scans_daily

This is probably going to be disjointed and rather stream-of-consciousness. It was sparked by ponderings made after I got the news--if anyone's been curious as to where I've been, that's half of the answer; the other is that my main computer crapped out on me and it'll still be a little while before I get the funds together to fix it--and a general dissatisfaction with certain portrayals of certain illnesses in comics anyway (any die-hard fans of Judd Winick probably aren't going to like what I say about his portrayal of an HIV-positive character . . .).

Anyway, first the cut.

Now that that's out of the way, second, the image for legality (at least it's on-topic):
SHAZAM!

The Death of Captain Marvel came out in 1984, a time of great maturity and depth in comic books. I think I first read it between the ages of 8-11, sometime around then. It was the first time I had ever heard of "cancer," and indeed, I initially mispronounced the word for a while before I was corrected. In the book, for those who don't know, Captain Marvel succumbs to a cancer he got after being exposed to something whilst superheroing. However, in the story, "cancer" could just be a place-holder for any life-threatening illness, including made up sci-fi ones; the use of a real world disease just lends that much more credence and verisimilitude to the story. While cancers can still be lethal, and their treatments debilitating or worse, a diagnosis of cancer is, nowadays, no longer a life sentence (for example, the type of cancer I've been diagnosed with has a very high rate of remission, it's just there's other factors, some of the chemo drugs for instance, that can cause discomfort or worse. But that's just my case. My grandmother died of lung cancer--OR DID SHE??? Yes, she did.) But there are few stories about that. Mostly, cancer is used for drama, rightly or wrongly.

And cancer patients don't care about the drama, they care about getting through it and hopefully outliving a relapse.

But cancer is hardly the only real-world disease that's used to maximize the drama of a story. AIDS and the HIV virus, for example. While Mia Dearden's life with HIV could be a good, well told story, unfortunately, it was told by Judd Winick, and it just smacks of "token HIV character," the same way that Terry Berg felt like, to me, a token gay character under his pen. And while there are comics that deal with these real-world diseases or afflictions (and others--I'm reminded of a porn comic I heard about once about amputees . . .) too often, in super-hero comics at least, the characters with these afflictions are "characters with these afflictions" first, and "people" second. When I was first thinking about writing this essay (or rambling) I had in mind one or two fictional people in mind as counter-examples, but I can't think of them right now. The point of this essay (or rambling), however, is two-fold. What examples are there of comic characters living with debilitating or life-threatening diseases, illnesses, or afflictions, and do they belong in super-hero comics? Other genres, sure, but super-heroes? Richard Donner once said something to the effect (discussing the plot of Superman IV with Christopher Reeve, I think) that introducing such real-world concerns to super-heroes can mess them up beyond repair. Is he right? Is he wrong? How much of a point does he have? Do people want to read about tights-wearing crime-fighters battling cancer, or HIV, or lupus? Should such characters be relegated to supporting cast? And what about those characters? Are any of them people first?

I guess I have to put tag suggestions here? char: Captain Marvel/Mar-Vell, Marvel Graphic Novel aka The Death of Captain Marvel, discussion (I don't know quite how those should be tagged), anything else? I'm really bad at tags.

Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; I do recall an ad for the American Cancer Society, I think, depicting Commissioner Gordon dying of lung cancer from the mid-80s? or so . . .