.

  9. H
    October 20th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    Thank you for this analysis of the greatness that is the shrinking super-hero. I really need to get that issue of Brave & Bold.

  10. Ben
    October 20th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    I was hoping that someone would remember the JLA story with Darkseid and Atom. That was great.

    As for JSA, that was Ray Palmer vs Mr Mind inside Brainwave (Jr’s) brain.

  11. abconnect » Blog Archive » Comic Book Diagnosis: Can’t Get You Out of My Mind
    October 20th, 2007 at 11:22 pm

    […] from Dirk Deppey […]

  12. Mark Simmons
    October 21st, 2007 at 5:34 pm

    Actually, I think the Futurama episode was also an example of the “Surgical Precision” pinpoint brain attack. Miniature Fry ended up holding his own brain hostage in an attempt to force the parasitic worms out of his body, although he started running into problems after he sliced off his own “hand-eye coordination lobe.” Not all that scientifically accurate, perhaps, but rather cute. :-)

  13. Jon
    October 21st, 2007 at 8:30 pm

    Yes, Brainwave Jr. I knew that Black Adam didn’t sound right. Thanks!

  14. Justin K.
    October 22nd, 2007 at 9:39 pm

    In the mid-80s, Gary Trudeau did the “Inside Reagan’s Brain” and “Return to Reagan’s Brain” storylines in Doonesbury, in which intrepid reporter leads a safari expedition into the wilderness of Reagan’s brain, hunting for lost Iran-Contra memories. Good stuff.

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