In this map of the continental United States, the red areas represent where women’s mortality statistics grew worse between the early 1990s and the mid-2000s, as Grace Wyler at Business Insider reports. The blue areas saw substantial improvement in that measure, green small improvement.
Generally the Oz and Ends editorial team looks on superhero cosplay as an exercise in futility, like wishing the comic books were as good as when you were twelve.
Superheroes aren’t drawn realistically. Their faces, musculature, clothing, and hair are beyond ideal. We see them in the middle of astonishing and yet good-looking moves, depicted with foreshortening and all the other tricks artists have devised. It’s impossible to reproduce that look consistently with actual human bodies, real fabrics, and convention-center settings.
But when cosplayers and photographers get close to the images on the comics page, we have to acknowledge their achievement.
Among the residents is Norman Bamberger, a cattle rancher who wants to cut the federal budget—except all the parts he depends on for his business:
Bamberger has 900 cattle, and he’s going on his second bad year in a row. Meat prices are high, good for reaping a profit, but a drought has caused increases in prices of grain he needs to buy to feed his cattle. He supports the automatic budget cuts of earlier this year, except for the one that threatens to reduce the number of federal meat inspectors—which could affect his own business.Of course, the automatic budget cuts were forced by Republicans, like his own Representative. And I’m sure there are other benefits and subsidies for farmers that Bamberger would to see preserved as well.
“It’s just stupid,” he said. Then, in a jarring attempt at dark humor that most would find offensive, he added: “Where’s Lee Harvey when you need him?”
Concerned about seeming harsh with his reference to the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy, he quickly added, “That wasn’t very nice.”
“Hell, we ought to impeach the little bastard,” [Charles] Leet said. “Asleep at the switch. I keep donating to the Bring Back Lee Harvey Committee. It hasn’t worked yet.”In that case, the men of Jetmore might want to make fewer jokes about Presidential assassinations. That habit makes them look like they have OIP Derangement Syndrome.
The group chuckled.
“We aren’t rabble-rousers. We don’t want to cause trouble,” [newspaper editor Mike] Thornburg said a few minutes later.
I won’t be attending MoCCA this year, but I’ll be represented at that independent comics festival by a couple of titles from Dan Mazur’s Ninth Art Press. One is The Greatest Comics Anthology of All Time, introduced back here.
And Geoff Halvorsen and I have a story in the inaugural issue of In a Single Bound, a magazine of eight short superhero comics set in Boston and hot off the press.
This tale is really Geoff’s baby. We were talking at a Boston Comics Roundtable meeting about his frustration with finding a structure for his visual ideas, so I listened and thought and came back with a story set at MIT. Dan, the magazine editor, provided great suggestions to make the result more “superheroey.” Geoff handled all the layout, art, and lettering. The result is the Tesla Club’s first tale, “The Infinite Corridor.”
Part of the point of In a Single Bound is that it’s not so “superheroey.” These are stories set in Boston, after all, not braggadocious New York or its other-universe avatars (Gotham, Metropolis). They tend toward the smart, skewed, and parodic. The parody might be directed at the superhero genre or the Hub itself. We’ll see how the collection fares in Manhattan this weekend before it flies back to home base for the Boston Comic-Con.
“One day my balloon ran away with me and brought me across the deserts to this beautiful country. When the people saw me come from the sky they naturally thought me some superior creature, and bowed down before me. I told them I was a Wizard, and showed them some easy tricks that amazed them; and when they saw the initials [O.Z.] painted on the balloon they called me Oz.”Some of this history is reflected in the new movie, Oz the Great and Powerful:
“Now I begin to understand,” said the Princess, smiling.
“At that time,” continued the Wizard, busily eating his soup while talking, “there were four separate countries in this Land, each one of the four being ruled by a Witch. But the people thought my power was greater than that of the Witches; and perhaps the Witches thought so too, for they never dared oppose me. I ordered the Emerald City to be built just where the four countries cornered together, and when it was completed I announced myself the Ruler of the Land of Oz, which included all the four countries of the Munchkins, the Gillikins, the Winkies and the Quadlings. Over this Land I ruled in peace for many years, until I grew old and longed to see my native city once again. So when Dorothy was first blown to this place by a cyclone I arranged to go away with her in a balloon; but the balloon escaped too soon and carried me back alone. . . .”
“That is quite a history,” said Ozma; “but there is a little more history about the Land of Oz that you do not seem to understand—perhaps for the reason that no one ever told it you. Many years before you came here this Land was united under one Ruler, as it is now, and the Ruler’s name was always ‘Oz,’ which means in our language ‘Great and Good’; or, if the Ruler happened to be a woman, her name was always ‘Ozma.’ But once upon a time four Witches leagued together to depose the king and rule the four parts of the kingdom themselves; so when the Ruler, my grandfather, was hunting one day, one Wicked Witch named Mombi stole him and carried him away, keeping him a close prisoner. Then the Witches divided up the kingdom, and ruled the four parts of it until you came here. That was why the people were so glad to see you, and why they thought from your initials that you were their rightful ruler.”
“But, at that time,” said the Wizard, thoughtfully, “there were two Good Witches and two Wicked Witches ruling in the land.”
“Yes,” replied Ozma, “because a good Witch had conquered Mombi in the North and Glinda the Good had conquered the evil Witch in the South. But Mombi was still my grandfather’s jailor, and afterward my father’s jailor. When I was born she transformed me into a boy, hoping that no one would ever recognize me and know that I was the rightful Princess of the Land of Oz. But I escaped from her and am now the Ruler of my people.”
“I am very glad of that,” said the Wizard, “and hope you will consider me one of your most faithful and devoted subjects.”
“We owe a great deal to the Wonderful Wizard,” continued the Princess, “for it was you who built this splendid Emerald City.”
“Your people built it,” he answered. “I only bossed the job, as we say in Omaha.”
“Where are we going?” asked Jack, when they had resumed their journey.A number of touches show the influence of the Wizard of Oz stage extravaganza that debuted to great crowds in 1902:
“I’m not exactly sure,” said the boy; “but I believe we are headed South, and that will bring us, sooner or later, to the Emerald City.”
“What city is that?” enquired the Pumpkinhead.
“Why, it’s the center of the Land of Oz, and the biggest town in all the country. I’ve never been there, myself, but I’ve heard all about its history. It was built by a mighty and wonderful Wizard named Oz, and everything there is of a green color. . . And in the Country of the Munchkins, over at the East, everything is blue; and in the South country of the Quadlings everything is red; and in the West country of the Winkies, where the Tin Woodman rules, everything is yellow.”
“Oh!” said Jack. Then, after a pause, he asked: “Did you say a Tin Woodman rules the Winkies?”
“Yes; he was one of those who helped Dorothy to destroy the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Winkies were so grateful that they invited him to become their ruler,—just as the people of the Emerald City invited the Scarecrow to rule them.”
“Dear me!” said Jack. “I’m getting confused with all this history. Who is the Scarecrow?”
“Another friend of Dorothy’s,” replied Tip.
“And who is Dorothy?”
“She was a girl that came here from Kansas, a place in the big, outside World. She got blown to the Land of Oz by a cyclone, and while she was here the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman accompanied her on her travels.”
“And where is she now?” inquired the Pumpkinhead.
“Glinda the Good, who rules the Quadlings, sent her home again,” said the boy.
“Oh. And what became of the Scarecrow?”
“I told you. He rules the Emerald City,” answered Tip.
“I thought you said it was ruled by a wonderful Wizard,” objected Jack, seeming more and more confused.
“Well, so I did. Now, pay attention, and I’ll explain it,” said Tip, speaking slowly and looking the smiling Pumpkinhead squarely in the eye. “Dorothy went to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard to send her back to Kansas; and the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman went with her. But the Wizard couldn’t send her back, because he wasn’t so much of a Wizard as he might have been. And then they got angry at the Wizard, and threatened to expose him; so the Wizard made a big balloon and escaped in it, and no one has ever seen him since.”
“Now, that is very interesting history,” said Jack, well pleased; “and I understand it perfectly all but the explanation.”
A while back I read about a couple of studies in medical decision-making by Lucas S. Zier, Douglas B. White, and colleagues. In particular, they looked at how medical surrogates responded to doctors saying that there was very little that they could do for a dying patient.
In 2009 the team reported in the journal Chest:
Sixty-four percent of surrogates expressed a reluctance or unwillingness to believe physicians’ futility predictions. They provided the following four main explanations for this belief: a skepticism about physicians’ ability to achieve complete prognostic certainty, a need to see for themselves that a patient was incapable of recovery, a need to triangulate multiple information sources before believing physicians, and a belief that God could intervene to change the course of an illness. . . .Three years later the researchers published further findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine, also looking at how medical surrogates responded to doctors’ good predictions:
Surrogates who doubted physician’s futility predictions clustered into the following two general groups: those whose doubt was based on religious beliefs (n = 18); and those whose doubt was based on secular considerations (n = 15), such as past experiences with inaccurate prognostication, a secular belief that future-telling is inherently inaccurate, and a need to triangulate physicians prognostications with other sources before accepting the prognosis as true. Surrogates who doubted physicians’ futility predictions on religious grounds were more likely to request continued life support in the face of a very poor prognosis…, whereas those whose doubt was based on secular concerns were not…
Participants’ interpretations of prognostic statements expressing a low risk for death were relatively accurate, but interpretations of statements conveying a high risk for death were more optimistic than the actual meaning. . . . Interpretations of the statement “90% chance of surviving” did not differ from the actual meaning, but interpretations of “5% chance of surviving” were more optimistic and showed substantial variability.If I interpret the abstract right, people hearing “90% chance of surviving” generally interpreted that as 90%, with only a slight spread to 95%. People hearing “5% chance of surviving” spread that out into 15%, with the center of the bell curve going as high as 40%.
