All Images © Marvel Comics Group Fantastic Four #39 & #64 -Story by Stan Lee / Art by Jack Kirby

The comic was an issue of the "Fantastic Four", the story about the team loosing their super-powers after being hit by radiation, as they were escaping a nuclear detonation. I read into the story was a situation similar to mine, how my body had changed and the inherent danger of blood sugar lows that would be a continual threat to my survival.

Marvel Comics were all initially written by Stan Lee seemed created expressly for a kid facing a condition such as Diabetes. The most obvious assumption about someone who reads comics is that they provide a form of fantasy wish fulfillment, such as having super-strength or abilities to make up for inadequacies in real life. What interested me was the intense inner and dual lives they possessed. Each had a dimensional reality, all were complicated if not somewhat neurotic, full of angst, guilt, passion, frustration, noble ideals, and were like me, fighting for their lives on a daily basis.

They also possessed qualities that I wished for such as a sense fun as well as adventure. In other words, they were cool.

Unfortunately all lived as outsiders in a solitary existence, a characteristic they could never fully escape even when in the guise of their alter-egos. Most people are familiar with the traditional (D.C. comics) characters of Superman and Batman who had their own secret identities, but It was the Marvel characters who endured thorough issue after issue of irony and alienation -the price they paid for being different, by world that always misunderstood their lives and motives.

"Trapped in a world he never made" the title of one story, pretty much summed up for me the difficulty of my life, having to deal alone with being so different, with no one in my real, physical world who I could relate to.

One of many instances where Reed Richards tries to return the "Thing" to normal. My hope was that there were scientists, like Richards, who were tirelessly searching for our cure.

There was one character the "Thing" from the "Fantastic Four" comics looked like a monster while the team's leader Reed Richards (who had accidentally caused this transformation) was always working on a cure to return him to normal even at the cost of loosing a vital member of the group. The "Thing" was tortured by being "trapped" in a grotesque body even as the other members of the "Fantastic Four" who had been endowed with more fun powers than his own of brute strength, as they lived happy and glamorous lives.

There was "Iron Man" who had a metal costume with all kinds of hi-tech gadgets, his problem was that he could not completely take off his armor since his chest plate kept his injured heart beating. He was always running out of energy when he needed it most, often times collapsing leaving him with just enough strength to plug himself in to a wall socket to replenish his batteries. This was just like my episodes of hypoglycemia where I too, lost all my strength and needed sugar to "power up"again.

Bruce Banner was a brilliant scientist who through trying to save the life of another is exposed to radioactive gamma rays, whenever he got angry he turned into the incredible "Hulk" a powerful and decidedly antisocial character, who is happy bouncing around the world but is always chased by the Army who wants to capture him. His lament was "why do they keep hounding me"?

Then there were the "X-men" a superhuman team of teenage mutants who were even out of the best of motives, ostracized and hunted because they were "different" and therefore perceived as a threat to the normal society. One member, "Cyclops" could never remove his protective glasses since his eyes, when opened, emitted a powerful laser blast, "Giant-man" was trapped at the height of ten feet. "Dare-Devil" was blind but had radar-like senses. The "Silver Surfer" who traveled from star to star on his silver surfboard was trapped on the Earth as a penalty for saving the human race. The list goes on and on of characters who lived with hidden levels of vulnerability, complexity and danger.