Polite Dissent

Identity Crisis #2 House of Lies
Brad Meltzer, writer
Rags Morales, penciler (that’s spelled with one “l”, DC)

The time has finally come to enter the fray that is known as “Identity Crisis.” I’ve put off this moment as long as I could, but when the autopsy scene at the end of Identity Crisis #2 reared its ugly head, I knew I had to take my stand.
(NOTE: So as not to give any plot points away, I will refer to the decedent as Somebody Dead, or SD for short.)

After Dr. Mid-Nite has finished SD’s autopsy, he calls Oracle:

The bad news is that, two days ago, SD supposedly died by carbon monoxide poisoning brought on by her third degree burns.

And under that scenario – beyond what else the autopsy’s showing – she would’ve breathed so much soot into her lungs, her bronchi and trachea should be black.

There’s no reason that Dr. Mid-Nite should have been expecting to find carbon monoxide poisoning in SD. Carbon monoxide is a colorless odorless gas that is produced by smoking cigarettes, the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels or the burning of certain chemical compounds. SD was not smoking cigarettes. There were no leaky furnaces, kerosene heaters or car exhaust in the room. SD herself was burned, not her surroundings so there was nothing that was burned to give off carbon monoxide. Therefore there is no chance that she would have been exposed to carbon monoxide. Dr. Mid-Nite should have known this.

Additionally, burns themselves have nothing to do with carbon monoxide. They don’t cause carbon monoxide poisoning, and they aren’t caused by carbon monoxide. In some rare circumstances, the same process can lead to both burns and carbon monoxide poisoning (like a house fire started by a leaky kerosene heater), but this is the exception rather than the rule. SD’s burns could not have “brought on” carbon monoxide poisoning as Mid-Nite stated.

As a side nit-pick, most medical authorities are moving away from the first-, second- and third-degree burn terminology and now using the terms partial thickness burn and full thickness burn.

While it’s true that people who die in fires or suffer smoke inhalation have soot in their trachea and lungs, this would not have been true for SD. Since she died shortly after being burned, there was no prolonged period of breathing smoky air. In addition, her surroundings were not burned, only she was. There wasn’t enough smoke around to blacken her lungs even if she had the time to breathe it in.

A final nit-pick, when Mid-Nite tells Oracle that he’s looking at her lungs and trachea “right now”, he’s shown examining her back. Sure, the lungs can be examined posteriorly, but the trachea is in the front and couldn’t be examined from behind.

Dr. Mid-Nite may be an excellent surgeon and big name super-hero, but as a medical examiner he leaves a lot to be desired.