This Could Be a Job For Mulder and Scully

Cancer. Cancer, cancer, cancer. Cancer.

November 6, 2008

While perusing stuff in my favorite comic book shop Druid’s Keep a depressed looking guy was chatting with Felix, and of course I had to eavesdrop. It just felt so scenic, me pretending to private read the latest issue of Justice Society of America when in fact was trying to eavesdrop on a comic book conversation. Comic book shop conversations are fun—you can hear guys frothing in the mouth at the crapfest that is Amazons Attack!, guys getting genuinely depressed at the death of Captain America over a year ago, and guys pumping their fists in triumph because Elektra has been revealed as a Skrull after all. There’s just so much passion, so much heart over supposedly trifle issues, so much… frothing in the mouth. Back to that particular conversation–apparently this guy was trying to sell all his comic books and action figures because his wife was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. He was looking for potential buyers and asking Felix for contacts and such. To have amassed such a huge amount of fandom material then to sell it because of a real life crisis—to quote Holden Caulfield, it killed me.

Cancer is such an annoying thing. Annoying might fail to carry its weight, but cancer indeed is annoying. Everything can have cancer, from the tiniest ducts to the nerves to everything. And if you think you’ve destroyed it it’s only a matter of time before it comes back. Years and years ago whenever I was playing scrabble with my family playing the word cancer was forbidden. It’s not something you can even speak. Like if you say cancer cancer cancer cancer you will eventually have, yes, cancer.

The best thesis on cancer I’ve come across is not any medical journal or any writing by a cancer survivor or anything, but in Supergirl as written by the great Kelley Puckett. In one issue Supergirl does all she can to try to save a young boy from cancer. The first thing she thinks of is to enlist the help of Resurrection Man. Resurrection Man is a D-lister character in DC comics. He dies over and over but lives again immediately, and every time he comes back to life he has a new super power. He is over fifty-thousand years old. Supergirl’s plan is to kill Resurrection Man repeatedly until he randomly gets the ability to cure cancer. But as RM explains:

RM: Look, when I was born, and for about forty-seven thousand years after that? Humans didn’t live long enough to get cancer. They got “tiger”, or flu. It’s a sign that things basically are good. You live that long and just from living your cells get worn down… the DNA gets damaged. It’s a consequence of living. Of breathing that long. It’s part of being human. It’s natural.

Of course Supergirl’s retort is: He’s five, what’s natural about that.

Eventually the boy dies and Supergirl’s next plan of course is to time travel, either go back to try and save the kid earlier, or bring his grieving parents back to the past to have more time with him. But she decides not to, as she accepts that it’s time to, pardon the cliché, move on.We can’t always work beyond our limitations, because the limitations were set there by someone else for a purpose. For what particular purpose we don’t know, but it’s there.

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