Polite Dissent

The plot of this episode of Fringe was, at best, so-so. They could have at least played up the “trapped in a building with a possible killer” angle. The science — and it’s generous calling it that — was painfully bad.

The Plot: In a large office building in Boston, a man walks into the office of a petroleum corporation, then drops dead, with his last breath spraying a fine mist of blood on all around him. Given the strange nature of the man’s death, the Fringe team is called in. Peter and Olivia arrive first and are interviewing bystanders. Walter, Broyles, and Astrid are on their way into the building, when one of the people exposed to the dead man’s blood comes walking toward the door, as fast as he can. Walter quickly shuts the door before the man can escape, and the man dies, spraying blood against the closed door. Fearful of an unknown contagious disease, the CDC is called in and the building quarantined — with Peter and Dunham still inside.

Some blood samples are obtained, and Walter takes them back to his lab. In the office building, the receptionist falls ill. Doing a little detective work, the team determines that the first dead man was a corporate spy from Dubai who was selling information on the peteroleum company’s competitors. The ill receptionist becomes frantic and violent. She scuffles with Peter, then jumps through a window, plummeting to the street below, dead. Unfortunately, Peter has been exposed to infected blood and now may be infected himself.

Inspecting the car of the corporate spy, the FBI and Center for Disease Control (CDC) find a core sample from 10 miles down that he was trying to sell. They also find the mysterious virus behind the outbreak contained within the core sample. Walter speculates it is 75,000 years old and was responsible for killing most of the mammals on Earth during the Ice Age (as opposed to the ice and cold). From this virus, Walter is able to concoct a test to determine who is infected and who isn’t. Walter believes that the virus has human-level intelligence and is purposefully acting to infect as many people as possible. He and Astrid enter the office building and test the staff. Most are not infected. Peter is showing signs of infection, but through sleight of hand, makes sure he has a negative test. The people who tested clean are escorted out of the building — except Peter. The guard at the door (a competent FBI agent at Fringe?) notices he has a nosebleed and keeps him in quarantine. In the end, eleven infected individuals remain in the building. Walter and Astrid also elect to stay.

Walter deduces that sulfur is a cure for the virus and relays the information to Dunham. Meanwhile, the CDC has called in the US Army to “take care of” the people remaining in the building. Dunham and Broyles ask for more time to synthesize Walter’s cure. Broyles suggests pumping the building full of Fentanyl gas (a strong narcotic) to knock everyone out and buy time. Dunham volunteers to enter the building and turn the HVAC back on. She scuffles with an infected Peter but succeeds in her mission. All the infected people are knocked out, Walter’s cure is made, and everyone (well, except for those already dead) survives.

It’s been a number of years since I’ve worked in a biochemistry or infectious disease lab, and I found the “science” in this episode totally appalling. I’m sure any actual infectious disease researcher or biochemist who watched the show had their television explode from the rays of frustration and hate their brains emitted. I’ll highlight a handful of items, but there are many more mistakes and plot holes that I didn’t have time to mention because I actually do have to get some sleep tonight.

1. I Give Him Credit For Trying
I applaud the bike messenger for attempting CPR (even if it was the 5 compression/1 breath technique that is not recommended anymore), but give it some time before you declare the guy dead. Ten compressions doesn’t cut it. At least continue the CPR until the EMTs arrive.

2. You Know What They Say About “Assume”
Walter believes the virus is transmitted by bodily fluids. How does he arrive at this conclusion? Certainly blood transmission seems probable, but how does he know about other bodily fluids? Is he surreptitiously testing saliva and semen?
He claims the virus is not airborne, or more people would be sick. How is he so sure about the incubation time? Maybe more people could be sick than he knows, they’re just not showing it yet. Sure, the bike messenger fell ill fast, but how do you know he was not exposed before (maybe the Dutch guy wasn’t patient zero), or maybe the messenger had a weakened immune system and succumbed faster than normal. Walter is making way too many assumptions.

3. Do You Even Know What You’re Testing For
There are way too many problems with Walter’s test.
Why the cheek swab? That’s used for DNA samples. Is he saying the virus can be found in the DNA of cheek cells?
Most viral tests look for antibodies against the virus — they’re a lot easier to develop. Of course, it usually takes several weeks for these antibodies to appear. There are some tests that look for the actual virus, but I don’t care how much of a genius Walter is, he couldn’t have cobbled one together so fast, or made enough of it to test the entire office building.
Most importantly, there was no prior testing to determine the false negative/false positive rate of Walter’s test. No test is 100% right all the time. They are risking everybody’s life on an unknown test.
Then Peter’s test was negative but he clearly was infected. We the viewers know he faked the test swab, but the characters don’t know that. Their first thought would have been: “Peter’s test was negative, but he has the disease. How many of these other people we let outside also had false negative tests?” And then they would have hustled them all back inside and left them there.

4. If Only My Labs In College Were This Easy
The scene in Walter’s lab was laughable.
No protective gear.
Isolating a virus in a test-tube using a centrifuge (and using it poorly) would never work. It’s not even close to being right.

5. Down In The Hole
Admittedly, I’m not a geologist, but how does 10 miles down equal 75,000 years. I would think it would be a lot more (years) than that.
The virus lived 75,000 years without a host — that’s impressive. Plus this virus can apparently be visualized without an electron microscope.

6. It’s A Gas
Fentanyl gas has been used at least once before to subdue a building full of people. In this case, it was a hostage situation in Russia with Chechnyan separatists. The Fentanyl didn’t work as well as expected and actually killed 117 hostages. In situations like that, it’s hard to control the inhaled dose — and Fentanyl can kill at the wrong dose. Plus, a fair number of people are allergic — fatally allergic — to narcotics.

7. Dire-Swine Flu?
Neuraminidase inhibitors are used to treat influenza viruses and … that’s about it. So this is a flu virus now

8. Eli Lilly Is Spinning In His Grave
In vivo does not equal in vitro. In other words, what works great in a test tube often doesn’t turn out to work so well in an actual living organism. If creating a new drug were as easy as Walter makes it out to be, we’d be neck deep in fancy new medications and the pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t be laying off people left and right.

9. Not So Smart, Is It?
If the virus really wanted to infect as many people as possible, why not infect the airplane instead of an office building? Those people would be in an airport and then other planes, not trapped in a building.

8. Nice Try, But…
The US Army is not authorized to act on US soil. National Guard, maybe.

9. Georgia On My Mind
I’m not sure of the actual powers of the CDC in a situation like this, but this seemed unrealistic to me. Their response was incredibly fast and a lot like a sledgehammer. I’m not saying the CDC isn’t fast — they are easily the best in the world at what they do — but they’re not that fast. And they actually do research, rather than just shoot people. Wait, was that a knock at the door?

I thought last week’s science was bad, but this was even worse. I have no choice but to move the Fringe Doomsday Clock forward two minutes to 11:58.

Tags: television fringe mutation virus infection cdc

This was a Fringe episode left over from Season One that had never been aired — and it wasn’t a particularly good episode, but better than some that were aired. There was at least one good plot twist.

The Plot: Lisa, a seventeen year old high school junior has been declared brain dead after a cerebral aneurysm. Her life support is shut off and she is declared officially dead before being wheeled into the operating room to harvest her organs for transplant. Once the operation has started, she suddenly sits up, alive, and screams out a series of code numbers. It turns out the code refers to a naval officer by the name of Andrew Rusk — and he has been reported missing. The Fringe team is called in to investigate.

Lisa denies ever having met Rusk, but when his name is mentioned, she speaks a phrase in Russian which translates to “my (or ‘little’) star.” Lisa has developed a fever and the doctors are watching her closely. Her mother tells Agent Dunham that she doesn’t want the team questioning Lisa anymore when Lisa suddenly screams from the bathroom — when looking in the mirror she has seen the image of Rusk standing behind her. Walter hypothesizes that Lisa’s aneurysm affected Broca’s area, a part of the brain which controls language — and according to Walter — also controls psychic ability.

A little while later, Lisa calls Agent Dunham, telling her that she still is still seeing Rusk. She is at a junkyard, because she saw the image of it in her mind. When the Fringe team finds her, she tells them that Rusk was shot there. Sure enough, a 9mm casing is found and a short time later, Rusk’s body is found. Lisa has a sudden seizure and is readmitted to the hospital.

Walter deduces that Rusk’s death and Lisa’s rebirth occurred simultaneously, and somehow this allowed her to pick up his memories. Lisa’s mother allows Lisa to be taken to Walter’s lab to purge the memories.

Meanwhile, Dunham finds out that Rusk used to call his wife the Russian phrase “my star.” She also finds out that he was exposed to high radiation doses in a shipboard accident and was given an experimental radiation inhibitor.

Back at the lab, Walter hooks Lisa up to an EEG, pumps her full of drugs, and the team discovers that she doesn’t just have some of Rusk’s memories — his entire consciousness is sharing her brain. Rusk’s personality emerges when the drugs put Lisa to sleep. He is able to give the team enough of a lead to track down his killer — a former Navy SEAL. When the suspect is questioned by the FBI he admits that he killed Rusk, but he did it because Rusk was a wife beater — Rusk’s wife hired him to kill her husband. He tells the team that he mentioned this fact to Rusk before shooting him.

Rusk is still in control of Lisa’s body, but by pretending to be Lisa, manages to sneak out of the lab. He goes to his house and grabs his gun. He confronts his wife, but she denies having anything to do with his murder. He ties her up and is getting ready to start a house fire when Peter arrives, with the rest of the team following a short time later. Peter talks to Lisa/Rusk enough to distract him so that Charlie can shoot him with a tranquilizer dart. Further testing in the lab reveals that only Lisa’s consciousness remains within her mind.

1. Breathe, Breathe In The Air. Since Lisa stopped breathing and died once the ventilator was stopped, why are they bagging her on the way to OR? (And if you want to argue that they are bagging her to provide oxygenated blood to her organs, then they also need to 1) give CPR, and 2) continue to bag her in the OR).

2. Infection Control, What’s That?
Lisa has enough of a fever to worry her doctor, but is discharged the next day — and immediately returns to school and church? Where lots of sick people are? (Assuming she goes to church on Sunday, it seems impossible for her to have made it back to school. By my calculation she would have been discharged late Friday at the earliest.).

3. Total Nit-Pick About Balloons
Hospitals are picky about which balloons are allowed. The ones is Lisa’s room are not allowed due to concerns about latex allergy.

4. I Wish All Surgeries Were That Easy
Abdominal surgeries, even on dead people, are not that easy. The renal artery is way in the back and all the intestines have to be moved out of the way before it can be reached.

5. Seize Her
That was one of the more unconvincing seizures I’ve ever seen.
Speaking of seizures, while I agree with the hospital doctor that in most cases the cause of seizures are never identified, I would not so cavalierly dismiss the idea that it was related to her aneurysm. She had a recent bleed in her brain, and blood is a very irritating substance — not to mention the swelling from the injury — which is enough to set off a seizure.

6. Too Many To Choose From
It was nice of Walter to put her on 100 mikes (micrograms) of a benzodiazepine, but it would help if he told Astrid which one to use. He typically has used Valium, but the doses he is giving fits Versed better.

7. Too Late To Matter
With a dose of 600-1000 REM, Rusk would have had the initial symptoms of radiation poisoning starting shortly after exposure (mostly nasty gastrointestinal ones). His bone marrow would be dead and he would require a bone marrow transplant to have any chance of survival (and for the record, only one person has ever survived that dose of radiation).
Once Rusk was removed from the reactor, he was no longer exposed to the radiation — and since he is not radioactive himself (radiation doesn’t work that way) — giving a radiation inhibitor at this point is useless, like closing the barn door after the horse has left. There is no radiation left to inhibit. The damage has already been done.

8. Quickdraw McGraw
Intramuscular medications (like the tranquilizer dart) do not take immediate effect. The medicine must be absorbed into the blood stream and spread throughout the body — or at least reach the brain) before it knocks the victim out.

9. Enough Already, George Michael
Scientifically-based faith (e.g. I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow) is a completely different concept than religious-based faith and the terms are not really interchangeable.

Since this is not a current episode, it’s not going to affect the Doomsday clock — which is a good thing for the show.

Tags: television fringe brain psychic possession

An incredibly mediocre show that didn’t meet a cliche it didn’t like (except, unfortunately, the psychic nosebleed). Sorry if the write up seems brief, but I’m really having a hard time caring about this show recently.

The Plot:The police are called for a kidnapping/hostage situation at the top of a parking garage where two guys are holding a teen hostage in a car. When the police arrive, they order the men out of the car. The duo get out of the car and then strange things begin to happen: one cop backs up and throws himself off the garage, while his partner shoots the other cops and then herself. The two guys get back in the car and drive off with the kid.

The Fringe team is called in to evaluate the case. Walter suspects that there is hypnotism of subliminal messages involved. The team heads to Massive Dynamic because the kidnapped boy is the son of one of their top aerospace researchers. By now, the two guys in the car have been identified as two local used car salesmen who had been upstanding citizens until now. The kidnappers and teen stop by a convenience store and ob it. A burly customer tries to intervene, but suddenly he is pouring scalding coffee over his head and the breaking the carafe over it. The cashier tries to shoot the men, but finds himself picking up a key and inserting it into an outlet and shocking himself unconscious.

Walter has been performing an autopsy on the cop who shot the other cops and deduces that it was not hypnosis, but instead mind control. He makes his deduction based on the fact that there are hematomas (pockets of leaked blood) on the surface of the brain, suggesting some mind/body conflict. He then infers — for no good or logical reason — that this mind control must be done via the cochlear (hearing) nerve.

A call comes in from the kidnappers demanding two million dollars. Meanwhile, Walter has concocted white noise headphones for the FBI troops to wear in the field which should block out any mind control. At an abandoned factory, the teen’s father hands over a briefcase of money to the kidnapper, who then runs into a nearby building. Agent Dunham follows. Meanwhile, Peter sees someone else running with the briefcase and follows, only to find the teen, Tyler, holding the briefcase. It turns out Tyler’s the one with mind control and the others were nothing but patsies. Unfortunately, Peter’s white noise headphones don’t protect him and Tyler orders him to drive the two of them out of town in the Bishop family roadster.

Peter tries to rebel, but Tyler forces him to drive the car as fast as it can go and plays chicken with a truck before Peter agrees to behave. A little while later, they are pulled over by a policeman. Tyler wants Peter to shoot the cop, but in the end, he lets Peter just knock him unconscious. Finally, Tyler and Peter arrive at his mother’s house (by way of a strip club), where Tyler finally gets to meet the goal of his quest — his mother. He believes that his father had driven her away and lied to him about her, but that turns out not to be the case, and when he learns she is married he has Peter pull out a gun and point it at her husband. Luckily, Agent Broyles arrives and shoots Tyler with a taser — but it’s a bad shot. Tyler has Peter shoot Broyles, and then he and Peter hop back in the family roadster and take off. Agent Dunham, Astrid and Walter are following close behind, and when they get near off, Walter activates the EMP device he has been working on. It knocks Tyler out for a split second, and that’s enough for Peter to realize what is going on and drive into a telephone pole. He survives with a mild concussion, but Tyler is knocked unconscious and captured.

1. Watching Too Many B-Movies, and Now I Need Some Popcorn
Walter’s original suggestions were nonsense. As Peter pointed out, hypnosis doesn’t work like that — and subliminal messages don’t work at all.

2. La La La! I Can’t Hear You!
Why go through all the elaborate set up of the white noise headphones instead of just using ear plugs?

3. Bleeding On The Brain
Hematomas don’t form with brain/body conflict. There are certainly medical conditions with conflict between mind and body — somatization comes to mind — but none of them cause hematomas. You could argue that the straining led to an increased blood pressure which popped the vessels, but high blood pressure related bleeds occur within the brain, not on the outside.
That was a surprisingly intact brain for someone who received a bullet at point black range.

4. On the AM Radio
Why amplify the brain waves — that should have been the team’s first realization that something wasn’t kosher — why not just make better sensors?
Amplifying the brain waves means that you are increasing the voltage within the brain itself, which is wonderful way of setting off a seizure.

5. It’s Better Than The 10% Cliche, But Just Barely
Brains are not computers. Whenever someone uses this analogy, it’s a safe bet that they don’t understand brains or computers
Having Tyler’s mother actually be a surrogate was a fairly clever twist — really the only one in an episode thick with clichés — but how does the doctor raise all five Tylers? Are they frozen until needed? Does he spend one day of the week with each one?

6. The Blind Leading the Blind
Geez, Olivia is a bad detective. She already knows Tyler’s mother died when he was young, and then can’t figure out why he’s looking at records of women who died in car crashes fourteen years before.

7. Crime And (Lack of) Punishment
Why would Tyler get off with just seeing some psychiatrists? That makes no sense at all, especially the way they explain it. He was directly involved in the murder of five people, the maiming of three others, and at least three attempted murders. He’s fifteen — old enough to be tried as an adult.

Why exactly am I still watching this show? I’m sure I have much better things to do.

Tags: television medicine fringe mind control hypnosis subliminal

The science, while a little sketchy, wasn’t half-bad in this episode of Fringe. Despite this, I found the story itself rather lackluster.

The Plot:In Seattle, Greg, a businessman, walks through his office, late for a meeting with his boss. As he moves through the office, he notices that everyone he sees has the heads of demons rather than their proper heads. When he enters the conference room, he sees that his boss is also a demon, so he bludgeons him to death with his briefcase. The co-workers who wrestle Greg to the ground notice that his eyes are cloudy and twitching.

The Fringe team is called to Seattle to evaluate the case. They interview Greg at the hospital and he tells them what he saw in the office. Suddenly, he begins thrashing wildly in bed, his hair turns completely white, and he collapses, dead. Walter assists that local medical examiner with the autopsy and determines that Greg died of “acute exhaustion.” He arranges for the body to be sent to his lab at Harvard for a more complete, Walter style, autopsy.

Talking with Greg’s wife, Dunham and Peter learn that he had a history of sleep walking, but it hadn’t been a problem for several months since visiting some specialists.

A second incident has occurred: a woman driving a mini-van told her husband she saw a monster and drove her car into an innocent cyclist. She died at the scene and was found to have the same white hair Greg did.

Back in his lab, Walter finds a microchip implanted in Greg’s midbrain. A quick look at the body of the second victim shows an incision on the neck suggesting she had the same operation. Broyles takes the microchip to Nina Sharp at Massive Dynamics who identifies it as a chip designed to work on the thalamus to promote sleep. She identifies its creator as a Dr. Nayak, also in Seattle.

Dunham and Peter pay Dr. Nayak a visit. He identifies both victims as patients of his who are taking part in a clinical study on the brain chip. He takes Dunham and Peter to his office only to finf there has been a break-in. Nayak’s office has been trashed and the computers containing all the patient data are missing.

Walter and Peter hypothesize that someone is using the chips as a rudimentary form of mind control. Meanwhile, in a dark room, we see shadowy someone access the clinic’s computers and select a patient — a waitress at a local Greek restaurant. Soon she begins hallucinating before attacking the chef and then collapsing, dead. Nayak identifies her as one of his patients as well.

Back on the east coast, Walter has been experimenting with the chip and discovers that it siphons the patient’s dreams away so that they never dream. The chips can also be used to place the patient in a dreaming state while awake. Finally, he discovers that whoever is on the receiving end of the chip gets an incredible high from the stolen dreams. Olivia realizes that they are looking for someone addicted to the dreams. A brief amount of detective works reveal that Dr. Nayak himself is the perpetrator. He has a dream-addicted dark side that is causing all the problems. They track him to his home just as he is using his machine to activate the chip in an airline pilot’s head. Dunham destroys the computer, saving the pilot (and his crew and passengers), but killing Dr. Nayak in the process.

Overall this week, I felt the science was not entirely implausible, a step up from the usual. So most of what follows are probably best regarded as “nit-picks”

1. Wherein I Make Some Concessions
I agree that exhaustion/stress can cause high cortisone levels and dehydration. For the sake of the story, I will also accept that it can cause sudden loss of hair pigment (a la Jean Valjean) and thyroid disorders. However, I am at a loss to explain how it can cause the sudden appearance of large patches of thickened flaking skin. Sure, dehydration and low thyroid can cause skin problems, but it is the entire skin, not just large discrete patches.

2. We Solve the Problem by Breaking the Space-Time Continuum
Let me get this straight: the brain chip is used to correct non-REM sleep disorders. It does this by siphoning off dreams. Now, dreams generally occur in REM sleep, which comes after non-REM sleep. So the chips fix the sleep by removing something that hasn’t even occurred yet.

3. Department of Redundancy Department
“Blood CBC” is hopelessly redundant. CBC stands for complete blood count, so a blood CBC is a blood complete blood count.
A CBC looks at the blood cells (white, red, platelets). It doesn’t look at hormones like thyroxine and cortisol, that’s a different test entirely.

4. OMG, n00b
Yes hackers steal passwords. They also mount DDOS attacks, but these are two separate things. Claiming the lack of DDOS attack means that a hacker couldn’t be involved means the FBI (or the Fringe writers) need much better forensic computer experts. (And what would a DDOS attack against a single clinic server accomplish, anyway?)

5. It’s Not Brain Surgery — Wait, Maybe It Is
The thalamus is located deep in the center of the brain. Any surgery to reach it, let alone implant a chip in it, is going to be a major undertaking — a hole in the skull needs to made after all — and wouldn’t be performed as an outpatient clinic procedure.
The thalamus is part of the diencephalon, making it forebrain, not midbrain.
And good luck getting the clinical trial approved by the IRB.

6. Your Suspicions Are Suspicious
Hearing that one of his employees was suspected, one would think that Dr. Nayak would have volunteered the information about his assistant being missing earlier in the day, rather than waiting until the end of it (or was that the effect of Hyde-Nayak?).

7. A Shot In The Dark
Peter, Dunham and the other FBI agent can’t find an on/off switch or a plug or a circuit breaker between the three of them? So the next logical step is shooting the server?

It’s the reverse of last week. This time, I found the science acceptable, but the story tepid — so they cancel out and the clock stays at 11:55

A list of all previous Fringe reviews is available here.

Tags: television medicine fringe sleep rem hacker adrenalin

Last week, I discussed a vaccination that prevented you from becoming a zombie. Tonight’s subject is the opposite: a vaccination that turn you into a zombie (actually, it turns you into a mindless super-strong drone, but close enough). This comes from the Pyroman story “The Saboteurs of Steel” in America’s Best Comics #4 (1943).

Evil gangster Ornitz sneaks into a nearby Army base and slips his mind control serum into the paratyphoid vaccine. The next day, the soldiers are vaccinated…

…and they all become the invulnerable super-strong mindless slaves of Ornitz who uses them to take over the Army base.

Can Pyroman stop Ornitz and his army of Army men? Of course he can, this is his story after all. To understand how he does it, it helps to understand the story as a whole:

A couple of medical notes to end the post:

Paratyphoid fever is similar to the more famous typhoid fever, though it is usually milder. It is caused by a bacteria from the Salmonella family, which is found in contaminated water. It is rare in the United States, Canada, and Europe but fairly common in developing nations. There is a vaccine available, but it not used very often as it is only partially effective.

As the vaccination is labeled “serum,” I suspect the soldiers are getting an immune globulin injection to ward off paratyphoid, and not actual paratyphoid vaccine. In immune globulin injections, the patient receive an injection of antibodies against the disease. These antibodies will circulate for several months, protecting the patient, before eventually breaking down. The patient does not gain any permanent immunity from the injection. This is known as passive immunity, as opposed to active immunity, which occurs when patients are exposed to the germ in question and develop their own antibodies. Active immunity can occur by natural exposure, or by vaccination. All the vaccines routinely given in the United States induce active immunity.

A perfectly serviceable episode of House – for the middle of the season, anyway. As a season finale, it was a bit of a let down (until the last five minutes, that is).

Scott is a 20 year-old who has undergone surgery that cut his corpus callosum (the part of the brain that allows the left and right sides of the brain to communicate) to treat a seizure disorder. The seizures have resolved since the surgery, but he has subsequently developed Alien Hand Syndrome, where he has no control at all over his left hand and it seems to have a mind of its own. He is at a restaurant on a date, complaining of bland food, when his left hand starts throwing rolls at an obnoxious diner at another table. A fight ensues, and before the melee even starts, we notice blood dripping from his eye.

Scott is admitted to House’s service for evaluation of his bloody tears and loss of his sense of taste. The initial differential diagnosis includes autoimmune disease, nasolacrimal tumor, infection, or the common cold. House has Taub and Thirteen search Scott’s apartment and they find mold growing on the ceiling in his bathroom. They decide this is the cause of his symptoms and start him on anti-fungal medication. About this time, Scott has a fight with his girlfriend, his left hand slapping her, and she storms out. He tries to follow her out but finds that he cannot walk. The differential now consists of dehydration or a meningioma (the most common tumor of the central nervous system) — only it’s a special meningioma that is allowing the two sides of the brain to communicate again. Instead of running an MRI or CT scan to look for the tumor, they run a test to see if there is communication between the left and right brain. The test is negative, but House notices that Scott is shivering. He also detects an ammonia scent to his breath and sees a caput medusae on physical exam, all signs of liver failure. House suspects the liver failure is due to sarcoidosis and has the team perform a liver biopsy. While performing the biopsy, Thirteen sees splinter hemorrhages (a sign of trauma or tiny blood clots) under Scott’s fingernails. He then takes a sudden turn for the worse, vomiting blood while his oxygen saturation and blood pressure drop.

The team now decides that Scott has a clotting issue, and start him on heparin (a blood thinner). An echocardiogram is normal, so the heart isn’t the source of the clots. They’ve also run tests for Factor V Leiden, Protein C, and Protein S (all things that can cause a clotting disorder), but they’re also negative. Thirteen now recalls his mention of always being sweaty and wonders if that might be a symptom of whatever disease he has. Cancer is thought to be the most likely, particularly lymphoma or pancreatic cancer. House strongly suspects the latter, even when an MRI of the pancreas is normal. He has Chase perform a new test where scorpion toxin and infrared dye is painted on the pancreas and will light up any cancer cells. There isn’t any sign of cancer, but once again Scott starts to develop a dangerously low blood pressure. House now realizes that the clotting problem is caused by his heart throwing off clots, but only when he slips into an arrhythmia, which he does under stress (like surgery or a biopsy), or every now and then. Sure enough, Chase checks a transesophageal echocardiogram and finds an abnormal rhythm and clots in the left atrial appendage. The heart throwing clots explains most of Scott’s symptoms, but what explains the heart condition? The new differential includes rhabdomyolysis (muscle disease), Graves disease (an autoimmune disease that causes too much thyroid hormone to be produced), and Cushing’s Syndrome (a condition where the body makes too much cortisol, a steroid). The Cushing’s seems the most likely, and a dexamethasone suppression test is ordered. About this time, Scott’s girlfriend returns and points out that his left hand only seemed to get “agitated” when Scott’s deodorant was involved. It turns out to be a special deodorant that Scott has to special order. Taub checks on it, and sure enough, one of the ingredients has been shown in one case to cause a heart condition and therefore this is decided to be the cause of Scott’s problem. End of case. Taub also notes ironically that the chemical has been implicated in seizure disorders, and maybe Scott had not needed the surgery in the first place.

As usual, major complaints are in red, minor in blue, nit-picking in green:

Patient has neurological signs (loss of his sense of taste, inability to walk) and they even suspect a brain tumor, yet they never check a CT or MRI of the brain?

The liver failure, particularly the varices and caput medusae, developed way too quickly — or else they’ve been there for a while and the team did a piss-poor physical exam.

It caught my attention when the script was vague about propylene glycol causing “heart problems.” From what I can find, it can cause arrhythmia, particularly bradyarrhthmias (abnormally slow heart rates) and QRS abnormalities. I don’t see any connection between it and atrial fibrillation, the arrhythmia that would cause Scott’s symptoms (again, left unnamed in the script).

The patient is crashing in the OR and no one thinks to look at the cardiac monitors?

I was surprised how quickly the team accepted that propylene glycol caused his problems and just stopped there, other more likely causes left untested for.

While giving blood thinners to someone with a clotting disorder is a good idea, they might want to think twice about giving it to someone with bleeding esophageal varices (at least I assume he has them, that’s the only thing that fits and can explain the vomiting blood).

Chlorotoxin-based (scorpion venom) tumor paint has been used in animal models, but I’m not sure it’s been tested in humans yet. It seems like an extreme step to take though. One of the first things I was taught (and taught loudly) on my surgical rotation was “don’t mess with pancreas” — though the language was more colorful.

So a clot to the brain caused the lack of taste , but what caused the bloody tears?
And don’t tell me “subconjunctival hemorrhage,” that was an embarrassingly bad suggestion of Taub’s.

I like that the writers finally acknowledge that storylines are often built on single case reports (not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that).

The medical mystery was mediocre, and they never explained one of the opening symptoms. His underlying condition (Alien Hand Syndrome) was more interesting that the mystery: C. The final diagnosis fit the symptoms, or at least the main ones, it just seemed the team accepted that the deodorant caused it too easily. I give it a B. The medicine overall was superficial and rushed, but not horrible. I give it a weak B. The soap opera was the highlight of the show, particularly the end scenes with Cuddy and Wilson and earns the show an A in this regard (though shouldn’t Cuddy have been mad that House lied to the clinic about sleeping with her, and not just yelled at him for discussing her sex-life?).

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There were two interlocking stories on tonight’s episode of Fringe. One of which contained a serial killer, and one of which contained Fringe science (if by “fringe” you mean “in no way connected to the actual laws of science”).

The Plot:A demolition crew is ready to implode an old building when one of them gets a strange feeling and runs back inside. He and his co-workers find a hidden basement that appears to have been sealed off for years, and in it, huddled in the corner, they find a naked, pale, bald ten year-old child.

Meanwhile, the serial killer known as “The Artist” has reappeared after a three year absence and sent a taunting note to the FBI.

Olivia and her team interview the strange child (hereafter called “Lex Jr”) in the hospital. He is having some shortness of breath and the doctor wants to put him on supplemental oxygen. Walter stops her and lets her know that Lex Jr is from a low oxygen environment and needs less oxygen, not more. Sure enough, Walter’s right and Lex Jr starts to breathe better. He seems to form an emotional bond with Olivia. He grabs her pen and writes a name upside down — and it turns out to be the name of the serial killer’s latest victim.

Olivia visits Lex Jr again, hoping for more clues about the killer. This time, he writes an address down for her. She goes to the address, but can’t find anything. It isn’t Lex’s fault though, it was Olivia’s: the murderer’s van was parked at that address and she missed it. While in the hospital, she meets a social worker who remarks that Lex Jr will likely be leaving the hospital soon.

Walter thinks he can provide a way for Lex Jr to talk. Olivia brings him to the lab where Walter hooks him up to the neural stimulator (remember that from episode five?). About this time, the social worker appears in the lab, only he’s not a social worker — he’s a CIA agent and wants the boy. He agrees to give Olivia and team one day to find the killer before he returns for Lex. With Lex’s help, and an assist by Peter, Olivia manages to track down and capture, if not kill outright, the Aritist. In the end, Olivia finds she can’t hand Lex over to the CIA and has the friendly doctor from the hospital set him up in a good foster home instead.

1. When is More Less?
The “Lex lived in a low-oxygen environment” concept bugged me. For one thing, if the hidden basement was that oxygen poor, the demolition crew would not have been able to breathe down there.
And later, when Walter tells the doctor to put Lex on 5% oxygen, what was the other 95%? Hospitals don’t keep tanks of less than 100% oxygen sitting around. If a little oxygen is needed, the flow setting is low. If more is needed, a higher flow (and fancier masks) are used. Remember, room air has 21% oxygen and if the team wants to go less than that, they’d need an air-tight room and would somehow have to remove the oxygen from it. You can’t just use a near-empty oxygen tank because all you’ll get from that are a few minutes of extra oxygen and then back to room air.

2. If a Bone Shatters, and No One is Around ti Hear It, Does It Still Hurt?
If he lived his entire life in the dark, he would not just be low in Vitamin D, he’d have rickets, a bone disease caused by long term Vitamin D deficiency.

3. Oxygen or Cautery
The machine they made a show of turning on before placing Lex on his “low oxygen” nasal canula had nothing at all to do with oxygen or air flow. It was the control panel for a electrocautery machine — which uses an electrical current to cut through tissue and/or cauterize wounds. It is a common piece of surgical equipment. You’ll notice the buttons were labeled monopolar, bipolar, and coagulate.

4. The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
For someone with an extreme sensitivity to light, he was sure kept in a brightly lit room. How about some sunglasses at least.

5. Call the Amazing Randi
Let me get this straight: Lex can not only read the mind of the serial killer — oh sorry “empathize” with him — but he can miraculously express it in English, a language he cannot speak and isn’t even sure which way is up when he writes it (but he fixes that one fast). I could almost accept it if he drew a vague picture of what the killer was seeing, but for him to give a specific name or address when it’s likely the killer wasn’t even aware of them…

6. When Being Cheap Costs
The meat packing company sold used bloody drop cloths? And they didn’t find this strange? And The Artist didn’t have the common sense to spend a few bucks extra to buy clean ones?

7. Code
Ars Technica has a couple of nice articles (especially the second one) on “The Fringe Code.”

Because of the nonsensical psychic powers, the complete misunderstanding of basic science, and pretending an electrocautery machine is an oxygen machine, I have no choice but to resume the Fringe Doomsday Clock countdown, and the hands move up a minute to 11:56.

I thought this would be a good episode of House — the last couple have been pretty good — but I was mistaken. It was surprisingly boring and the medicine was hap-hazard and illogical as well.

Morgan, a thirty-five year-old nursing home nurse comes to see House in the hospital clinic complaining of frequent colds and feeling rundown. As she is asking for some tests to be run, she suffers a tonic-clonic seizure and becomes incontinent of green urine. House decides to admit her.

The team’s initial differential diagnosis consists of infection (especially Pseudomonas) or toxin exposure. House sends Taub and Kutner to search Morgan’s office where they find a bottle of methylthionium chloride (better known as “methylene blue“), a medication that can cause green urine. Taub suspects that she has Munchausen’s Syndrome and has been faking her symptoms. Rather than admit that Taub was right, House sends him off on a fool’s errand.

House now goes to see the Morgan and pretends to induce a photosensitivite seizure. He catches her faking a seizure and she realizes it. She admits that her symptoms were fake, but insists that she is really sick. She knows that she is sick because Debbie the nursing home cat came to sleep beside her. Debbie has a reputation for only sleeping next to people who are dying, so now Morgan is certain that she is at death’s door. House is unimpressed, but then she collapses outside his office, wheezing. Foreman declares that she has bronchospasm, which both House and Foreman agree cannot be faked.

The differential now consists of bronchitis, emphysema, or visceral larva migrans (infection with intestinal worms from the cat). House suspects the latter and has the team perform a bronchoscopy (looking down the lungs with a flexible fiberoptic camera) to find any worms. The test is negative, and so now the team considers acid reflux, allergic asthma, or a panic attack. House thinks the allergy idea is the most likely, so orders a methacholine challenge (a test which provokes asthma is the patient is asthmatic). The challenge test is negative, so Cuddy tells House the he has to discharge Morgan. He takes her out to the smoking area to talk about the dissolution of her marriage and death of her step-son. While there, he notices a rash and she begins to wheeze again. He has another nearby doctor diagnose her with bronchospasm then wheels her back into the hospital. He thinks she has Churg-Strauss Syndrome (a type of vasculitis more common in people with asthma) so starts her on steroids. Morgan now develops brown urine, but there is no evidence of kidney failure, liver failure, an intestinal fistula (an abnormal connection between the intestine and bladder), or blood in the urine. Foreman suggests that the urine only looks brown because it still has traces of green dye and something is making it purple, and purple + green = brown. House thinks this means she may have a Strep bovis infection from colon cancer (about 15% of colon cancers have a concurrent S. bovis infection. The exact relationship between the two is unclear). The team reminds him that her colonoscopy was normal. He orders a pill-cam (capsule endoscopy), which is also negative for cancer.

Kutner suggest that Morgan may have a skin cancer which has spread to her colon. House has him check her over for melanomas. He finds no skin cancers, but does find prominent spider veins on her back which weren’t there before. House now determines that she has Cushing’s Syndrome (Cushing’s is caused by elevated levels of cortisol in the body. This is most commonly caused by high levels of ACTH, a chemical that tells the body to make more cortisol. ACTH-secreting tumors can most commonly be found in the pituitary gland — part of the brain — or the adrenal glands near the kidneys. House is trying to determine which is the source of the ACTH.) An MRI is negative for a tumor in the adrenals or brain, and blood levels of ACTH are equivocal, so House wants Chase to sample the blood from within her brain to see if there are high levels of ACTH there. The surgery is completed, and Morgan is found to have slightly elevated levels of ACTH in her brain. Incidentally, she also suffered a cardiac arrest while in the operating room. House decides that the cause of her Cushing’s Syndrome is an ACTH secreting tumor in the pituitary. The symptoms can be controlled with medication, but surgery can correct the problem permanently. Chase tries to dissuade her from the surgery, but she decides to have it anyway.

About this time, House has his Eureka! moment of the week when the cat comes in to his office and plops down on his laptop. He realizes that Debbie likes warm places to sleep, so she lay down with patient with fever or those on a heating blanket. She chose to sleep next to Morgan because she was giving off heat due to a carcinoid tumor hiding in her appendix. House is able to stop the brain surgery in time — and presumably Morgan has her appendix and tumor removed.

A very blah episode of House. Basically a weak copy of the themes of House versus God, with much less exciting medicine. The best part was Taub’s side story, and that — like a car crash — was painful to watch but you couldn’t look away. Poor guy.

This episode did inspire me to develop Scott’s Sign: If the cardiac arrest occurs off-camera, it’s not going to be a good show.

Their really weren’t any huge medical errors this week, but there was a great deal of confusing medicine, leaps of logic, and poorly explained reasoning. Since I didn’t have any major complaints this week, I’ll just go with minor complaints in blue and nit-picking in green:

It always amuses me when House, a show about a physician which prides itself on finding the most obscure presentation of a particular disease, limits itself to only looking for the most common causes a condition knowing it must be one of them (in this case, it was Cushing’s Syndrome having to be from an ACTH-secreting tumor in either the brain or adrenals. Sure, they’re the most common, but many other more obscure causes are known and this show thrives on obscure.)

All her MRIs and CT scans and no one ordered a scan of the abdomen, which would have found the tumor.

The purple urine/Strep bovis infection is quite a stretch. Strep bovis is one of the possible culprits in PUBS (Purple Urine Bag Syndrome — a condition seen in catheterized patients), but the evidence is far from convincing.

House seemed to be saying the Cushing’s explained the brown urine (which, incidentally, I can find no information on), but the team also told him they tested for every cause of brown urine, which would presumably include Cushing’s. So did they test or not?

Labyrinthitis is only very rarely treated with antibiotics. It is not treated with the Dix-Halpike maneuver either — Benign Positional Paroxysmal Vertigo is (though, admittedly, they do have similar presentations)

The medical mystery wasn’t given a chance to be interesting, so only earns a B-. The final solution was slightly clever, but relies on too many missed opportunities earlier, so earns a B. While there was nothing hair-rendingly bad about the medicine this week, there was nothing remotely commendable either, and so it is awarded a strictly average C. The soap opera was disappointing as well. The Taub scenes were painfully good, but the rest was just goofy. I give it another B-.

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The villainous Virtual Bob (yep, that’s his name) is trying to use a virtual reality program to drive Marc Slayton (Backlash) insane. Instead, Slayton turns the tables on him and uses the program to take control of Virtual Bob’s mind.

Seriously — Virtual Bob? Did he really think that was a good name? It’s an MMOPRG gesture, not a name. Frankly, There aren’t really that many awe-inspiring comic book characters who go by “Bob.” There’s Sideways Bob from DV8…and…and….hmmm. Well, there’s Bob the lizard from Grimjack. At least he’s cool.

Backlash #5 by Sean Ruffner, Jeff Mariotte, and Brett Booth/center>

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Tags: comics medicine nosebleed backlash taboo virtual bob

It’s nice to have House back after the winter break, but I wish the second half of the season had started with a stronger episode, not this lukewarm time waster.

Jeff is a 32 year old patient with a 3 year history of chronic pain. It started as abdominal pain, but now he also has severe headaches and muscle cramps that come and go. He has seen seven specialists since his symptoms started, but a cause has never been found. He is on high doses of narcotic pain medication with poor pain relief. As the episode starts, he writes a farewell letter to his wife and son and tries to commit suicide, but they come home unexpectedly and find him. He is rushed to the hospital where he is admitted to House’s team.

Thirteen suggests fibromyalgia, but the idea is quickly shot down as Jeff’s symptoms do not match the recognized criteria of the condition. Taub suggests that the patient’s pain is psychosomatic, probably due to an undiagnosed depression. House has Taub run a “pain profile” (i.e. depression screening) on the patient, and Foreman and Thirteen search his house. The search turns up some metal polish — which can cause nerve damage (but the patient worse wore a respirator) — and a freezer full of quail. Quail-related food poisoning (coturnism) can cause rhabdomyolyisis (a disease caused by rapid muscle breakdown). Taub continues to think that the pain is psychosomatic, but House disagrees, believing that Jeff’s depression is caused by the pain and not the other way around. He orders a muscle biopsy to rule out rhabdomyolysis.

In the middle of the biopsy, Jeff complains of sudden right arm pain and his blood pressure drops dangerously low. Kutner announces that he is in “arrest” — though whether it is a cardiac arrest or a respiratory arrest is never clarified (though later comments suggest it was a respiratory arrest). He is found to have a pulmonary embolus by a ventilation/perfusion scan. The differential includes a hypercoaguable state (patients that clot easier than normal) or a cancer syndrome (Trouseau Syndrome is mentioned). Since House is not around, Foreman orders a CT scan of the patient’s chest, abdomen, and pelvis in an attempt to find a suspected tumor. No tumor is found, but edema (swelling) is seen in the intestines and air is seen in the intestinal blood vessels. Kutner suspects that Jeff may have a blockage in his superior mesenteric artery which has blocked blood flow to the intestines and damaged then. Thirteen points out that blood clots elsewhere in the body may be causing his pain. Foreman orders an angioplasty of the artery. Hearing the symptoms, House intervenes and points out that the patient had blown air into his IV, causing an air embolus in a suicide attempt. This is what caused the intestinal edema, air in the intestinal vessels, the pulmonary embolism, and respiratory arrest.

The differential now includes non-motor seizures (discounted because the EEG’s have all been normal) or a glycogen storage disease (an inherited enzyme deficiency) such as McArdle’s Disease. An ischemic forearm test (a test designed to uncover the enzyme deficiency) is performed. It doesn’t show any evidence of the glycogen storage disease, but during the test the pain moves from his left arm to his left leg, the first time that it’s ever jumped like that. The possibility of disc disease is mentioned once, then never again. The team now wants to decide once and for all whether it is psychosomatic pain or there is a physical cause. A total spinal block, high in the spinal cord, is given. This is supposed to separate the mind from the body. If the pain is gone, then the cause of the pain is physical (because the connection between the nerve ends of the body and the pain areas of the brain has been broken); but if the pain remains, then the cause is in the brain (because it doesn’t involve nerves of the body, thus breaking the connection would have no effect). The test relieves Jeff’s pain, but not entirely. This puzzles House because the test results should be all or nothing.

A short time later, House and his team are called to the floor when Jeff’s son Zach starts writhing on the floor, screaming in pain. Jeff’s wife is scared that Zach may have what Jeff has, but House recognizes it as a distraction to cover Jeff’s latest suicide attempt — drinking a bottle of isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. He is started on dialysis. With the failure of the spinal block to clearly identify a cause, the team now considers Fabry’s Disease (another inherited condition), syphilis, or opiod induced pain (his pain medications are worsening his pain). House decides the last is the most likely, and forces narcotic withdrawal in the patient by giving him naloxone, an narcotic blocking agent. It doesn’t work, and Jeff’s wife convinces House to let Jeff be discharged home with the understanding that he is going to attempt suicide again once he gets home; this time with her blessing.

A short while later, talking to the handyman who is fixing his apartment, House has his “Eureka!” moment and deduces that Jeff has epilepsy (yes, I know they dismissed the idea earlier, but bear with me here). It started three years ago as a seizure in the muscles of the testicle but then spread to the brain’s sensory region and somehow “rewired” the neurons of the brain. It didn’t show up on EEG, House says, because the nerves to the testicular muscles are in the “deep” area of the brain. With treatment for his seizures, Jeff is cured and lives happily ever after.

This seemed to me to be a relatively weak episode medically. There aren’t many specifics I can point at and say they got wrong (but not much I can say they got right either); it’s more of an overall impression. Part of the problem is the vague symptoms — is the patient’s pain all over (as frequently stated) or specific to certain areas (as it seemed to be whenever the plot required). Admittedly, chronic pain conditions are difficult to diagnose and treat, but this was a little too much.

As usual, major complaints are in red, minor in blue, nit-picking in green:

As is becoming more common, the diagnoses suggested are way off from the patient’s actual signs and symptoms. McCardle’s Disease, Fabry’s Disease — really?

I think it’s pretty clear that neither Foreman, the nurses, nor the writers have any idea what a double blind experiment actually entails.

Speaking of no idea, Cuddy’s right: the team (and floor nurses) seem to have no idea what “suicide precautions” are. What were they, 0-2 for the night?

The medical mystery was one of the least interesting cases yet (if not the most boring in 5 years), so deserves a mere D, and just because I’m feeling generous. The final solution hurt my mind trying to understand, and earns another D. The medicine was scattershot and unenlightening, but not much worse than the season’s average so earns a C-. The soap opera was…adequate, barely. C.

The most damning thing I can say is that there were no great House lines or moments that made me chuckle — for the first time ever.

Last week’s House review
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This week’s House Challenge scores have been posted.

I figured it was time to take a look at Batman: Knightfall, the storyline where Batman has his back broken by Bane, and then begins the process of recovery.

I hope it goes without saying that Batman’s recovery is nothing short of miraculous: in less than two years, he manages to go from struggling to breathe to a full return to crime fighting, none the worse for wear. As the late night infomercials say, “results not typical”.

For the purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on the period initially after the injury where he is under the care of first his faithful butler Alfred, and then neighborhood physician Dr. Shondra Kinsolver.

I. The Injury
To start off, let’s take a close look at what happened to the Dark Knight. There are two mechanisms of injury here. First, Batman’s spine is hyperextended; it’s bent backwards farther than any back is meant to go. Second, Bane is driving his knee into the back, pushing the spine forward.
[click here for an annotated image.]

II. The Doctor’s Assessment

Dr. Kinsolving: These x-rays clearly show a fulcrum-type stress fracture. Not at all the kind of trauma sustained in a car crash.

Dr Kinsolving is both right and wrong.

She’s right in that the way the injury was explained to her (a car accident) does not match the injury she observes (blow from behind). Alfred tries to explain it away, but she’s already suspicious.

However, she’s wrong in the way she herself describes the injury. While Bane’s knee was used as a fulcrum to break Batman’s back, what he suffers is not a fulcrum fracture per se. Those are a type of Chance fracture and occur with hyperflexion (the back bending forward too far), not hyperextension.

It’s not really a stress fracture either. Those can occur in the spine, usually with an increase in repetitive trauma (for instance, athletes who increase their workout), or with trauma. However, stress fractures of the spine don’t occur in the verterbral body, and do not occur with the kind of trauma Batman experienced.

Despite what she says, I don’t seem much of a fracture on the x-ray she’s holding up, unless it’s the diagonal line on the vertebra. If that’s what she’s referring to, it doesn’t match the type of injury she’s describing, or the one Batman suffered. [click here for an annotated image.]

(Based on the mechanism of injury, I’d predict that Batman suffered a fracture/dislocation injury. There was some spinal breakage occurring, but most of the injury is from one or more of the vertebrae being pushed forward into the spinal cord, injuring it).

III. Steroids
Steroids are a good treatment for spinal cord injuries. Bear in mind the term “steroid” generally refers to one of two related, but distinct, classes of medication.
1. There are the infamous anabolic steroids. These are the ones that cause an increase in muscle mass and have been abused in most major sports; Bane’s own drug Venom is a particularly fast acting and potent anabolic steroid.
2. Then there are the glucocorticoids (a type of corticosteroid). These are potent anti-inflammatory and immune suppressing drugs. They are used for asthma attacks, poison ivy, autoimmune diseases and other conditions where it is important to calm down inflammation or the immune system. This is the class of steroid that is used in treating spinal cord injuries; it reduces the swelling and improves the recovery.

Decadron was not developed for or “specifically made” for spinal cord injury. It has many medical uses and was around a long time before anyone thought to use it for spinal trauma.

Additionally, it is not a controlled substance and is easy to obtain with a prescription. We have a large supply in a drawer in our office. I suspect the writer is confusing it with an anabolic steroid — which is a controlled substance.

Clandestine #2 by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer.
Albert Clandestine uses his powers to attack the mind-controlling Inhuman Tral in this scene from Clandestine #2 (current series). The attack destroys Tral, but is also decimating for Albert, who had used his powers solely for healing before this.

As far as I can tell this is the first, and apparently last, appearance of Tral. So it goes.

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Flash #240 “Fast Money, part three: Broken News”
Tom Peyer, writer
Freddie Williams II, penciler

In the recent Flash #240, Flash rushes across town to battle the villainous gorilla Grodd (and for those of you not up on your Flash lore, Grodd is an super-intelligent gorilla with mind control powers).

Flash (monologue): Please Please Please. Let me see Grodd first — because if his force of mind kicked in — well, I’m faster than light but a helluva lot slower than thought. If he saw me first, I’m dead.

Just like the Mirror Master, Flash seems very confused by the difference between the speed of thought and the speed of light.

The speed of light is roughly 670 million miles per hour. Thought is a process involving neurons in the brain, and is thus subject to the speed at which impulses can travel along nerves. Depending on which nerves are involved, transmission speed can vary; regardless, nerve conduction tops out at around 250 miles per hour — six orders of magnitude slower than the speed of light (plus Flash is faster than the speed of light).

Even if you want to get metaphysical and claim that the “speed of thought” refers to something abstract which does not obey the rules of physics, remember that Flash is concerned that Grodd may see him first. Eyesight relies on light reaching the eyes and is thus dependent on the speed of light. Since Flash is moving faster than the speed of light, he should reach Grodd well before he can be seen.

Topic suggested by Andy D.

This week’s Booster Gold #8 features the return of the one of the classic psychic nosebleeders: Max Lord. By rescuing Ted Kord, Booster has shifted the time stream so that Max Lord no longer died and the OMACs were never defeated. It’s not a pretty picture.

Mind control and nosebleeds seem to be Max’s defining characteristics now — not that he was ever that complex a character to begin with. Regardless, in celebration of his return to his psychic power abusing ways, here are some Max Lord haiku:

manipulator
likes to play with other minds
needs a red hanky

ran the Justice League
more or less a hero…once
always wears black now

drove Superman mad
psychic skills have a down side
nose goes drip drip drip

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Quite likely the final episode of House in this strike-shortened season. Overall, it was a good episode even if it was another exploring the House-versus-religion theme. While the medical mystery was just moderately interesting (at least initially), the solution was clever, and the medicine mostly correct. Good soap opera too.

Roz is a Hasidic Jew, recently converted, and even more recently married. At her wedding ceremony, she loses control of her bladder, and a large stain of bloody urine appears. She collapses and falls, breaking her leg. She is admitted to House’s team for the evaluation of her condition. Dr. Thirteen reports that Roz’s urine culture was negative (meaning no urinary tract infection) and there is no history of trauma or sexually transmitted diseases. A CT scan was negative for cancer and kidney stones. She reports that Roz’s sodium was low, however, and suggests that Roz may have endometriosis of the bladder. Taub counters that the low sodium may be related to Roz fasting before the wedding, while House posits that Roz may have been exposed to a toxin, carboxylic acid in particular. House agrees to let Thirteen start Roz on treatment for the possible endometriosis (with AIs, i.e. Aromatase Inhibitors) and get a cystoscopy . Meanwhile, he sends Taub and Foreman to search Roz’s apartment where they find no carboxylic acid, but discover that prior to her conversion, she had been a heavy metal record producer. She admits to a history of heroin use, but not for some time. A hair sample is obtained, but the tests are negative. Additionally, the treatment for endometriosis has been unsuccessful and the cystoscopy clean.

Taub suggests Roz may have cryoglubulinemia (abnormal proteins in the blood that thicken with cold temperatures), but House feels she has porphyria (problems in the synthesis of hemoglobin), and her sudden conversion to Judaism suggests the mental problems commonly seen in certain types of porphyria. Roz’s husband considers this an insult, and requests a new doctor. Cuddy agrees with the cryoglobulinemia diagnosis and wants to start her on Indomethacin (a potent non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, the same class as Motrin). Meanwhile, Roz has become hypoxic with her oxygen saturation dropping to 85%. This argues against both cryoglobulinemia and porphyria. She is kept on oxygen and her saturation improves. Foreman mentions Wegener’s Granulomatosis, but House now believes it to be Lupus with a hidden heart problem. He orders a stress test. Roz makes it through the test well and has no evidence of heart problems. After the test, she develops sudden leg pain and the team believes that she might have a blood clot. An MRI is obtained, which shows no clot, and an fMRI (functional MRI, which works by detecting increases in blood flow within the brain, and these are believed to represent area of brain activity) is ordered as well, ostensibly to look for subtle signs of a stroke. The fMRI shows activity in her limbic system (one of the emotion centers of the brain) when Foreman is placing an IV (a painful situation) which House believes shows that Roz has masochistic tendencies, but Thirteen discovers she was praying during the IV placement, so that might explain the limbic activity.

As Roz stands up after the test, her blood pressure and heart rate come crashing down. When she sits or lies down, she is fine — she only has a problem when standing (orthostatic hypotension — low blood pressure when standing). She is started on fludrocortisone and ephedrine (two drugs that can be used to treat extreme cases of orthostasis). The differential now includes pheochromocytoma (a tumor that releases high levels of adrenalin and similar compounds), systemic sclerosis (better known as scleroderma, an autoimmune disease), and a heart arrhythmia. An EP study (”electrophysiology study”, which looks for abnormal rhythms in the heart) is ordered, but the results are normal. The suspicion now turns to an autonomic nerve disorder such as Riley Day Syndrome. A thermoregulatory sweat test is ordered, but instead of becoming overheated, Roz becomes hypothermic (an abnormally low temperature) and has a seizure.

Infection is now considered as a possible diagnosis, as is Addison’s Disease (a condition where the adrenal glands do not make enough steroid hormones). Roz is started on Cortisol to test for Addison’s and she starts to feel better (cortisol is a steroid hormone). As Thirteen examine her though, she notices a swollen abdomen and Roz reports that she is starting to feel dizzy. Thirteen quickly realizes that Roz has internal bleeding. Chase (apparently the only surgeon in the hospital this season) wants to perform an exploratory surgery to locate the source of bleeding, but Roz decides to delay the surgery until after she has had a chance to celebrate Shabbat with her new husband, even though it might cost her her life. The differential diagnosis now includes DIC (disseminated intravascular coagulation), hydatid cyst (a tapeworm cyst), volvulus of the small intestine (a twisting of an intestinal loop), polycythemia vera (too many red blood cells in the blood), thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) and even Parkinson’s Disease. During the brainstorming session with the team, House has a sudden revelation and realizes that Roz has a nephroptosis, also known as a floating kidney. Instead of being firmly secured to the underlying tissue, her right kidney is hanging loosely, just supported by a few blood vessels. This explains the blood in the urine, the internal bleeding, and the orthostatic hypotension. The strain this is putting on the right adrenal gland (located on top of the kidney) likely explains most of her other symptoms. The floating kidney was not noticed on the scans because they were all performed with her laying down and it only shows up when she is standing up. Surgery should be able to fix her problem and stop the bleeding.

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I really don’t have too many medical complaints this episode, other than my usual litany of untrained people doing potentially dangerous tests and results comic back to quickly. Now, you’ll notice I didn’t say I had no complaints, just not as many as usual:

Roz didn’t just have a slight bit of blood in her urine, that was gross hematuria. In my mind, that should have necessitated a full bladder and kidney work-up from the very beginning that should have caught the nephroptosis.

Was it just me, or did they seem to keep forgetting about her broken leg? It never seemed to be splinted or cast. She did get to do the arm stress test, instead of the treadmill one, but that seemed to be the only acknowledgment of the broken leg.

I’m not clear on what caused her shortness of breath (that improved overnight) or her sudden leg pain (other than, you know, that fracture thing). Maybe blood loss and anemia led to her shortness of breath, but that much anemia should have been easily noticed on her labs.

They sure like to jump to the big guns early, don’t they? Aromatase Inhibitors. Fludrocortisone. Ephedrine. I’m not saying these drugs don’t have their places, just not first thing.

From what I read, there is some debate in the medical community over how significant a “floating kidney” actually is. All of Roz’s autonomic symptoms (hypotension, low sodium, low temperature, etc) are quite a stretch, especially when you remember that she was lying down when many of them happened.

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The medical mystery was moderately interesting, frankly not something that would I would expect to pique House’s curiositu — I give it a weak B. The medicine was better than it has been recently, though still not without mistakes or unexplained symptoms — another B. I thought the solution was clever and elegant, though the severity of her autonomic symptoms were straining credibility. Still, I give the solution an A-. The soap opera was good and almost — almost – had me liking Amber. It was nice to see Cuddy back to her normal acerbic self, especially when she was talking to Wilson. I also give this aspect an A-.

All in all, not a bad quasi-Season Finale. Not a grand slam, but at least a solid triple.

The previous House review
A list of all prior House reviews

Challenge scores can be found at the post immediately beneath this one (or click here).
I’ve also posted information about next season’s Challenge, for all who are interested…

Tags: television medicine house hematuria endometriosis cryoglobulinemia porphyria autonomic dysfunction nephroptosis

A relative weak episode of House, medically. Foreman returned, and it was good, but the mind-reading/mimicking patient blew my suspension of disbelief.
All in all, while Mirror Mirror was one of the best Star Trek episodes, the same cannot be said of House (it’s not an awful episode , just mediocre). Anyway, spoilers below!!

A man walking down the street is mugged and starts coughing and wheezing during the attack. As he falls to his knees in respiratory distress, one of the muggers feels bad enough to call for an ambulance (but not bad enough to return his wallet). The patient, who identifies himself as Martin Harris, is admitted to House’s team for evaluation of his respiratory collapse.

The initial differential diagnosis includes asthma (not supported by the x-ray), food allergy (no skin findings), and pulmonary embolism (a blood clot in the lungs — but radiology studies were normal). Foreman suggests laryngospasm (a sudden tightening of the vocal cords) as a diagnosis. Though he is not happy about Foreman being present, he recognizes that his suggestion has merit and orders a methacholine challenge. The test is negative, though now the patient complains of numbness in his extremities and abdominal pain. The differential diagnosis now consists of dissecting aortic aneurysm, a spinal cord lesion, or multiple marantic emboli (clots from growths on the heart valves). None of them seem to fit the symptoms well, but the team is interrupted mid-discussion with the news that the patient has had a syncopal episode and collapsed.

As they are evaluating Martin, Foreman begins to suspect Munchausen’s Syndrome because the patient “borrowed” the name of one of the paramedics and his new symptoms match the exact symptoms of his neighbors. House, instead, suspects Giovanni’s Giovannini’s Mirror Syndrome, where a patient who has lost his memory mimics those he sees around him. House brings Martin into the operating room where Wilson is performing a procedure. Sure enough, Martin begins to mimic Wilson, confirming the Mirror Syndrome diagnosis.

A short time later, House and the team notice that Martin has a lace-like rash over his arms and legs (livedo reticularis), which House decides is due to cold agglutinins (antibodies that clot in the cold, blocking capillaries and blood flow) caused by infection. Blood cultures are ordered as well as an ultrasound. House sends Dr. 13 and Big Love to search for the patient’s car to find out who he really is. A solid liver lesion turns up on the ultrasound — the thought is either an abscess or a vascular hemangioma (a clump of dilated capillaries). Frat Guy performs a needle aspiration and gets a dark substance he believes is pus. He suggests that Martin has a tropical fungal infection and the patient is started on Amphotericin. The livedo reticularis returns and Martin is placed in a heated whirlpool. The Amphotericin does not help and what was felt to be pus ends up just being coagulated blood. The differential remains infection, but most likely viral or some rare bacteria. Because the patient has no memory, they can’t get a good history, but House suggests they run antibody tests on Martin’s blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) because this will give them some idea what diseases he’s been exposed to in the past and a general idea of where he is from and where he’s been. His antibodies are high for histoplasmosis (common in the Ohio River Valley) and weak for coccidiomycosis (found in the San Joaquin Valley) and Chagas Disease (common in Mexico and Central and South America).

The livedo reticularis has returned despite aggressive hot water baths. House starts Martin on lipopolysaccharide (a toxin found on the cell wall of certain infectious bacteria) to induce a fever to raise his temperature and keep his blood flowing. While in the tub, Martin goes into cardiac arrest. Kumar defibrillates Martin before he is completely dry. This returns Martin to a normal heart rhythm, but also knocks Kumar out.

House orders a re-check of the blood cultures and Foreman recommends a heart biopsy. As Dr. 13 completes the heart biopsy, Kumar drops a hint to House that Martin regained some of his old memories while in the hot tub. Taking the items found in the patient’s car by Big Love and Dr. 13, House pretends to be Robert Elliot (the patient’s real name) in an attempt to jog the patient’s memory. With the help of vaporub, he succeeds and discovers that Robert/Martin is a traveling farm equipment salesman and has developed an Eperythrozoon infection from pig feces (a type of bacteria found in certain animals, including pigs and ruminants. It has been known to infection humans on occasion, though I can find no listing of serious infections).

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There was too much bad reasoning in this episode for the medicine to be very good. Everything magically clicked into place when it shouldn’t have. Sure, methacholine can be used to detect laryngospasm, but it is better for inducing asthma – also on the differential diagnosis list. Sure, infection can cause cold agglutination, but so can many, many other things including vasculitis, autoimmune diseases (Lupus!), cancer, and tuberculosis, just to name a few.

I don’t have much to say about Giovannini’s Mirror Syndrome, because I can’t find any information about it. Whether it exists or not (and I suspect it does in some manner), the way it was presented was too unbelievable. A patient would take on characteristics of those around him, but not be magically able to see deep into their psyche; they wouldn’t become omniscient. And if patients with Mirror Syndrome do mimic the strongest personality about them, why would he copy Wilson in the ER and not House, who is clearly the dominant personality. Why did he pick one name and stay with it? Wouldn’t he pick a new name every time he encountered someone dominant? Shouldn’t he be Gregory House?

The temperature of cold agglutination does not increase as the patient becomes sicker, certainly not to over 100 degrees. Anyway, giving someone a bacterial endotoxin to cause a fever is not a good idea because it causes other serious effects besides just fever.

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Funniest Line (intentional):

House (to Cuddy): I know when my Vicodin isn’t Vicodin. Do you know when your birth control pills aren’t birth control pills?

Funniest Line (unintentional):

House: He’s got Mirror Syndrome.
Foreman: Giovannini’s?
House: Do you know another Mirror Syndrome?

(um, how about Maternal Mirror Syndrome from last season?)

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The medical mystery was interesting, though the symptoms were stretching incredulity — I give it a B. The medical aspect forgot the whole idea of differential diagnosis, and chose certain causes without reason. It wasn’t wrong, per se, as incompletely thought out. The Giovanni’s Mirror Syndrome seemed a little too convenient, too. It earns a C. The solution was yet another strange zoonotic disease, but not one really considered as dangerous as the show suggested; I give it a B-. The soap opera with Foreman and House and Cuddy was good (as was Chase running a betting pool), but Martin reading everyone’s mind was too much of a stretch: B.

The previous House review
A list of all prior House reviews

Challenge scores are in the post immediately beneath this one (or click here)

Tags: television medicine house mirror syndrome livedo reticularis cold agglutinins eperythrozoon

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).

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
In 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
Brains! Brains!
Hypertrichosis
Xenografting
De-Aging

Tags: comics medicine brain identity crisis micromax fantastic voyage micronauts atom batman baob haney

Episode Title: In Which Addison Finds the Magic

A show primarily about marriages this week. Pete and his dead wife. Violet and her ex-husband. Naomi and Sam doing more of their infighting. And Addison whining. Plus more bad ethics. I expect this from Dr. House, it’s his shtick, but not from these doctors who are supposedly better and brighter.

Dr. Cooper Freedman
Cooper is brought to see a young girl who is blue. Not depressed, as he thought initially, but the patient actually has blue skin. He asks about dyes, inks, or any topical compounds that could have dyed her skin, but there have been no exposures. There was no other chemical exposure, by history. He ultimately decides that she has methemoglobinemia (an abundance of chemically-damaged hemoglobin in the blood) and treats her, correctly, with intravenous methylene blue. He in unsure what exposure lead to her developing the condition, but she responds to the medication. Over the next day or two, her skin turns blue again, as does the skin of her three younger sisters. One of the girls has a seizure as well. Cooper and the mother search the house, but can find no source of toxicity. He eventually talks the girls into letting him spend the day playing with them and they lead him to their “castle” – a neighbor’s old shed filled with leaking bags of the fertilizer ammonium nitrate. Nitrates are a known cause of methemoglobinemia and the girls are inhaling enough of the fumes to make themselves dizzy and their skin turn blue.
Methemoglobinemia is rare. There is an inherited form of the disease, but the girls have an acquired methemoglobinemia. It is treated with oxygen and 5 minutes of intravenous Methylene Blue followed by a saline flush (a big bag of blue IV fluid shouldn’t just be left hanging like it was in the episode).
Other possible causes of methemoglobinemia include certain older antibiotics, local anesthetics, nitrates, and metoclopramide (Reglan). There are a few unusual household chemicals that may cause it. Well water with a high nitrate content has been known to cause methemoglobinemia.
Inhalation of ammonium nitrate generally causes a nasty headache, cough, and sore throat — symptoms that were missing but would have helped narrow down the type and route of exposure.
I find it hard to believe that a parent who chose to stay at home to raise her kids is not going to notice her four kids regularly disappearing from the yard like that?

Dr. Addison Montgomery and Dr. Pete Finch
Addison has a newlywed couple as her patients who complain that they cannot have sex. Any attempt causes severe pain to the wife. Addison attempts an exam, but even that is too painful for the patient to endure. She diagnosis her with vaginismus. She tries muscle relaxants first, but they do not work. Next she tries trigger point injections combines with guided imagery. That works miraculously.
Vaginismus is a real condition, and difficult to treat. It is almost always psychological in nature.
The best treatment for vaginismus is a combination on counseling, special exercises, time, and understanding. It rarely resolves overnight.
I’ve never heard of muscle relaxants being used as a treatment. I can imagine that benzodiazepines like Valium might work, but more for their psychological effects than the physical ones.
If her problem is indeed caused by overly-sensitive nerves, then trigger point injection might work. Her issues seemed much more psychological to me, though, so I suspect Pete’s therapy did the most good.
For a “world renowned” surgeon, Addison has some lousy bedside manner.

Dr. Violet Turner and Dr. Sam Bennett
Violet has a patient named Doug who is unhappy in his marriage and wants a divorce, but is scared to tell his wife. After three years of therapy, she has finally convinced him to stand up to his wife and tell her what he wants. When he does, his wife’s nose starts to bleed uncontrollably and he brings her to the clinic for evaluation and treatment. Sam is able to control the nosebleed, but the patient’s labs show that she has a moderate anemia (low blood count).
A day or so later, the wife confronts Violet and she once again begins bleeding. Not just a nosebleed this time, but hemoptysis (coughing blood). She is admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with Wegener’s Granulomatosis, a chronic disease caused by inflammation of the blood vessels. After a confrontation with the hospital chief of staff, Sam discovers that the patient has known she has Wegener’s for at least 6 months and never bothered to tell the husband. He and Violet confront both the husband and his wife with the truth, but in the end Doug chooses to stay in his unhappy marriage.
There are good treatments for Wegener’s now, but it can still be a fatal disease. Relapses occur in about 50% of patients, and about 80% suffer some variety of long-term complication (deafness or kidney disease, most commonly). Survival rates vary, depending on the study, but around 75-80% can expect to live at least another 5-10 years with treatment.
No chief of staff is going to overrule an attending physician like that. It’s bad form and it’s not her job. Plus, it will drive doctors from the hospital. Hospitals like doctors, they make them money.
The confrontation in the end may have been within the letter of privacy laws, but clearly against the intent. You don’t threaten patients into sharing information with each other. The wife should have refused to tell them anything and reminded Violet that she had been fired as her husband’s therapist, so her husband would not leave the room with her. (OK, ideally, she should have told her husband the truth in the first place, but how likely was that to happen?).

Tags: television medicine private practice methemoglobinemia nitrates vaginismus wegener’s

Armageddon 2001 was the big DC “event comic” of 1991. There were two bookend comics, Armageddon 2001 #1 and #2, at the beginning and end of the summer. In between, all the annuals (back with every series had an annual) tied into the storyline: in the not too distant future of 2001 (remember, this was written in 1991), the villainous Monarch has taken over the entire world and slaughtered all the super-heroes. The kicker is that he used to be a super-hero himself before becoming evil, but no one knows which hero. One of the citizens of the dystopic future uses experimental equipment to gain time-based superpowers. As “Waverider,” he can travel through time. He can also look into a person’s future just by touching them. He resolves to use his powers to travel back to 1991, the year when Monarch first appeared, and discover Monarch’s identity by looking into the future of each hero.

In Hawk & Dove Annual #2, Waverider appears just as Hawk and Dove have broken up a mugging. First he touches Hawk. He sees a future where Hank has become a member of Monarch’s Peacemakers, his powerful Brownshirt-like police force. Hank is unhappy because he realizes that the Peacemakers are no better than thugs and Monarch just a tin-plated despot. His attitude has already gotten him in trouble once when his superiors decided that Hank needs a little “re-education.” Hank takes this as an opportunity to turn into Hawk, for the first time in years, and face Monarch mano a mano. He explains to Monarch that he hasn’t been in hiding, but slowly and carefully building up his powers to become more powerful. Hawk transforms into a more powerful version of Hawk (who looks ridiculous, like a thick-waisted chicken-headed monster) and attacks Monarch. Despite all his added power, Hawk is still losing the fight when Dove rescues him by bringing him over to another dimension where she’s been hiding and building a resistance against Monarch.

Next, Waverider touches Dove — but unlike other heroes, her link to Order allows her to sense him and she realizes what he is doing. She takes control of Waverider’s powers and shows him three futures, which may or may not be linked. First, there is a council of war on a distant planet. Encouraged by an aged Dove, they agree to attack Monarch before he becomes an intergalactic problem. Second, on another planet (which looks to be Gemworld), Dove mourns a dead Hawk. She is also raising her child, who has some sort of magical powers. For the third future, Dove brings Waverider back to his own world of Armageddon 2001. In this future, Hank is married to Ren and Dawn to Captain Arsala. Hank and Dawn have realized that it is time to confront Monarch one last time. They realize that they are likely to die in the battle, and ask Ren and Arsala to raise their child (Hank and Dawn’s — or is it Hawk and Dove’s) in secret.

Finally, Waverider touches both Hawk and Dove together. In this vision of the future, a young, female, first-nameless Dr. Arsala is the top neurosurgeon of the time, good enough to catch the eye of Monarch. She is also a friend of Barter’s, and he gives her two special gifts that he says comes from her “real parents” who died fighting Monarch. He gives her a vial of Chaos (the essence of Kestrel he took from Ren back in Hawk & Dove #17) and a gem of Order (the blue gem Hawk fought in Hawk & Dove #25) and tells her to remember “unity.” Puzzled, Dr. Arsala talks to her father, the former Captain Arsala, who tells her that Barter was right — Hawk and Dove were her parents. He explains a little about her real parents to her, and how they gained powers by speaking a certain word. She remembers what Barter told her and speaks the word “unity” — and she is instantly transformed into Unity, who seems to have the powers of both Hawk and Dove. Her costume reflects both of her parent’s costumes, in color at least (purple instead of red or blue), though the actual design leaves much to be desired. She confronts Monarch and decides that she will use her super-powers combined with her neurosurgical skills to physically and literally change his mind.

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This comic, published shortly after Hawk & Dove #28 (the official “last issue”) is a fitting epilogue to the series. It follows the themes presented in the series, particularly after Hawk and Dove’s return from Druspa Tau, to their logical conclusion. The annual ties nicely into the continuity of the regular series with such things as Barter, the essence of Kestrel, and the Order gem. It also manages to fit into the Armageddon 2001 storyline in a logical fashion, better than any of the other annuals, and as far as I can tell it was the only annual that actually dealt with Monarch.

Sadly, the art was sub-par for most of the issue. The connecting sequences were by Curt Swan, and while better than his work on issue #28, I still don’t care for his take on Hawk and Dove. The Dove sequences were drawn well, but the Hawk and Hawk-and-Dove sequences could have used better pencils. The character designs, particularly of the supposed-to-be-impressive über-Hawk and Unity, were more silly than awe-inspiring.

All Previous Hawk and Dove Reviews

Tags: comics hawk dove armageddon 2001 monarch waverider unity barter

Having heroes turn into villains has only rarely been handled well. The payoffs — when it’ s done right — are memorable, but the ploy seems to fail (and usually fail spectacularly) far more often than it works. The most common explanations (amnesia, mind control, shape-shifter impersonation, mirror universe, vampire bite, evil clone) have never worked for me, it always seems superficial and not real.

Looking at my list, a few patterns emerge. A good hero/villain doesn’t necessarily need a good motivation (did Terra really have one besides money and disliking do-gooders?), but a bad motivation (trying to win an ex-husband back, for example) will kill any momentum. The revelation should come as a surprise, but there should be hints that all is not right if you go back and read the previous issues. Every hero is somebody’s favorite, so a hero-turned-villain, even handled well, is going to piss somebody off. Finally and most importantly, any hero/villain conversion as part of an event comic or mini-series is pretty much guaranteed to be bad.

(I’m not counting any villains turned heroes turned back to villains because that reversion to type seems inevitable. Magneto’s gone through the villain/hero/villain cycle at least 6 or 7 times alone. I’m also not counting Elseworlds or possible futures.)

Here’s my quick list of hero turned villains that have worked, or not worked for me (plus a few I’m not quite sure about). There may be some spoilers:

GOOD:
1. Terra from The New Teen Titans.
2. Dark Phoenix. I’m not counting the Black Queen aspect, as that falls under the mind control explanation I don’t care for, but Jean’s subsequent metamorphosis into Dark Phoenix was well done.
3. Runaways. (I don’t want to name names, since this is still a recent series.)

BAD:
1. Madeline Pryor
2. Monarch/Extant (Hawk)
3. Monarch (Captain Atom)
4. Alfred Pennyworth
5. Jean Loring
6. Maxwell Lord
7. Iron Man
8. Parallax
9. Triumph
10. Rusty, Skids

UNDECIDED:
1. Ozymandias in Watchmen. This never completely worked for me, mostly because I never had a good sense for who Ozymandias was, so why should the reveal be a surprise?
2. Atom Smasher.
3. Hulk. He’s coming back to take names and kick butt. But then, he’s been played as a villain many times before.

Tags: comics hero villain

In 1990, the adult son of one of the Warner Brothers executives who worked with DC Comics was senselessly murdered. In response, DC published Batman: Seduction of the Gun, a comic with a strong anti-gun tone, and with the added bonus of the proceeds going to a charitable educational foundation.

In Gotham City, a drug-for-guns deal is going down. The police and Batman bust up the deal, but the main criminals — members of the NZN gang — escape. To capture the gang, Batman masquerades as a gun dealer while Robin enrolls in an inner-city high to protect the dealer’s daughter from gang reprisal. The Batman aspect of the story is a fairly typical Batman adventure with subterfuge, fights, and narrow escapes from death. The Robin part I found a little over the top, with Robin attending a school where over 95% of the students are armed, and gun fights in the hallways between classes are daily experiences. Admittedly, I didn’t attend an inner city high school, but this strikes me as more than a little unbelievable. Both stories converge in the end, but things don’t work out as well as Batman — and Robin — had hoped.

Overall, it’s a well done story and a PSA comic that actually appears to be in continuity. For the most part, it doesn’t hit the reader over the head with its message, though there is a page or two of talking heads looking directly at the reader and lecturing. We also learn way too much about the wounds that killed Thomas and Martha Wayne (“The bullet…struck the left lung and then the heart through the right ventricle, ruptured the superior vena cava and the aorta. The bullets struck back left ribs and flattened out, breaking the ribs…I remember a lot of blood. The hearts continued pumping for a bit.”). The story by John Ostrander contains the intense action-filled plot with a touch of pathos he seems to favor (and it works for him, his scripts hit a lot more than they miss). The Vince Giarrano art is a satisfying cross between Graham Nolan and Neal Adams. There are places where the art is particularly explicit and disturbing — bullet wounds, for instance — but I suspect that was the intended effect.

Online, I’ve seen this comic described as “pro-gun-control”, but I don’t think that’s really the case. I can certainly see where people might get that impression, particularly as the proceeds from the book went to an educational gun-control foundation, but in the last panels of the comic, Bruce Wayne tells Tim Drake that gun control is not the best option (“No law passed can change the human heart or open up a mind that is closed. We must give up the guns in our hearts and minds first.”). The story certainly takes a strong stand against the proliferation of handguns, but gun control is not specifically mentioned. To me, the comic seems more anti-guns-in-school, anti-gang, and anti-Saturday-Night-special than explicitly anti-gun or pro-gun-control, though I may be splitting hairs.

Tags: comics psa batman john ostrander

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

So when your mind is taken over by a hostile Martian, there’s the ususal psychic nosebleed. In addition, there’s oral bleeding as well as the rare eye bleeding. Ouch.

Scene from Martian Manhunter #2, script by A.J. Lieberman, pencils by Al Barrionuevo

The “control of their motor skills” the caption mentions is not what’s causing the bleeding, it’s just a set up for the next few panels when the mind-controlled guards gun down the other guards.

All previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts

Tags: comics medicine nosebleed lieberman barrionuevo martian manhunter

Georgetown University, the home of Hank Hall (Hawk) and Dawn Granger (Dove), is hosting their annual Crime and Punishment Symposium. This particular year, the guests include the Vice President of the United States, Judge Irwin Hall (Hank’s father), and political gadfly columnist Jack Ryder. As part of the symposium, the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit will be displaying some advanced weapons prototypes.

Across campus, Farley Fleeter, once leader of the Madmen gang, has taken a job as a custodian at the University so he can steal drugs. While he is snooping around a biochemistry lab, there is an accident and he is exposed to an experimental virus. He thinks little of it at the time and goes on with his job and returns to his apartment. However, it turns out that the virus infects anyone he touches and links their mind with his. These people think the same thoughts he does and carry out the same actions. So when Fleeter decides to dress as the Madman and steal the experimental weapons, every person he has touched also dresses up as the Madman and tries to steal the weapons. Instead of a single Madman, there are now over a hundred Madmen (and women) converging on the weapons display.

When the Madmen swarm the gymnasium where the weapons are being displayed, Hawk and Dove leap into the fray. The Secret Service also springs into action. It seems that when the Vice President shook Fleeter’s hand earlier in the day, he caught the virus. This means that the Vice President is one of the Madmen, but the Secret Service doesn’t know which one, so they decide they have to protect every Madman. This, understandably, puts them at odds with Hawk and Dove.

Of course, Hawk and Dove aren’t the only costumed vigilantes present. Wherever Jack Ryder goes, the Creeper can’t be far behind — and before too long he pops in, adding his own brand of insanity to the mix. Whether he’s helping or hindering is up for debate.

By now Fleeter has figured out what is going on and realizes that he can direct the other Madmen. When he tries to infect the Creeper, his plan starts to fall apart. The Creeper’s personality is to strong — and too maniacal — to be overwhelmed and starts to take control of the other Madmen. Dove takes advantage of the confusion to identify Fleeter as the lead Madman and Hawk punches him out. This frees the rest of the Madmen from his control. The Vice President is rescued and everything returns to normal.

NOTES:

1. The Vice President is never officially named as Dan Quayle, but it’s clear that’s who it is supposed to be (and the comic was published in 1990 when he was in office). There are some admittedly cheap laughs at the VP’s expense (de rigueur for comedy of this era), but the Kesels manage to redeem themselves by taking it one stop farther and having him become one of the Madmen — but nobody knows which one.

2. This storyline is a cornucopia of Steve Ditko goodness. Hawk and Dove as well as the Creeper were all Ditko creations. In addition, the Madmen gang was also created by Ditko (they debuted in Charlton’s Blue Beetle #3).

3. Hawk & Dove #18 is one of my all time favorite Hawk & Dove covers. I love the way everything has been sprayprainted with a neon green “C” by the Creeper, including a pissed-looking cat and his captive mouse.

4. Punch and Jewlee (and their unnamed offspring) appear in this story as well. They are speaking at the Symposium about how they turned their life of crime around, but then they decide to steal a prototype force field vest. Unfortunately, Punch quickly learns the downside of experimental prototypes as the vest malfunctions and causes some painful burns in some delicate places.

Jewlee: Look, Love Puppet — the munchkin thinks it’s funny! I think you’re bonding!

All Previous Hawk and Dove Reviews

Tags: comics hawk dove creeper steve ditko

What’s your UDQ (Über-Doctor Quotient)? Do you have what it takes to be an über-doctor, the classic comic book doctor who can do everything? Take this simple quiz and find out: Several common family situations are described below. How would you, the nascent über-doctor, respond?

1. Your spouse complains that you spend too much time in the lab, and not enough time with them.
A. Buy your spouse flowers and take them out for a night on the town.
B. I have a spouse?
C. Remind them in no uncertain terms that science is your life.
D. Clone yourself, so that you can keep your spouse happy, but still keep up wour work in the lab.

2. Your daughter thinks that Britney Spears is the greatest musician ever, and plays her music loud enough to rattle the windows.
A. Confiscate her stereo.
B. Invent a special radio that substitutes a Patsy Cline song whenever your daughter tries to play a Britney Spears song.
C. Take her to the symphony, repeatedly, until she learns what real music is.
D. Build a time machine, go back in time, and prevent Britney’s parents from ever meeting.

3. Another driver cuts you off in traffic.
A. Ignore him. He is insignificant compared to your genius,
B. Three words: Alien death ray.
C. Tailgate him, honk, and give him the finger.
D. Using spare components found in the glove compartment, build a remote control device that will let you take control of his car. Have him pass a nearby squad car doing 80, in the wrong lane, backwards. That’ll teach him.

4. Your young child’s pet goldfish has unexpectedly died.
A. Flush!
B. Breed a species of long-lived goldfish that will outlive your child, and quite possibly, the human race.
C. Calmly explain the concept of death to them and buy them another goldfish.
D. Secretly replace the dead goldfish with a robot goldfish you built. Not only will this robo-fish never die, but it can teach them the ABCs and math up through trigonometry.

5. You find yourself trapped in a broken elevator with the very pregnant Mrs. Belding, who (of course) goes into labor.
A. Use the elevator’s phone to call 911.
B. Luckily, the credit-card sized first aid kit you keep in your wallet is equipped for any emergency, from childbirth through major surgery.
C. Try to fix the elevator.
D. Deliver the child, circumcise him, baptise him, toilet train him, and have him reading at a thrird third-grade level by the time the elevator is repaired twenty-minutes later.

Part 2 of the UDQ Quiz (including questions #6-10 and scoring) are coming soon, so keep your answers handy.

Tags: comics medicine über-doctor quiz

The first part of a two-episode storyline in House. This one features a strangely giddy cop, and an infected Foreman (so far no sex, but let’s wait and see). There are plenty of spoilers below, so beware!

Joe Luria, a police officer, chases a suspect through an abandoned warehouse and into an alley. Joe has a dry cough, but doesn’t seem particularly short of breath. After he finds the suspect hiding in a trash bin, he starts laughing uncontrollably. He makes bizarre jokes and even continues laughing after he has been shot in the head.

At the hospital, it is noted that Joe has patchy infiltrates on his chest x-ray. A drug screen is negative, and it is decided that the bullet fragments are in the wrong part of his brain to cause his symptoms (and he had the symptoms before he was shot). Chase suspects Joe may have carbon monoxide poisoning and a blood gas test does show elevated levels of carbon monoxide.

Meanwhile, as Joe is being placed in a hyperbaric chamber to treat his carbon monoxide poisoning, Foreman is searching Joe’s apartment, which is a pig sty. He collects several samples and discovers that Joe is growing marijuana in a shed on the patio. Back at the hospital, Joe has developed involuntary muscle contractions of the hand.

After a visit to the police station, House determines that Joe is suffering from Legionnaire’s disease (from a dirty air conditioning unit), and this explains his cough and chest x-ray findings. Whether or not it is supposed to explain his carbon monoxide poisoning is never revealed, as that subject is dropped and never mentioned again.

The team discovers that Joe has “Anton’s Syndrome” — a type of blindness where the eyes are working, but the brain is processing the information wrong. It is caused by damage to the occipital lobe of the brain, and could be related to gunshot trauma, though House suspects a stroke. He wants an MRI, but Foreman reminds him that the bullet fragments are magnetic and are not safe in an MRI. House places Joe on the blood thinner Heparin for treatment of the suspected stroke. An angiogram (where dye is injected into the arteries of brain and then x-rayed) is obtained and it does suggests some clotting around the Circle of Willis (a group of arteries which supply blood to the brain).

Down in the morgue, House shoots a corpse at close range with a bullet similar to the one in Joe. When they MRI the corpse, sure enough, the metallic fragments are drawn out of the head and wreck the MRI machine. Luckily the hospital still has their portable MRI machine.

Events start happening at a rapid pace now. An echocardiogram of Joe’s heart is obtained to look for sources of stroke, but is normal. During the test, Joe develops a sudden tachycardia (a rapid heart rate) and is discovered to have bleeding in the brain. A hole is drilled into his skull (trepanation) to relieve the pressure. Meanwhile, Foreman has become giddy and starts laughing uncontrollably. Both he and Joe are placed in isolation. An MRI of Foreman’s brain shows a lesion in the cingulate cortex (an area in the center of the brain). The differential diagnosis now includes West Nile Virus (a disease spread by mosquito bite), Eastern Equine Encephalitis (another viral disease carried by mosquits), and toxins. The MRI also shows some inflammation around the ventricles which Foreman interprets to mean that he has a Staph infection (an infection from a bacteria of the Staphylococci family). He wants an Ommaya reservoir to feed the antibiotic linezolid (also known as Zyvox — a potent and somewhat controversial antibiotic) directly to the brain.

The tests for West Nile, Eastern Equine, and various toxins all come back negative. Foreman tests himself and notes that he has a negative Kernig’s sign, but a somewhat positive Brudzinski sign (Both are classic tests for acute meningitis). In the same room, Joe is having increased contractions of the hands and forearms. House wants a biopsy of Foreman’’s brain, but Foreman wants his Ommaya reservoir and antibiotics. He shows House the thermometer to prove that he is running a fever. In the operating room, House pretends to place an Ommaya, but takes a biopsy instead.

Up in isolation, Joe develops full blindness and starts complaining of intractable pain that is not helped by the morphine (House refers to this as hyperalgesia).

Foreman’s biopsy shows only non-specific signs of inflammation (in other words, the biopsy shows something is going on, but gives no clue as to what that something is) and the Staph tests are all negative. The differential diagnosis is wide open: any bacteria, fungus or toxin that might cause brain damage.

Foreman stabs Cameron with a needle while she is drawing his blood so that she is exposed too and will have to go back to the Joe’s apartment for more samples. Thoughts at this time include listeriosis, SSPE (Subacture Sclerosing Panencephalitis, a rare late complication of measles infection. Despite what the Chase implies, it has never been reliably shown to be related to vaccination), Aureobacidium fungus (one of the alleged “toxic molds”), toxocara (a parasitic worm common in cats and dogs), trichinella (another parasitic worm, this one from undercooked pork), ergot (a nasty mold that grows on rye wheat, and Cryptococcus neoformans (an infectious fungus). The last seems the most likely and both Joe and Foreman are started on Amphotericin B and Flucytosine (both very strong anti-fungal drugs).

Foreman seems to improve initially, with a lowered fever and a drop in white count. But then Joe develops ventricular tachycardia then ventricular fibrillation, then asystole. Foreman tries to revive him, but can’t, and Joe is pronounced dead. At the same time, Cameron reports that there is no evidence of Crytpococcus in the samples so they’re back to square one. (End episode. Cue “To Be Continued” sign).

So far, it’s an involving mystery. It appears to be an infection of some sort, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the symptoms ended up being red herrings. House’s reactions are interesting as well; Wilson points out that for once is acting “cautious” and “common.”

The bad?

• I’m surprised Cameron was caught off guard when House wanted to get an echocardiogram of the heart. That’s standard procedure in a stroke situation, as well as obtaining a Doppler of the carotid arteries.
• The idea of checking a sedimentation rate to look for signs of exposure/infection in the rest of the team is ridiculous — it’s an incredibly nonspecific test and will be elevated with any sort of inflammation anywhere in the body.
• Why did Foreman inject the morphine directly into Joe’s carotid artery? He had a perfectly good IV, so why waste the time and risk the complications in a carotid stick.
• Finally, that code at the end was pitiful. Cameron announces that Joe has “multiple system failure” — with little, if any evidence — and the code is called after barely a minute. That’s ridiculous and embarrassing for all involved.

The ethics shown by Foreman and House in this episode were appalling — more than usual. Shooting a corpse in the head was shocking, but served no real purpose (to prove what would have been easier to test by just placing a bullet fragment in a sealed box in the MRI — it worked for Mythbusters.) Performing a brain biopsy without patient consent? There are simply too many risks involved. Stabbing a colleague, even one as Pollyanna as Cameron, was a little too Machiavellian for Foreman. Sure, he may not have been thinking clearly, but that’s still felonious assault.

No grades yet for the episode, not until I get to see the conclusion tomorrow night.

• The previous House review
• A list of all prior House reviews

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Still want more great medical reading? This week’s Grand Rounds are being held right here at Polite Dissent! Of course, I think it’s an especially good Grand Rounds this week. Make sure you take a look.

Tags: television medicine house grand rounds.

Pork Barrel Spending in Metropolis
by Lois Lane, Daily Planet staff

There has been a great deal of attention focused recently on excessive government spending, particularly in the wake of the devastation resulting from Hurricane Katrina and the billions of dollars that will be necessary to rebuild the storm ravaged areas. Leading the charge against congressional pork barrel spending has been a loose coalition of bloggers and other on-line activists. The web site Pork Busters pays testament to their activities.

Many senators and congressmen have addressed the topic at hand. A few have agreed to cut projects, but most have denied that their particular pet projects are in any way pork barrel spending. Given his usual loquaciousness, the congressman from Metropolis has been strangely silent on this topic. Constituents sending letters or e-mails to his office received a brief and poorly spelled form-letter in reply.

After repeated calls from the Daily Planet, Representative Levitz reluctantly agreed to address Congressional pork spending when he spoke to the crowd at a recent pancake breakfast fundraiser for the Committee to Re-elect Pete Ross (CREEPeR).

After the meal was served, Representative Levitz stepped to the podium and spoke:

What many uninformed people see as “Pork” are actually extremely important projects. For example, reinforced vibranium walls for City Hall are a necessity! In a world with criminals like the Joker, the Shocker and Joe Quesada running around, municipal employees deserve adequate protection!

This announcement was met with scattered applause, particularly from the people seated on the stage.

Hurricane Katrina and the Gotham City earthquake have demonstrated how quickly civil government can break down in a disaster. Rather than leave our lives in the hands of a handful of a few fickle costumed vigilantes, I have proposed the creation of the Levitz Armed Mandroid Exigency Situation Team. In the event of a disaster, these Mandroids will be activated and used pre-emptively to provide security and order in this fair city. Again, this is not a Pork project, but rather a means of keeping a responsible individual in control during a possible disaster…namely me.

There have been questions about the Metropolis highway funding as well. A city the size of Metropolis attracts a large number of costumed indiviuduals, both so-called “super-heroes” and “super-villains.” The unlawful activities of these costumed rough-necks routinely have a detrimental effect upon our city’s infrastructure. We desperately need these Federal highway funds to repair the streets of Metropolis. The fact that these street repairs are carried out by a subsidiary of LexCorp is purely coincidental.

Finally, let me remind my constituency that my record speaks for itself. I am against excessive, superfluous and redundant government expenditures. I voted against both of President Luthor’s Battlesuit Bills as well as his needlessly expensive Kryptonian Deportation Depot.

When asked about whether the money spent on the giant robot standing beside him could be better spent elsewhere, Representative Levitz stated:

In this day and age, personal safety is a priority for everyone and this is especially true for elected public officials. This Mark-5 Sentinel is not an example of Pork spending, but instead a vitally important aspect of the War against Terror.

At this point, Representative Levitz quickly left the breakfast, mumbling something about an upcoming “Crisis.”

I managed to catch up on a great deal of reading while on vacations. No medical journals, no comic books — just traditional books — of both the honest pleasure and guilty-pleasure variety.

• My Name is Legion by Roger Zelazny.
  An old science-fiction gem by Zelazny, this book is a collection of three novelette-length stories featuring a hero who has dropped out of the over-computerized future society and become an investigator for hire.
• To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis.
  A fun book that takes on time travel, cats, dogs and Victorian England. Some of the plot point are a little to obvious (did anyone not know where the cat was — or who Mr. C would end up being?), but half the fun is seeing how Willis works these points into the seamless narrative.
• The Big U by Neal Stephenson.
  Stephenson’s first novel, hard to find, but worth reading. Not as dense as some of his recent novels, but the multilayered plot is undeniably his. Snow Crash is still my favorite.
• The DaVinci Code
  Digital Fortress
  Deception Point by Dan Brown
  After reading these books, and previously having read Angels & Demons, Iam convinced that Dan Brown has only written one book — he’s just written it four times: An intellectual is asked for assistance on a dramatic problem and then finds himself (or herself) in the middle of an intricate scheme. The love interest, another brilliant intellectual, also becomes embroiled in the plot. The antagonist controlling the entire conspiracy, originally hidden from view, is revealed to be a close friend or mentor who is not really evil, just misguided.
• The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
  The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore
  Two short novels involving the California town of Pine Cove. Despite some memorable characters (particularly Sheriff Theo Crowe and ex-scream queen Molly Michon) and a few laugh out loud moments, these books pale beside Moore’s better novels (in particular I like Coyote Blue and Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story).
• The Dain Curse
  The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
  Two crime noir classics. The Dain Curse reminded me a great deal of Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone because of the faint supernatural overtones. The politics and political machine featured in The Glass Key dates the book a little, but the intrigue is still quite clever.
• Back Story by Robert Parker
  You can never go wrong with Spencer and Hawk.

The last day of the work week at Polite Dissent means only one thing: Lois Lane Friday!

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #126 “The Brain Busters” (first story in the issue)
Cary Bates, writer
John Rosenberger, penciler

Lois Lane and Clark Kent are headed across town to the WMET television studio to interview the suddenly famous clown, Captain Dingle. On the way there, they run across a street full of people acting very strangely. Some are singing and dancing, others are acting like children. The people aren’t the only ones affected; even the pets are acting weird. Clark conveniently disappears and Superman appears. He freezes the rain into sleet and the cold snaps everyone out of their bizarre behavior.

Lois continues on to the studio where she meets the station manager and Captain Dingle himself. They invite her to watch the tape of a recent Dingle episode and she agrees. At first she loathes the show, but soon she begins to like it. After watching the episode, she finds herself obsessed with the show and can’t wait to see it on Saturday morning.

Riding the subway home she is surprised to hear everyone talking about Captain Dingle and how they’re not going to miss the show this weekend. She is surprised by how popular a children’s television show is. Acting on a hunch, she takes out her camera with a special high speed film. Snapping a picture of the show she discovers…subliminal messages! She deduces that the people she and Clark spotted the previous day were the test subjects for the subliminal messages and that the station manager must be up to something.

Lois takes a cold shower (in her clothes, for some reason) to break the subliminal mind control and alerts Superman. With his help, she stops the station manager and his goons from robbing a bank while everyone else is watching Captain Dingle.

Sadly, the scene from the cover image never actually appears in the story; Captain Dingle is an innocent dupe of the evil station manager.

This idea of using subliminal messages to control someone’s mind is nonsense. Subliminal messages simply do not work. The original study that purported to show a dramatic increase in the purchase of soda and popcorn at a movie theater using subliminal messages has been shown to be a hoax. No legitimate study has demonstrated any evidence that subliminal messages can influence behavior; in fact every study shows just the opposite – that subliminals have no effect upon behavior (and that includes those expensive subliminal self-help tapes).

However, let’s suppose for just a minute that subliminal messages did work. That would explain the bizarre actions of the people, but what about the pets? Since when can dogs read?

(Honestly, if there is anything vaguely subliminal in the story, it’s the clown’s name.)

In Teen Titans Spotlight #7 and #8, Hawk gets his first solo adventures courtesy of writer Mike Baron and penciler Jackson Guice. They also take a superficial stab at environmental and nuclear issues. While the comics are readable, they show some fundamental misunderstandings about the characters of Hank Hall and Hawk.

As Teen Titans Spotlight #7 begins, Hank Hall arrives in Denver, Colorado to attend an anti-terrorism conference at a local think tank. While at the airport, he is approached by an anti-nuclear protestor who he promptly punches. Talking to the police after the fracas, he explains who he is and why he’s in town. They sternly advise him to refrain from punching people in the future, and conveniently drop the news that there has been a terrorist threat against the local nuclear plant.

At the conference, Hank quickly grows weary of opinions different from his own. He takes a hike in the nearby hills for some fresh air. A National Guard helicopter flies over, warning the people at the conference that terrorists have taken over the nuclear plant. Hank changes into costume, puts together the never-before-seen custom Hawk-glider and flies down into the yard of the power plant.

Scouting around, Hawk discovers an incredible number of insects buzzing around and all the plant personnel dead or unconscious – apparently from insect stings. He also finds one other living person — one of the nuclear protestors he encountered the day before. She explains that she was protesting outside when the terrorists took over, and in all the confusion, she snuck inside to see if she could help (the authorities presumably, but she may have meant the terrorists. It’s not exactly clear). She also explains that she’s wearing insect repellant and that’s why she hasn’t been bitten by the bugs.

Hawk and the girl explore the plant and discover that a giant four-legged insect calling itself “Arachnid” has taken over the plant. Arachnid is a hive mind composed of thousands and thousands of insects living in a symbiotic mass. Arachnid instructs plastic-eating termites to start chewing through the control panels of the plant. Hawk tries to tackle Arachnid, but it just dissolves into its constituent insects and escapes. Luckily, Hawk discovers an electric keyboard in the plant director’s office and manages to find a tone that drives the insects away when played over the PA system.

Hawk and the girl are questioned by the cops, but released when thousands of dead insects are discovered in the plant’s controls. Hawk heads to the hills again to contemplate the recent events. Without warning, Arachnid appears in front of him. The insect-beast explains that while Hawk may have won their first encounter, he believes that the two of them should be able to reach some kind of compromise. He invites Hawk down to South America to meet his “Queen.” Hawk agrees and this sets the plot for the following issue, Teen Titans Spotlight #8.

The art by Guice is quite good. He draws an imposing Hawk, towering above the other characters. The action scenes are well choreographed, and unlike many other artists, he does an excellent job with backgrounds. Guice is ably inked by Larry Mahlstedt who gives him a nice clean line, not the muddy mess that often results when Guice inks himself (Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme anyone?).

The story is an entertaining enough read, but it is clear that Baron does not have a good grasp of Hawk. At several points in the story, Hank is shown physically putting on and taking off the Hawk costume. In another scene he is shown talking to police, his mask and hood off and hanging around his neck. Hawk’s costume does not work this way; it is a magical construct that appears when danger is present and Hank yells “Hawk.” As shown in The Hawk and The Dove #1, the costumes cannot be removed by conventional means. This is a misunderstanding of one of the most basic premises of the character. As a side note, this is also the first (and only) time that Hank is ever shown wearing glasses.

Hank is quite free with his secret identity in this comic. He tells the police who he is, and the other members of the conference know him both as Hank Hall and Hawk. When exploring the nuclear plant he refers to himself as “Judge Hall’s little boy.” This is not consistent with past and future adventures when he is very concerned with is secret identity, particularly where his father is concerned.

Hawk compromising with a terrorist? Never. Gonna. Happen.

Finally, do I even have to say it? A four-legged insect named Arachnid. That is wrong in so many ways.

This is in no way intended to be an in-depth analysis of Crisis on Infinite Earths. If you’re looking for that, make sure to check out Matt Rossi’s excellent posts over at the Howling Curmudgeons. Instead, this post is going to look at how Hawk and Dove assisted during the Crisis, and how the events of the Crisis ultimately affected them.

Dove can first be glimpsed in the background aboard the Monitor’s spacecraft in issue #5, but nothing more comes of that.

The first real appearance of Hawk and Dove come in the ninth issue. At this point in the story, the villains have taken control of Earth-4, Earth-X and Earth-S. The heroes are called together to wrest control of these Earths from the villains. Acting true to form, Hawk objects to the presence of Red Star, a communist and a Soviet, among the heroes, but Dove reminds him that it’s for the greater good.

Dove can later be seen among the heroes fighting to free Earth-4. He and Robotman are losing a fight against Black Adam when Kole comes up from behind and turns Adam to crystal. Robotman wants to smash him into little pieces, but Dove won’t let him because “it’s not right to hurt someone else…no matter what he did to us.” This is a little extreme, even for Dove. I can fully understand Dove not wanting Robotman to kill Black Adam, but not for the reasons given. Dove is against violence and brute force. He is not, however, against punishment and ‘hurting” others when appropriate. It’s a subtle difference, but a real one.

Hawk is nowhere to be seen during this skirmish, or in any of the battles on Earth-X or Earth-S. It would be logical that he would be sent to Earth-4 with Dove, but then you would expect him to be fighting alongside him. His actions during this period are unknown, but he was probably out there punching some villain (or communist) in a frenzy of violence.

In the following issue, Dove is shown as one of the heroes sent back to the dawn of time to fight the Anti-Monitor. Again, Hawk is not seen, but since all the heroes were sent back in an attempt to stop the Anti-Monitor, he must be among the crowd somewhere.

In the final issue, the five Earths have been merged into a single new Earth, but danger is still present. The Anti-Monitor has sent his shadow demons to destroy this new world. Hawk and Dove, along with the Human Bomb, Doll Man, Batgirl, Vixen and the Inferior Five are in New York City escorting civilians to safety. Dove notices a child left behind. He runs to get him, but is ambushed by a shadow demon on his way back and killed as Hawk looks on in shock.

Don’s funeral is featured on one of the last pages of the book. Family and teammates can be seen standing solemnly next to Don’s tombstone. There is some controversy as to whether or not Hank was there. He can’t clearly be seen at the funeral (but it is a tiny picture), and events in the Kesel and Kesel Hawk & Dove mini-series suggest that he was not at his brother’s funeral.

Hawk continues to fight crime, but without Dove to control his wilder impulses he becomes more violent and unpredictable. He appears in various DC titles for the next three years, ending up as a hostage in need of rescue in Central America. He finally begins to regain his focus and returns to America. But that is a post for another day…

The Savage She-Hulk #1 “The She-Hulk Lives!”
Stan Lee, writer
John Buscema, artist

Do you ever wonder where it all began? When did meek Jennifer Walters become the lovable She-Hulk? Well, fret no longer — your answers are here.

There are definitely some medical mistakes in this comic, but nothing too atrocious. The plot holes on the other hand — those are horrid.

As the story begins, Bruce Banner is in Los Angeles to visit his cousin, lawyer Jen Walters, hoping that she can help him with his “problem” (presumably he wants to sue the Hulk.) While driving to her house, he tells her how he became the Hulk and she fills him in on her latest case. She is defending a street punk accused of shooting a mob boss’s bodyguards. Jen believes that her client is innocent and that mob boss killed his own bodyguards. She has spread the rumor that she knows a big secret in order to draw the boss out of hiding.

Her plan has a major flaw in the form of the three thugs who are waiting for her at her house. As she steps out of the car, she is shot in the back. Bruce tumbles out of the car and grabs a nearby garden hose, figuring, “I’ve seen cops use it — for riot control!” He sprays it at the crooks and drives them away (Drives them off with a garden hose? That should only make them wet and very very annoyed.)

He drags Jen inside the house and realizes:

She’s dying! Lost too much blood! Only a transfusion can save her!

I would agree with Bruce that replacing Jen’s lost blood is important, but I would point out that stopping the bleeding is even more important.

Stating that he can’t wait for an ambulance, Bruce picks Jen up and runs out the door, looking for a doctor’s office. That’s right, instead of waiting the few minutes for an ambulance to arrive (or driving to the hospital himself), Bruce decides to carry the bleeding Jen all over a residential neighborhood looking for a doctor’s office. In a fit of coincidence, he finds a doctor’s office — right across the street.

Ignoring the locked door, he breaks in and scrounges up some transfusion equipment. Bear in mind that no normal doctor’s office is going to have transfusion paraphernalia; it’s very specialized equipment. If by some chance they did have the equipment, they’d also be storing some blood — for what’s the point of having transfusion equipment without blood?

Somehow, he manages to transfuse his blood into her, and then he sits and waits.

It’s done! Now for the worst part — the waiting!

What’s he waiting for exactly? For Jen to bleed out again because he never stopped her bleeding in the first place?
Jen regains consciousness and Bruce takes a minute to call the authorities. Instead of calling for an ambulance immediately, or while sitting there waiting, he puts off calling for help until she starts showing signs of recovery? That kind of defeats the whole purpose of calling for help, doesn’t it?

Jen is rushed to the hospital and Bruce is taken in for questioning. Before the District Attorney can arrive, he changes into the Hulk and escapes.

Meanwhile, Jen is resting in her hospital bed when the three hoods who shot her come into her room dressed as doctors. They try to drug her but she changes into She-Hulk and not only captures them, but gets them to squeal on the mob boss. She returns to her room (actually, the room next to hers — her room was destroyed in the brawl) just in time to change back to plain Jen Walters.

I’m confused about this whole “transfusion from Bruce Banner causes Jen Walters to change into She-Hulk” concept. Is Bruce’s blood radioactive? Does he set off Geiger counters? Since blood cells only circulate for an average of three months, why is his blood still radioactive this long after his accident? Finally, since it has been revealed that the Hulk is a physical manifestation of Bruce’s multiple personality disorder, does this mean that Jen suffers from the same serious and very rare condition? Did she have an abusive father who killed her mother too?

Tags: comics medicine hulk she-hulk blood transfusion

In my chronological review of the appearances of the Hawk and the Dove, I’ve posted about several painfully bad comics. The worst was probably Teen Titans #25, the comic that sets up the whole “powerless” Teen Titans storyline that drove the title into the ground. However, that was nothing compared to the mind-numbing storytelling of today’s comic. I present: Showcase #100.

Something bizarre is happening. Weather conditions have gone haywire, volcanoes are erupting and time is out of joint. Cavemen, dinosaurs, cowboys and Germans are roaming the streets of Metropolis. The heroes are summoned to a meeting in the JLA’s satellite headquarters. Of course, the JLA’s not there as they’re all “off on missions” (except for Flash and Green Lantern). So it’s up to the second- and third-string heroes to save the world. Coincidentally, it’s these same heroes who have appeared in Showcase over the years…

Green Lantern tells the group that something is blocking his ring, but it’s not a force field because radio waves can still get through (a little known scientific fact about force fields). Frankly, he’s baffled. Luckily, Adam Strange and the Atom are able to piece together the fact that some mysterious force is dragging the Earth out of its orbit and propelling it through space faster than light, ripping open the time stream.

The heroes split into teams. Adam Strange, Green Lantern, Flash and the Atom head into space to find the power source of whatever may be causing the disaster. They discover an invisible space ship, but Green Lantern is unable to affect it because it’s yellow (yep, it’s another one of those invisible yellow objects). He creates a moving prism to Doppler shift the light so that his ring can work (yes, we all know that’s not how the Doppler Effect works. Shhh…don’t tell Hal.). Robots from the ship attack, but Space Ranger shows up just in time to save the heroes. The whole group ventures inside the ship but is attacked by a giant plant. The Phantom Stranger appears and the group holds a séance to call forth the Spectre. Using the power of belief, the Spectre is able to return Earth to its orbit.

Rip Hunter and his pals jump into their Time Sphere but become trapped in the time stream and don’t appear again in this comic. Way to go, Rip!

Most of the other heroes are on Earth working crowd control. This includes the Teen Titans, the Metal Men, Aquaman, Dolphin and the Sea Devils. Across town, a strange collection of people are clustering in the offices of Angel O’Day (of Angel and the Ape fame). In addition to Angel and Sam, there’s Tommy Tomorrow, Firehair, Bat Lash, Anthro, and the Inferior Five. Angel, Bat Lash and Tommy Tomorrow take off in Tommy’s ship, figuring they can use its advanced technology to track down the source of the problem.

At the WGBS tower, Lois Lane is broadcasting an SOS for Superman, but it’s all in vain. The Challengers of the Unknown climb in through the window and use the station’s transmitter to pinpoint the cause of the disasters. The Challengers fly off with Lois and the Creeper tagging along and discover a strange metal building. Rocky jimmies open a small door and Lois slips in before it locks shut.

On top of the building, Tommy Tomorrow uses his ray gun to blast a hole in the roof. Angel jumps in and the hole seals behind her. Despite the dangerous radiation (which they can somehow detect), both Lois and Angel crawl though the mysterious building and find the control room. They flip the correct lever to drive the alien from Earth, never to return.

That summary should give you a nice taste of the comic. The story by Paul Kupperberg and Paul Levitz is full of bizarre contrivances and unexplained plot holes. The villain is never once explained. How did the alien move the Earth from its orbit — and more importantly — why? If it can teleport, then why did it build a door? The “technobabble” is painful to read, and the science is so bad that even a third grader would see right through it.

The art by Joe Stanton is fairly angular and nears the level of caricature at several points. His inking is wispy and doesn’t lend any weight to his lines. The backgrounds — if they exist at all — are sketchy. Admittedly, he wasn’t working with much of a story. His cover sure is eye-catching though.

The Hawk and the Dove appear on the cover, the splash page, and in the background of three small panels. They are apparently working crowd control with the Titans. They don’t get to say a word, though they do get to beat up Nazis. Frankly, Sugar and Spike have a bigger role in the story.

One last thought: strange weather, characters from different eras converging and a mysterious never-before-seen alien masterminding the event. Sound familiar? It’s Crisis, only without the red skies, and seven years ahead of its time.

Another week, another good JLU episode. This one was primarily about Booster Gold, who stayed true to his comic book roots as a shallow “hero” interested mostly in fame and fortune. The humor quotient was high, with the recurring joke that everyone thought Booster was Green Lantern. His sycophantic robot pal Skeets was worth the price of admission all by himself (his best line: “I got nothing.”).

The backdrop of this episode was a battle with the supremely powerful Mordru. Hero after hero was called in to help, including – reluctantly (to J’onn that is, Booster was ecstatic) – Booster Gold. The episode was strongly reminiscent of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Zeppo” which focused entirely on Xander while the rest of the gang was off fighting an apocalyptic monster in the background. Similarly, this episode focused on Booster while the rest of the Justice League was in the background fighting the big baddy. While Mordru was beaten in the end, his defeat was just a minor part of the plot.

Elongated Man had a nice role in this episode as well. Initially he was assigned to help Booster with crowd control because Plastic Man was already in the front lines and they “didn’t need two stretchy guys.” He ended up saving the day in the end, though.

Heroes shown included Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Elongated Man, Booster (but sadly no Beetle), Fire, Ice, Hawk, Dove, Vigilante, Aztek, Vibe (!), Stars, S.T.R.I.P.E., Captain Atom, the Shining Knight, the Huntress and Plastic Man (mentioned, but not seen).

I also managed to catch the new Batman series this morning. It was not anywhere as good as Batman the Animated Series, but much better then the Batman cartoons from the 1970s. It was an enjoyable show, though clearly aimed at a less sophisticated audience than Justice League Unlimited. The way that Bruce Wayne was drawn reminded me too much of Jackie Chan from the Jackie Chan Adventures. The new Joker was quite imposing and much more physical than previous incarnations of the character; he was the first Joker to actually seem frightening. I liked the new look for Wayne Manor in the way it resembled a medieval fortress as opposed to the previously pictured stately manor.

The plot was fairly straightforward. Batman has been prowling the streets of Gotham for three years. The Joker, a previously unknown villain, breaks into Arkham Asylum and frees most of the inmates. He and Batman tangle but the Joker escapes. Batman tracks down Joker to his lair, but the Joker flees in a hot air balloon filled with Joker gas. Batman catches him, they fight, and Joker ends up back at Arkham, this time as an inmate himself. Meanwhile the Gotham City police are trying to track down this urban legend known as Batman…

I’ll certainly watch The Batman again, but I’m looking forward to the imminent arrival of my Batman the Animated Series DVDs more.

The Tomorrow People was a British science fiction show that ran in the UK from 1973-1979. It was later shown in the US on Nickelodeon (long before they became a popular cable station); I remember watching the show daily after school in 1984-5.

The show was about a handful of young men and women who were the next step in evolution from Homo sapiens (hence the Tomorrow People name). They had mental abilities such as teleportation, telekenesis and telepathy. They lived in a secret undreground hideout run by a sentient robot named Tim. They had adventures not only on Earth, but across the galaxy as well.

The Tomorrow People was similar to Dr. Who in that each storyline consisted of a handful of 25-minute episodes. Each episode tended to have a cliffhanger ending. The production values were much worse than Dr. Who. There was one particular episode where the Tomorrow People were dealing with alien ambassadors — one looked like a cheap rubber bug suit and the other looked like a giant ice cream cone.

Most of the episodes were simplistic and full of science-fiction cliches, but still fun to watch in that automobile accident kind of way. There are two episodes that I remember best. The first dealt with the Tomorrow People traveling back to the Roman era to stop another time traveler from teaching the Romans steam power. Time paradox tales are always fun, and very hard to screw up (and they did OK here). Another episode dealth with the return of Hitler, who convinced British school boys to start a new Nazi party in England. Turns out that Hitler was really a mind-controlling alien. Thankfully the Tomorrow People stopped him (whew!).

Nickelodeon started their own version of the Tomorrow People in the mid-90’s, but I was in medical school thenand free time was just a dream to me (I once read an article that reported that the average third-year medical student gets 20 minutes of sunlight a day, and I remember thinking “When?”)

Another cloudy cold Sunday in central Illinois. Apparetnly, there’s a law of nature that Sundays in this area can’t be nice days. No big deal this week, as I’ve got a great deal of reading to catch up on, and I’d just as soon lounge on the comfortable couch in the den.

Good news! Our new grass has finally started to grow. The backyard now looks like a giant Chia-Pet.
Better News! My partner comes back tomorrow! No call for 2 weeks!!

Sunday Blog-o-Bits:

1. Just over 1 week until the Tour de France!
2. I know I mentioned my concern about Bible-inspired diets a few weeks ago. Now comes news that the academic credentials of author Jordan Rubin are all from non-accredited correspondance “diploma mills” (third item down). This is not the first time this has happened, John Gray, author of all those “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” books also has mail-order academic credentials.
3. From the Hypnosis in Media site is a look at hypnosis and mind-control involving comic books and comic book characters. Other comics are discussed here. A very thorough listing that seems to be accurate as far as I can tell. Maybe I’ll be able to find a good mind-control story after all.
4. Finally, for all you war-gamers, or those interested in military history, check out the Armchair General. In addition to good historical articles, it also offers readers the chance to find out what would have happened if they had been in charge in famous battles (I fare…poorly).

I love video games. I have been playing video games for close to two decades now, and own a few (ahem) game systems. As I get older, however, I find that fewer and fewer games are appealing to me.

In some cases, the subject matter itself, or the way it is portrayed, is offensive. Some genres and titles just don’t interest me (football games, for example). Most of the problem is that I’m just not getting my money’s worth out of games anymore. Ironically, it’s not because they’re too short, but instead they are too long. When I was in school, or even residency, I had a lot more free time. When I was off duty, I was free. No “home call”, no family, no house to take care of. Then, I could spend 90+ hours finishing Final Fantasy VII. Now, that’s no longer practical. I need games that don’t go on forever. Games that don’t require a hint book. Games that I can finish before I lose interest.

The industry needs to pay more attention to the desires of mature gamers. We need games that are playable, fun, and finishable. Mature gamers may not be as numerous as younger gamers, but I suspect we have a great deal more money.

I would like to see games that:

• Can be finished in a few good weekends (around 30 hours of gameplay).
• Have a gentle learning curve and a logical control scheme.
• Are replayable (hidden areas, power-ups, etc.)
• Have good graphics and a good storyline.
• Are divided into manageable areas and have a good save system.

True, some companies make “budget games” that are shorter, but they generally are of shoddy quality all around. I want to see big budget games that can be enjoyed by people with limited time (and in some cases, limited abilities).

The two Ratchet & Clank games are good games. The basic game takes just about 20-30 hours, but there are many areas to go back and explore after the game itself is finished. Saves are logical, and finishing a level is a good nights play. The graphics are good, the voice acting excellent, and the story line in engrossing with lots of humor.

Primal is also a contender. The game is longer, but allows you to save anywhere. The graphics are excellent, and it has the best voice acting I’ve ever heard. The captivating story is easy to follow yet captivating.

The new Pitfall games does not come close. The control scheme is awkward and the save game scheme poorly thought out. The levels vary from simplistic to near-impossible-to-figure-out-what-the-designer-had-in-mind. The story and graphics are childish.

The score…. Ratchet & Clank 1 & 2: good. Primal: good. Pitfall: Bad. A game industry that listens to mature players: Important and needed.

Has there ever been a good mind-control story?

It has always been one of my least favorite story clich鳮 I’ve never seen it carried off very well. Either the explanation for the power control is poor (Ruse), or it seems like little thought has gone into the story itself. Often it seems to be done because the writer needs a quick explanation for a plot hook or needs to explain someone acting out of character (“I was mind controlled! No, really!”).

It still occurs up regularly (in the last year alone: Scion, JLA, X-Treme X-Men, and Alias, just to name a few off the top of my head).

Brian Michael Bendis pulled it off better than most in the the last story arc in Alias. He certainly put some thought into the villain’s motivations. It showed a seamier side to mind-control powers that I’m sure most of them would indulge in (because, well, they’re evil). While it showed some nice back-story of Jessica, and explained some of her psyche, I still thought it was one of the weaker Alias stories. Especially the ending, which was far too deus ex machina for my taste.

The worst recent story was the first story arc in Ruse: mind-controlling magnetic snuff. The less said about this the better.

How about it? Can anyone name a good mind-control story, or have a particularly favorite bad one?

You can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Ruse
Ruse followed the adventures of a Sherlock Holmes-like character, Simon Archard, and his female Watson, Emma. It was set during a Victorian Age in an Earth very similar to ours. It was heavily promoted by CrossGen as it was the first title written by Mark Waid since they lured him from Marvel and DC. Ironically, it was also the last CrossGen title he wrote before returning to Marvel and DC. The series had great potential — especially due to the perfectly fitting artof Guice — but that potential was never realized. This was for several reasons. First, we learn that superpowers exist on this world, and that Emma possesses some, but wants to hide that fact from Archard. This simple idea — and deus ex machina — ruins much of the atmosphere so carefully created as it doesn’t match the setting, except as a tie into the “shared sigil universe.” Second, the comic is rife with pseudo-science. If there’s going to be magic, fine, call it magic and be done with it. Don’t try and explain it away in pseudo-scientific terms that evan a grade schooler can tell are utter nonsense. i.e. “Their minds were controlled by metal filings in their snuff which, when inhaled, were aligned in such a way…” More technobabble than Star Trek. Third, unlike the other CrossGen books, Ruse had no real guiding theme. Sure, a mystic diamond would occasionally pop up and Archard would hunt it, but it was more like a series of random adventures. As I said, potential, but that’s about it.

Read more…