Polite Dissent

A couple of representative scenes from Ex Machina #14 (November 2005), wherein Mayor Hundred is forced to use his powers to “uncrazy” a violent schizophrenic. He’s pretty much bleeding all over the place this issue.

Scenes from Ex Machina #14, script by Brian K. Vaughan, pencils by Tony Harris

All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed ex machina

Today is my birthday. According to the Hague Convention for Weblogs and Internet Communications of 2005, everyone who reads this required to buy me a present. However, we all know how hard international treaties are to enforce (and frankly I don’t think the president ever signed it after the Senate ratified it), so I’ll let it pass this year.

Instead, I have a present for you: a story from 1963 that, like a fine wine, has only improved with age. This little gem is titled “My First Date” and is the second story in the first issue of Dr. Tom Brent, Young Intern. Between stories like this and the numerous ads for correspondence nursing schools, it seems clear that the target audience for Charlton’s young doctor comics series of comics were young women. Apparently women who had never gone on a date…

Click on any of the images for the full story

Tags: comics charlton date

The Amazing Spider-Man: Riot at Robot World was published in 1991 by Marvel Comics and the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, with a grant from IBM to commemorate National Engineers Week.

Peter Parker is assigned by the Daily Bugle to cover Robotworld, the new museum/exhibition hall that just opened, designed to educate the public about robots. He meets with Ana Lopez, a mechanical engineer and the project’s head, as well as three high school students who are accompanying her. The group tours the exhibition while they educate Peter on what exactly robots are (scientific genius Peter Parker does show a slight case of ONISGS Syndrome here).

About halfway through the exhibit, the robots suddenly come to life and begin attacking. Peter dodges out of sight (”I need more film”) and returns moments later as Spider-Man. He fights robot after robot, including the giant Tyrannosaurus rex featured on the cover. Meanwhile, Ana and the students run to the control room where they find that Ultron has taken over the exhibition. When Spider-Man arrives in the control room and faces off against Ultron (very unsuccessfully and very painfully), Ana and the students use the distraction to rig a remote control box and shut down Ultron.

I’m of two minds about how easily Ultron was defeated. On one hand, as a long time Avengers fan, I am appalled by how quickly he was taken out of commission. It takes the Avengers at least three issues to defeat him, and he always comes back stronger than before (though the remote control shut off is a clever way around that whole adamantium armor issue). On the other hand, I can see how an engineer and a group of students shutting down a big bad guy by building a remote control would be appealing and inspiring to high school students interested in engineering.

Overall, this PSA comic is better than most. Writer Dwayne McDuffie writes believable characters and includes the clever quips we expect from Spider-Man. He also manages to throw in allusions to Buckminster Fuller, Isaac Asimov, the Terminator, and the Three Stooges. The penciler, Alex Saviuk, turns in some impressive art as he make excellent use of visual flow, perspective, and angles to give the book an exciting fee — unusual for a PSA comic.

Tags: comics psa spider-man robot dwayne mcduffie alex saviuk

A clever mystery on tonight’s episode of House. The medicine wasn’t as good, but House’s wheelchair bet was at least fun to watch. Spoilers below, so watch the episode before you read.

Stevie, a sixteen year-old boy, is making out with his girlfriend when he suddenly becomes short of breath and starts gasping for air. He’s brought to the hospital and admitted to House’s service. According to Foreman, Stevie has no history of trauma, asthma, or allergies. An EKG and echocardiogram are both normal. He does have a bloody pleural effusion (a pleural effusion is a build up of fluid in the membrane surrounding the lung). An x-ray reveals no tumors or pneumonia. The team’s initial thoughts are cocaine or some other recreation drug, or a venous aneurysm.

House orders a venogram, which is negative. Chase and Cameron inspect Stevie’s house only to discover it isn’t his house. It seems he lied to them. He is Romani (Gypsy) and he was brought up not to trust outsiders.

Foreman suspects Stevie has a deep venous thrombosis (DVT - blood clot in one of the veins of his legs), but House still suspects a venous aneurysm. He thinks the leak is so small it didn’t show up on the first test. He wants to thin Stevie’s blood and then try the venogram again (not a good idea. There are nuclear medicine tests that are used to discover small amounts of bleeding — much safer). Foreman decides to go ahead and perform an arteriogram first to look for a DVT. The study shows that blood is going into the liver but not coming out, which Foreman and Cameron interpret to mean that one of the three hepatic vein is blocked. (Strangely, this arteriogram which showed a venous abnormality is never mentioned again, except incorrectly when Foreman states that he performed two venograms). Meanwhile, Stevie is having severe stomach pain so the test is stopped.

The team now considers cirrhosis, disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC), and leukemia, but House rules them all out. They next suspect diseases which could cause a granuloma in the liver (this granuloma would be obstructing the hepatic vein); considerations include tuberculosis (TB) or sarcoidosis. An obstructing liver tumor is also a possibility. House orders a CT, MRI (to look for granulomas and tumors), sputum culture (for TB), and an ACE level (which is usually high in sarcoidosis).

The MRI shows what appears to be a granuloma in the liver, so the team shifts their focus to Wegener’s Granulomatosis. Foreman wants to perform a liver biopsy, but House tells him to go ahead and start cyclophosphamide to treat the Wegener’s.

In the meantime, Stevie’s parents have arrived and are causing a commotion. They are redecorating his hospital room and serving him traditional Romani herbal soups. In the middle of a scene between Foreman and the parents, Stevie again complains of severe pain. Foreman pulls back the blankets to reveal a large amount of blood in his groin. It turns out that while his liver seems to have improved, his bladder has now started hemorrhaging. House wants to start FT-28, an experimental drug not approved for Wegener’s, but Stevie’s parents refuse the treatment. Foreman tricks them into leaving the room, and then talks Stevie into taking the medication. Before Stevie can take the medication, however, he double over in severe abdominal pain.

Stevie is rushed to surgery where a ruptured spleen is found. Foreman looks at the spleen under the microscope, but can find no evidence of any granulomas. House wants the surgeon to examine the small bowel for granulomas, but he refuses. House enters the operating room himself and examines the bowel, but he can find no granuloma.

The diagnosis of Wegener’s seems less likely now, particularly when the surgeon tells them it wasn’t a granuloma in the liver, but instead some scar tissue. House wants to look at Stevie’s large intestine so the Young Guns sneak in and perform a quick colonoscopy while House distracts the parents. The test reveals the culprit: a toothpick. Stevie swallowed the toothpick at some point in the past. His contortions while making out in the car had driven it into his lung, and then it migrated into his liver, bladder, spleen, and then large intestine. Once the toothpick is removed, Stevie recovers.

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I liked the fact that the answer to the medical mystery this time was not some obscure disease, but instead something as simple as a swallowed toothpick. It does fit the symptoms, and Foreman is right that wood does not usually show up on x-ray (but I’m not sure about MRI).

While the solution was clever, the medicine was just so-so. House’s fixation on Wegener’s Granulomatosis was strange since it seemed to come out of nowhere. Sure Wegener’s can cause granulomas in the liver (so then it should have been on the differential diagnosis), but so can TB and sarcoidosis, the diseases they were looking for in the first place. The team also continued to confuse pleural effusion (fluid in the membrane surrounding the lungs) with pleural edema (fluid within the lung). Stevie had a bloody pleural effusion, but a bleed within the lung would lead to blood inside the lung, not around it.

The surgery scene seemed off as well. Never mind the House-barging-into-the-OR scene, that’s passé now. I have some concern about the use of silk suture to ligate the blood vessels as silk is only slowly absorbed and extremely irritating to the body. However, a quick perusal of the surgical literature suggests that silk is still used at times to tie off blood vessels, so I’ll let House off the hook on this one, unless some surgeon knows better. I will point out that anatomically, the small intestine is tethered to the mesentery and a variety of blood vessels; it’s not just sitting out like a giant sausage.

Ethically everything was ludicrous, but since when has House or his team bothered to get informed consent?

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Tonight’s medical mystery was a solid B, and the solution was logical as well as unexpected, so earns an A. The medicine wasn’t as good, purely average (for House, above average for most other medical shows), and deserves a C. The character interaction/soap opera between the team members was minimal. Most of this week’s non-medical content was reserved for members outside the team. House got in his “wheelchair duel” — and won in his usual Machiavellian way, but this was primarily a Foreman show. What “soap opera” was present was well done though, and earns a B+.

The previous House review
A list of all prior House reviews

Tags: television medicine house wegener’s granulomatosis

To rescue his niece, John Henry Iron (Steel) and the Teen Titans break into Lexcorp and battle their way through Lex’s goons and the remaining members of Infinity Inc. until Steel confront Lex Luthor in his office:

Lex Luthor to Steel: You have four broken ribs and a ruptured appendix. Your small intestine is leaking fecal matter into your blood stream. Trust me–I have x-ray vision.

Let’s take a closer look at the injuries Lex claims that John Henry Irons has suffered:

broken ribs: Most likely suffered when he was being crushed by Everyman. Broken ribs are painful and will take several weeks to heal, but they are not usually dangerous. Rib fractures can be more serious if several ribs are broken in multiple places resulting in a flail chest, or if the broken ribs are pushed far out of place and are sharp enough to lacerate the lungs, but thankfully both of these injuries are very rare.

ruptured appendix: Most likely injured by the hammer through the abdomen. The appendix may not serve much of a function, but a ruptured one can lead to serious problems such as peritonitis. This will require surgical repair.

small intestine: An injured small intestine may leak intestinal contents into the abdomen, but not into the blood stream. The circulatory system has evolved in such a way that foreign matter doesn’t “leak” into it, even in a trauma situation. An injury leaking intestinal contents into the abdomen is serious and a surgical emergency. The intestinal contents have digestive enzymes that cause inflammation of the peritoneum, and bacteria which infect it. Surgery drainage and repair along with high-dose antibiotics are needed, and the sooner the better.
A nit-pick, but digested food in the intestine is “chyme” and doesn’t become “fecal matter” until well into the large intestine.

Lex is a shrewd businessman and a good scientist, but he’s not a doctor. His descriptions are off in places, and I suspect this is because he’s being his normal condescending self and trying to look like he knows more than he does — he ends up using the wrong terms and describing unlikely injuries. In fact, if you glance at the scene in question, he’s not even looking at Steel when he “diagnoses” him.

I wonder about how good x-ray vision really is. I know it’s been established that x-ray vision better than a regular medical x-ray, but those are some pretty specific injuries Lex is describing. I would need to order a CT scan with oral contrast to diagnose those. But then again, how much is the x-ray vision, and how much is Lex just gloating/bluffing?

Tags: comics medicine steel lex luthor flail chest peritonitis 52

Pursuant to our discussion of Skrulls and Skrullness a couple of weeks ago: according to the recent Heroes for Hire #3, it takes the transplant of a Skrull organ (any organ) to gain Skrull shapeshifting abilities.

Heroes for Hire #5 written by Gray and Palmiotti, pencils by Portela

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Midnighter #3 written by Ennis, pencils (in this scene) by Sprouse

I’ve talked about the different types of broken bones before (twice). From Midnighter #3, here is a good example of an open fracture (once called a compound fracture). You’ll notice that the bone in question (a femur in this case) has not only fractured, but also broken through the skin.

That’s a set up for a nasty infection, even if you do have rhino genes.

Tags: comics medicine skrulls transplant fracture midnighter

Just when I think I may finally be done with psychic nosebleeds, I get dragged back in.

This week, the star is Cable from this week’s X-Men Annual. He gets psychically stabbed in the brain by Random (which I didn’t quite figure out because Random’s never had that power before). Regardless, here’s the result:

Scenes from X-Men Annual 2007, script by Mike Carey, pencils by Mark Brooks

All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed cable

X-Men #194 “Primary Infection, part 1 of 3”
Mike Carey, script
Humberto Ramos, pencils

The X-Men have captured the flunkie of a mysterious scientist and Rogue uses her powers to access his memory:

Dr. Palance: You’ve heard of Mary Mallon, I assume?
Flunkie: N-No. I don’t believe –
Dr. Palance: The original Typhoid Mary. She was a healthy carrier of the S. typhi virus. She gave typhoid to everyone she touched.

Sorry Dr. Palance. You may be a brilliant geneticist, but as an epidemiologist you leave a great deal to be desired. You have committed one of the most common comic book medical errors: confused a virus with a bacteria.

The bacteria Salmonella typhi (at least Dr. Palance got the name right), a member of the Salmonella family, is the cause of typhoid fever. This disease is rare in the United States and most industrialized nations, but is common in the developing world. It is spread by contaminated food or water. Initial symptoms include diarrhea, fever, malaise and abdominal pain. As the infection worsens, the fever becomes higher and the diarrhea becomes worse. Eventually, weakness, fatigue, delirium, and death occur. Luckily, S. typhi is sensitive to several common antibiotics, though resistant strains are becoming more common.

Typhoid Mary was a real person, but Dr. Palance is overstating her contagiousness. She was a carrier of the S. typhi bacteria, but never became infected with typhoid fever herself. In her work as a cook in the late-nineteenth and and early-twentieth centuries, she infected nearly fifty people with typhoid, three of whom eventually died of the disease. When she was discovered to be a source of the disease, she was placed in quarantine. After three years, she was released with the condition that she stop working as a cook. However, she took an assumed name and started cooking again, infecting more people in the process. This time, she was placed in quarantine for the rest of her life.

• Wikipedia entry on Mary Mallon, the “original” Typhoid Mary
• The comic book Typhoid Mary
• Medline and Military information on Typhoid Fever
• Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference on the legend of Typhoid Mary
• A very nice website on Typhoid Mary from the PBS show Nova (from the episode “The Most Dangerous Woman in America”)

Tags: comics medicine x-men typhoid fever typhoid mary

If you think the title of this comic sounds familiar, you’d be correct. This comic is simply a reprint of Adventures in Reading starring the Amazing Spider-Man with a new cover slapped on it.

This time the comic is sponsored by Marvel Comics and the soft drink Squirt. The interior consists of the same 32 pages (34 counting the inside covers) and the same lame story: Spider-Man and three inner-city kids are zapped from one book to another without ever being clever enough to realize what’s going on. For a better description of the story, check out my review of the original comic. And yes, the strange Interlac puzzle is in this edition too.

The most notable thing about this reprint is the back cover, which contains one of the more egregious examples of crass marketing I’ve ever seen in a PSA comic. Kudos to Squirt for sponsoring this comic, but shame on them for slapping this on its back cover and turning Spider-Man into a commercial pitch man:

Take it from Spidey and Squirt – – reading is a lot more than a school subject. Reading lets you meet new people, go places you’ve never been before. and think things you’ve never thought before. Just open a book and a can of Squirt and find out. Hey, here’s an idea…why not start with the book you’re holding?

Tags: comics psa spider-man squirt interlac

Don’t send you child to school with those same old boring Valentine’s Day cards every other kid uses. This year give him something new and exciting…
Legion of Doom Valentine’s Cards.
Available at fine retailers everywhere.

Last year’s Valentine’s Day card sets:
♥ The X-Men
♥ The Legion of Super-Heroes

Tags: comics legion of doom valentines

Since they were such a hit last year, here are some more Legion of Super-Hero valentines:

Tags: comics legion of super-heroes valentines

Tonight’s episode started well, but seemed to make less sense as the episode went on. Medically, that is. The character relationships and interactions just got better and better as the night progressed. Spoiler and a long narrative (sorry folks) below:

Hannah is a teen-age girl with CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain and Anhidrosis), a rare condition in which she can not feel pain, hot, or cold. She is also unable to sweat and regulate her body temperature. As the episode begins, Hannah’s mother is rushing her to the hospital emergency room on a snowy night. Hannah had been playing on the ice with some friends and slipped and fell. Her mother is concerned that Hannah may have injured herself, so she wants her to get checked out at the hospital. Unfortunately, they are involved in a serious car accident — Hannah takes a nasty laceration to the leg while her mother is knocked unconscious.

The ER is overcrowded, so Foreman is filling in and treating Hannah, who has purposefully neglected to tell Foreman about her CIPA. House strolls into the room and immediately diagnoses her when she mimics flinching to a painful stimulus, but does it wrong. He decides to admit her and run x-rays, blood tests, and an EEG. He also wants to perform a spinal nerve biopsy, but Cuddy tells him there is no need for a nerve biopsy unless the EEG is abnormal.

Hannah is a very reluctant patient. She is worried about her mother and won’t sit still for the test. House asks Foreman to sedate her, and Foreman tells him that they tried but she fought back and they were afraid of pushing any harder for fear of breaking one of her bones. House decides to take matters into his own hands. He and Hannah have a “whine-off” over whose life is more pitiful (and I think this scene does an excellent job of showing what Hannah’s daily life is like). When Hannah turns around to show House the scars on her buttocks, he injects her with the sedative and they run the EEG. In the end, all the tests are normal.

When Cameron goes to tell Hannah the results, she finds her unresponsive with a temperature of 105° (that’s 40.6°C for you non-Americans). Her temperature is brought back to normal, but there is no clear cause of her fever. A lumbar puncture (spinal tap) was negative, suggesting no meningitis. While there is an elevated bilirubin, the rest of her liver tests are normal. Her urine drug screen is negative. House decides to talk Cuddy into letting him perform the spinal nerve biopsy. Meanwhile, the Young Guns decide that a spinal nerve biopsy is too risky, and they want to find a better way to diagnose Hannah. Chase suggests that if the pain levels are high enough, Hannah may be able to feel some pain after all and pinpoint where the problem is. He recommends that they purposefully overload her pain sensors and monitor what happens. Chase has Hannah alternate her hand between warm water and boiling water while he runs a brain scan. Unfortunately, she is so worried about her mother that she leaves her hand too long in the boiling water and gives herself second degree burns. Foreman tries the next test. He has some bizarre set-up where he is drilling into the skull and injecting some medication into her brain to stimulate pain receptors. It seems to be working as Hannah starts screaming in pain. However, as soon as they unhook her from the machine, she bolts for the door. She was just faking the pain in order to escape because she has developed a full blown paranoia and thinks everyone is out to get out.

Hannah runs to the lobby balcony and threatens to jump off. The team tries to talk her down, but her legs suddenly become numb and lose control and she falls to the lobby below. She now has several broken bones and a concussion in addition to whatever is causing her fever and leg numbness. House suspects some form of nerve disease. HIV and syphilis are suggested, but he points out that all STD tests were negative. He also states that the cause can’t be vascular because her ANA (Anti-Nuclear Antibody) is normal. Cameron suggests thyroid storm (a rare life-threatening condition where the thyroid gland goes into massive overdrive) as the cause. He checks with Cuddy (who is apparently an endocrinologist) but she shoots down that idea.

House wants to proceed with the spinal nerve biopsy. Wilson talks to him in private, accusing House of wanting what’s best for himself, and not what’s best for the patient. House relents and grudgingly allows the Young Guns to perform a much less risky peripheral nerve biopsy. The results show a demyelinating disease that is affecting outside fibers first. (If you think of a nerve as a wire, then myelin is the insulation surrounding the wire. Demyelinating diseases strip this insulation.) House now suspects some sort of metabolic disease. Hearing that Hannah had a headache after visiting her mother in the ICU, he decides that it was an emotional — a guilty — headache and this guilt means that she has a vitamin B12 deficiency. Foreman points out that she received B12 in the ER. House is now concerned about leukemia and the team is ready to start a bone marrow biopsy. Talking to Wilson (and eating his food), House has a sudden realization and stops the biopsy. He rushes her to the OR in a ridiculous scene where he personally opens up her abdomen and stomach to reveal a long tapeworm. This tapeworm led Hannah to become B12 deficient which led to her loss of sensation in her legs. With some B12 replacement, Hannah should be good to go (of course, she’ll still have CIPA).

continues below the cut Read more…

scene from Adventure Comics #301 by Jerry Siegel and John Forte

So let me get this straight: the 30th century has a powerful healing urn which “can cure almost any illness” — and they keep it locked away in a museum rather than using it to, you know, cure illness?

(And don’t tell me there’s no sickness in the 30th century because there’s been plenty of examples of it over the years in the Legion — just ask the Rannzes or Drura Sehpt. Though I will admit this was towards the beginning of the Legion, so the writers were probably still going for that “Future Utopia” concept.)

Tags: comics medicine legion of super-heroes conspiracy

With the Daytona 500 this weekend marking the beginning of the 2007 NASCAR season, I thought this would be a good time to look at the history of NASCAR and comic books. What’s the point of being a vocal comic book and NASCAR fan if I can’t put it to good use?

Contrary to popular belief, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing — better known as NASCAR — actually has a fairly substantial association with comic books — both as a subject and as a sponsor — starting in the early 1990s.

Beginning in 1991, Vortex Comics published a number of NASCAR-related comics. There was The Daytona 500 Story, which related the history of the race of the same name. Legends of NASCAR ran for 16 issues, and each issue featured the biography of a different racing champion. The art was surprisingly good with pencils by artists including Herb Trimpe and Don Heck. There was also a Legends of NASCAR Christmas Special — and, true to the spirit of comic books in the ’90s — a hologram cover. Vortex also published NASCAR Adventures which, like Legends of NASCAR, profiled a different racer in each issue. It originally ran for 2 issues, but then came back with a #5, and a little later with a #7. To the best of my knowledge there was never a #3, 4, or 6. For the kids, Vortex published the one-shot Adventures of the NASCUBS, featuring anthropomorphic race car driving animals as well as the “Official Mascots of NASCAR.” The NASCUB characters have never been seen again.

In 1998, at the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Charlotte Motor Speedway (now known as Lowe’s Motor Speedway), Dale Jarrett competed in a special Batman themed car. His teammate, the late Kenny Irwin, raced in a Joker car.

In 1999, DC released Superman Meets the Motorsports Champions, a one-shot comic book starring Superman (surprise!) as well as 9 different race drivers including Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr (back when he was driving exclusively in the Busch Series). The comic was written by Chuck Dixon with art by Paul Ryan and was available only at K-Mart stores. Later that year, Jeff Gordon raced a Superman themed car in the Winston (the NASCAR all-star race) and Dale Earnhardt Jr. raced another in the Phoenix 300.

In 2000, Custom Comics of America released RaceWarriors (probably not the best name for a comic), which purported to tell the story of stock car racing in the year 2020. Each issue also featured a backup feature on a famous NASCAR driver. It was an ambitious project, as the initial covers stated “A new edition each week” and “Collect all 38 issues!” Presumably, they were going to release a comic for each week of the racing season, including the off weeks. However, by issue #9 the blurb on the cover had changed to “A new edition every 2 weeks” and issue #10 had “A new edition ever month.” There was no issue #11.

In 2001, Bill Elliot (#9) and Casey Atwood (#19) both raced special Spider-Man themed cars at that year’s UAW-GM Quality 500 in Charlotte. Ironically, both of them were driving Dodges. These were the best looking Spider-Man cars by far, much better than the ones designed to advertise the Spider-Man films.

In April 2002, at the Texas Motorsports 300 (a Busch Series race), Lyndon Amick raced a Spider-Man/Dr. Pepper themed car to advertise the upcoming Spider-Man motion picture.

Terry Labonte had a special Spider-Man 2 theme on his #5 car during the 2004 Pepsi 400 in Daytona to advertise the second Spider-Man movie.

In August 2004, Hot Wheels sponsored a Justice League Racing Weekend at the Michigan International Speedway with several Justice League themed cars racing on both days. In the Busch Series race on August 21st, there were Flash, Batman, and Martian Manhunter cars. The next day, at the main Nextel Series event, there were Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman Cars. There was also a general “Justice League” car showing all the heroes. The villains weren’t left out either; they were featured on the pace car. Appropriately, Greg Biffle in the #16 Flash car won the race.

Not content with his name on just a few cars, Batman had an entire race named after him. The June 19, 2005 race at the Michigan International Speedway was officially known as the “Batman Begins 400.” Mark Martin also raced a Batman Begins themed car in the event.

In 2006, Jeff Gordon raced a Superman Returns car in the July 1st Pepsi 400 at the Daytona Motor Speedway.

This year the NASCAR/comic book connection continues. We have already had NASCAR featured in Archie #572, and later in the year comes the NASCAR Heroes series by NASCAR Comics.

Tags: comics nascar

This weekend’s examples of the psychic nosebleed come from the final issue of The Authority: Revolution when Jenny Quantum and the Engineer are trying to free Midnighter from Henry Bendix’s influence. Though the actual injuries are fairly physical in nature (the Engineer is in Midnighter’s brain destroying Bendix’s implants, as well as planting a virus “that will wipe out any implant instaled after the 20th century”), I’m counting it as a psychic injury as it is all taking place within Midnighter’s brain, and there is no anatomical reason for his nosebleed short of a skull fracture.

Scenes from The Authority: Revolution #12
Script by Ed Brubaker, pencils by Dustin Nguyen

All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed authority midnighter

A second example from The Authority: Revolution. This scene takes place near the end of the book (oops, Spoiler Warning), when Jenny Quantum takes on Henry Bendix.

Again, it’s mostly a physical injury — Jenny is “exploding tiny quantum bursts inside [Bendix’s] brain.” At least, I think that’s physical. By definition (particle physics definition, anyway), “tiny” quantum bursts is redundant, as anything quantum would be sub-atomic. I think quantum is being used more as a modern catchphrase than anything else, much like many of the pseudo-scientific crackpots on TV and the web invoke quantum-this and quantum-that without really understanding what it means. Anyway, I’m considering it a psychic nosebleed for the much the same reasons given yesterday.

Scenes from The Authority: Revolution #12
Script by Ed Brubaker, pencils by Dustin Nguyen

All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed authority

I had hoped to find a President-related PSA in honor of President’s Day. No such luck. However, I did turn up another PSA relating to a famous historical American, so I decided to use that instead. From The Young Doctors #5 (Charlton, September 1963), here is the PSA “American Pioneer,” written about Daniel Boone.

Just click the image to the right to see the full ad.

This PSA ad is over forty years old, and it shows. I doubt this would be published today, given its less than flattering depiction of Native Americans. In fact, as far as this ad is concerned, there seem to be no French involved in the French and Indian War, just Indians.

Tags: comics psa daniel boone american indians

There is no episode of House tonight — or next week either — thanks to Fox and American Idol.

In the meantime, to whet your appetite for good medicine, make sure to visit Grand Rounds, the weekly collection of the best of medical blogging. Grand Rounds is hosted this week at Pure Pedantry.

Tags: medicine house grand rounds.

Image taken from the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices

Tapeworms as a diet aid? Legend has it that early in the twentieth century, tapeworms were sold as a diet aid. This story surfaced again in the 1950s when noted opera singer Maria Callas lost close to 80 pounds over the period of a year. It was widely claimed that she lost weight by intentionally ingesting a tapeworm. Another story has it that her weight loss was due to tapeworms, but ones acquired unintentionally through her love of steak tartare and other raw meat dishes. The singer herself claimed her weight loss was due to a sensible diet and regular exercise.
Snopes considers the tapeworm diet legend of “undetermined” veracity.

The concept of the tapeworm diet continues today, with at least one website* recommending tapeworms not just as a diet aid, but as a treatment for allergies and asthma. The weight loss ascribed to the tapeworms in the FAQ on the site is the same weight loss one would obtain from a healthy diet and exercise. Guess which one is better for you in the long term?

Medically, intentional ingestion of tapeworms strikes me as a very stupid idea — so I don’t want anyone to think I’m endorsing this. I’m not. I just find it fascinating that people would intentionally infect themselves with a parasite. Tapeworms are unpleasant and frequently cause abdominal pain and other gastrointestinal symptoms. They don’t just steal calories, but also vital nutrients. I think this quote from an article from the Arizona Republic sums up some of the other concerns well:

Do you know what ascites are? A big pool of fluid in your tummy caused by an immune response to something in your guts. Something like a tapeworm. It gives you a big potbelly, which runs kind of counter to the look you might be wishing for.

And a tapeworm might not necessarily just set up camp in your innards. It can also cause cysts in your muscles, liver and eyes. Your eyes!

So don’t you think it might be easier instead to just eat a bit less and exercise a bit more?

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*I’m not going to provide linkage to the site due to its potentially dangerous “medical” advice, but if one were to Google for “tapeworm diet” I bet they could find it.

Tags: medicine tapeworm diet weight loss

One of the better issues of the series, and not just because it accomplishes the nearly impossible: it manages to fit the horribly out of continuity Brave and the Bold #181 logically into the main Hawk and Dove storyline. For those of you who don’t remember, that issue of The Brave and the Bold featured a middle-aged Hank and Don Hall being stripped of their powers because they didn’t fulfill their destiny and they fought with each other too much. It did have nice art by Jim Aparo, though.

Hawk & Dove #25starts just as the story from The Brave and the Bold is ending: Batman is swinging away and Hank and Don are discussing the loss of their powers. Hank returns home to his estranged wife Linda, who welcomes him with open arms…

…but then before his eyes she morphs into Ren. Not quite the same Ren we know and love, but a hippie version of her, including bell bottoms, tie-dyes, and psychedelic posters on the walls. Confused, Hank stumbles outside…

…and finds himself back on the Georgetown campus. There’s a crime in progress, but Hawk and Dove are already there. Only it’s his late brother Don, the original Dove, and a female Hawk. They capture the criminals, make snide remarks about the SCU, and then change back into their civilian identities. Hank confronts the two of them, protesting that he is supposed to be Hawk. You get the feeling this is an old argument between the brothers. Don sadly reminds Hank that while he was saving the children’s lives during the Crisis he was crippled, and subsequently stripped of his powers and a new Hawk chosen. Hank keeps protesting, “I’m Hawk,” over and over again…

…and he wakes up in bed, apparently a victim of nothing more than a bad dream. Then his wife appears, and it’s Dawn. He panics, but Dawn reminds him that they lost their powers on Druspa Tau. They returned home and subsequently married. She pushes Hank into the shower…

…and he finds himself back in the real world as Hawk, punctured by spear growing from a giant blue gem (just like on the cover). Hawk thinks back: he remembers entering the Smithsonian, changing to Hawk, and stealing the sapphire his brother needs to return to life. He remembers dodging the Smithsonian security and heading to roof to hide. He also remembers being puzzled when he didn’t immediately change back to Hank — but then he realized the gem had started glowing. The gem suddenly exploded in size, piercing him with several of its blue crystal arms.

Now that he’s awake, Hawk realizes that the gem is magic and somehow related to Order (the opposite of the Chaos that gives him his powers). It is purposefully warping his mind and memories. He is able to summon the willpower required to break the gem’s hold on him. Then he smiles because the gem has transformed into a giant blue crystal golem, and he realizes that he has something to hit.

Meanwhile, Ren is at the hospital visiting the still recuperating Rodger. She is concerned that she hasn’t been able to get in touch with Hank for a few days, and even more worried that it might have something to do with Dawn and Dove. Rodger does his best to reassure her.

Speaking of Dawn, she is on a date with Captain Arsala. They are sitting in his car, watching the sunset and eating burgers when his pager goes off. Hawk is robbing the Smithsonian and Arsala and the SCU are needed there. He offers to drop Dawn off at home on the way, but she declines and tells him she’ll get a ride home once they get to the Smithsonian.

The SCU team arrives at the museum grounds to find Hawk battling a blue crystal monster. He defeats it, and it reverts back to the sapphire he stole from the Smithsonian. Arsala orders him to surrender. Dove appears and asks Hawk what happened. He is surprised to see her, and tells her that he can’t explain, but asks for her just to trust him. He runs off, gem in hand. Arsala demands that Dove fly after him, but she refuses, saying that Hawk must have had a good reason for his actions.

The issue ends with Hawk alone in an abandoned warehouse, staring at the gem he stole, and wondering out loud if it was worth it.

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The writing was very good this issue, and the Kesels manage to weave action and soap opera together seamlessly. The opening alternate histories of Hawk and Dove are extremely well done, and each story has a distinctive voice — but then I’ve always been a sucker for alternate history stories. Each of the different versions has art by a different team, with the regular Guler/Hannah team handling the art on the main story.

It was clever of the Kesels to reconcile the Brave and the Bold story by explaining it away as one of the alternate histories shown by the gem. I’m not sure who provided the art on this section (the comic only all the artists involved, not who did each section), but they did a good job replicating the Aparo art from the original story. The second alternate history basically serves as a segue from the counter-culture late ’60s, when Hawk and Dove debuted, to their reappearance in the ‘90s. It sets up the most powerful of the alternate histories, the third one, where Hank has lost his powers. In this version of events, Hank went back to save the kids during Crisis on Infinite Earths instead of Don. Since Don didn’t die, he’s still Dove. Unfortunately, Hawk was crippled saving the children and a new Hawk appointed. Trivia buffs should note that this is the first appearance of a female Hawk, though I doubt she is anyway related to the current female Hawk as she goes by Kath and not Holly. The art is very somber The final alternate history presents Hank and Dawn as a married couple. In this reality, they lost their powers after the death of T’Charr and Terataya, but returned home from Druspa Tau to fall in love and get married. I did recognize the art on this section — it’s by Kevin Maguire, who also drew Hawk & Dove #20. I like the little touches like the wedding pictures on the wall with Hank in a blue tux.

Sadly, this is the last really good issue of Hawk & Dove. There are great moments in the remaining three issues (and one annual), but no single issue stands out.

All Previous Hawk and Dove Reviews

Tags: comics hawk dove jim aparo kevin maguire

Of all the comic book writers of the Silver Age (and even later), I don’t think anyone has ever written better technobabble than Bob Haney. His descriptions sounded impressive and were concise, yet made no sense when you actually tried to think through what was said, let alone applied conventional medical knowledge or physics.

Good technobabble is a lost art, and Haney was the best:

Tags: comics medicine technobabble bob haney

Oops. I accidentally published this as “private” instead of “public.” If there is any significant problem with the Wordpress blogging software, it’s the ease of making this mistake. I corrected my error, so now everyone can enjoy the brilliance of Bob Haney.

Actual patient quote:

“I don’t really smoke a pack a day, it’s more like a pack every twenty-four hours”

Another great nursing school advertisement from the 60’s. This one is from The Young Doctors #4 (Charlton Comics, July 1963)

Click on the image for the full-sized ad

Tags: comics medicine advertisement nursing

OMAC #7 “And One Alone Shall Rise”
Bruce Jones, writer
Renato Guedes, artist

This comic gives us a perfect example of an error caused by a disconnect between the writer and artist. Vienna, an “exotic dancer,” has been injured and is in a coma at a hospital. The doctor is talking to a police officer about her:

Doctor: How’s our comatose athlete, nurse?
Cop: “Athlete”?
Doctor: We assume — or dancer. Look at the pulse rate — like a rock.

The doctor (and by extension, the writer) are absolutely correct. Athletes, particularly endurance athletes, have a pulse rate that is much lower than average. Basically, because of their regular exercise, an athlete’s heart is much more efficient and doesn’t need to pump as often to move the same amount of blood. While the “normal” adult heart rate is 60-100 beats per minute, I’ve known marathon runners whose resting heart rate is in the 30-40s.

Unfortunately, the art doesn’t match what the doctor is saying. The handy little monitor next to Vienna shows a heart rate of 144. Not quite the rock the doctor mentioned.

To nitpick a little, the nasal canula is drawn incorrectly, and the IV site on the hand as well. The rest of the scene looks accurate though.

Tags: comics medicine omac bruce jones heart rate

Another DC public service ad from the 1950s. This one features two spoiled brats brothers and their poor put upon stay-at-home mother.

Click on the image for the full PSA ad

This PSA is from World’s Finest #100 (March 1959) and appeared in several other comics published the same month, including Batman #122 and House of Secrets #18. The script is by Jack Schiff, art by Bernard Bailey, and letters by Ira Schnapp. As with most of these DC PSAs from the 50s and 60s, the ad was underwritten by the National Social Welfare Assembly.

Tags: comics psa world’s finest

I felt this was the weakest scene in the whole comic. First, it doesn’t sound like Reed Richards — it sounds more like bad Braniac-5 fanfic*. Second, that whole “adrenal glands” comment just struck me as awkward. It’s not necessarily wrong, just graceless.

The adrenal glands are located just above the kidneys. Among the many hormones they produce is epinephrine (better known as adrenaline), the chemical that activates the fight-or-flight response. Adrenalin is produced at the direction of the brain when the body experiences certain kinds of stress. So I guess Reed is saying the seeing Sue stresses him to such an extent that it activates his fight-or-flight response and makes it hard to communicate romantically. That’s entirely likely — from personal experience I can tell you that seeing the person involved in a bad break-up can cause those feelings.

But why mention the adrenals at all? Why not blame the locus ceruleus or the other areas of the brain responsible for activating the adrenal glands in the first place? Why not just say “it hurts to see her” and leave it at that. And while the fight-or-flight response might cause some problems, I think the bigger problem is the anger and betrayal they feel with each other and you can’t blame the adrenal glands for that. The way it’s written, it makes Reed sounds like someone trying to seem smarter than they actually are by using big words that are close, but not quite right. And that’s not Reed — he may use big words, but he uses them correctly (usually).

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*“I…will…always…love…you…Quer-” she gasped. Taking a final ragged breath of the thin air, she clutched at my arm and then was still.

“You shouldn’t have, Mary Sue,” I said feebly to her lifeless body, the rising wind tousling her long blond hair. “That death beam was meant for me.” I realized that my computer-like brain was unable to deal with the rush of emotions I felt. I cursed my unfeeling ancestors of the planet Colu and their emotionless breeding program. Gently I closed her eyes, which before had always shown the most brilliant azure blue but now had slowly faded to dull gray in the light of the setting suns. I clung to her body until it became cold and then I buried it on that barren world.

I returned to my lab and cried for a full ninety-three minutes.

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Or maybe Reed has just been listening to too much “Death Cab for Cutie” and now he’s going to run home and blog about it. Reread his captions above, but this time imagine them on some overly dramatic MySpace blog or LiveJournal.

Tags: comics medicine civil war reed richards adrenal gland braniac-5

Continuing my series of medical annotations of Naoki Urawawa’s excellent manga Monster.

There is barely any medicine in Monster Volume 5, but it’s my favorite volume of the series so far because of the well-realized characters within it. There is Dr. Rudi Gellen, a former classmate — really a former competitor – of Tenma during medical school. He is now a respected clinical psychologist and when Tenma ends up on his doorstep, will he help him or turn him over to the police? (He should really be a criminal psychiatrist and not a psychologist, so I wonder if that’s a translation mistake or just another appearance of a common error — confusing psychiatrists and psychologists).

Nina Fortner appears again, chasing Michael, one of the ex-cops who murdered her foster parents. Johann, Nina’s brother and the monster of the title, doesn’t appear in the book directly but does influence most of the action and underlying conspiracies. Finally, Inspector Lunge arrives and sets a trap for Tenma, but in the end he is the one who is injured.

In the first chapter of Monster Volume 6, it is up to Tenma to repair Inspector Lunge’s injuries despite the inspector’s distrust of him, not to mention the fact that he is handcuffed.

While I am usually impressed by Tenma’s medical skills, I don’t agree with his choices here. Inspector Lunge has an open abdominal wound and it would be a very bad idea to introduce contamination into the wound — contamination such as thread taken from an old cloth bag left in an abandoned warehouse. I agree that the bleeding needs to be stopped, but there are better ways Tenma could be going about it (for instance using thread pulled from his or the inspector’s clothes; or even direct pressure while driving the inspector to the hospital).