Polite Dissent

JSA All-Stars #5 An Hour at a Time
Geoff Johns and David Goyer, writers
Adam DeKraker, penciler

This this issue focuses on Rick Tyler, the current Hourman and son of the original Hourman. While there is some decent medicine in the story, there is an abundance of bad medicine, plus some serious logical errors as well.

Rick is talking to his mother about his reformulation of the drug Miraclo, which gives him his “hour of power”:

It’s a homeopathic solution now. Delivered through a transdermal patch in my glove.

The fact that Miraclo is “homeopathic” makes no sense. Based on an 18th century medical theory, homeopathic medicines follow two basic principles: the Law of Similars, and the Law of Infintessimals. According to the Law of Similars, to treat a particular symptom a substance that causes similar symptoms is used (for instance, you’d use a substance that causes a fever to treat a fever). The Law of Infintessimals states the more dilute a solution is, the stronger its effect. Homeopathic solutions are diluted by orders of magnitude to such an extent that it is statistically unlikely that even one molecule of the original substance is left in the final preparation.

Leaving aside the scientifically dubious claims of homeopathy, let’s focus only on the Law of Similars. Super-powers are not a symptom. How can you “treat” super-powers by using another substance to cause them? I suspect the writers are using “homeopathic” to mean natural, or non-synthetic, but the terms are not interchangeable (they mean very different things). As it stands, Rick’s comment is technobabble at its worst.

Transdermal administration of Miraclo is a possibility. Many drug preparations are available now that are absorbed through patches on the skin. However, the absorption of medicines through the skin tends to be a slow process, and is best for long term steady-state drugs (like hormone replacement or pain killers). It wouldn’t be fast enough to give Rick his power when he needed it.

Next, in the middle of lunch, Rick has a premonition that a man is going to commit suicide by jumping from the top of a nearby skyscraper. He rushes to stop the man.

After racing to the top of the building, Rick has a sudden realization that he has an addictive personality. This makes sense. There are certainly people who have problems with addiction after addiction. It makes since that Rick, who was once a drug addict, now gets his kicks from the adrenalin rush of being a hero.

Speaking of Rick racing up to the top of the building, why did it take so long? It took him over 50 minutes to get from the 1st floor to the roof (80 flights of steps). It took me 47 seconds to climb 5 stories (10 flights) of steps at the hospital this morning. At that rate, it should take 12:32 to reach the top of an 80-story building. Admittedly, this calculation does not take fatigue into account, but 1) I walking briskly, not running; and 2) I didn’t have Miraclo surging through my body. It should not have taken Rick that long to get to the roof.

The numbers make even less sense when they are broken down further:

It took nearly two minutes per floor for the first six, but only six-seconds per floor for the last 22. It seems that I was right about transdermal being slow, and it took over 50 minutes for the drug to kick in.

Finally, let me point out the “count-down clock” in the issue is not counting down Rick’s hour of power, but instead the amount of time until the man jumped to his death. Rick’s hour started at least a minute and 16 seconds later. The whole ending, where Rick runs out of power just as the man jumps, is contrived. He still had at least a minute of power left.