With RFK Jr about to become the Surgeon General of the US...
...we want to look at an example of how graphic fiction portrayed pandemics such as anti-vaxxer Kennedy seems to want to happen!
So the theme of this never-reprinted tale from Gold Key's City Surgeon #1 (1963) shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone!
Tell the truth, Nurse Lake seems to be brains of the operation!
She's the one who figures out one of the two missing crewmen might already be deceased, and her quick thinking immobilizes the other when he shows up at the office!
In the early 1960s, one of the most-popular genres in pop culture was "medical drama"!
Spearheaded on TV by hunky prime-time physicians Dr Kildare and Ben Casey along with the related series The Nurses as well as daytime soap operas with hospital settings and paperback romance novels with covers featuring "studs in scrubs" with swooning nurses, comics hopped on the medical bandwagon!
DC and Marvel simply ran more medical-themed tales in their existing romance books.
But the smaller publishers were another matter...
Charlton launched numerous series featuring doctors and nurses in separate titles including Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love, Dr Tom Brent: Young Intern, Nurse Betsy Crane, Young Interns, and Sue & Sally Smith: Flying Nurses.
(Oddly, there were never any cross-over stories between the various books!)
Archie Comics published a short-lived series about Young Dr Masters!
Dell had popular comics based on Dr Kildare. as well as their own Nurse Linda Lark!
Gold Key published two different Ben Casey comics (including one done "fumetti" style using photos of the TV actors with captions and word balloons) and created their own doctor in City Surgeon!
Unfortunately, artist Jack Sparling's illustrations weren't consistent, showing Dr Blake Harper as young and virile in one panel and middle-aged in the next on the same page!
Plus there was no romantic element to the book!
For whatever reason, there was never a second issue of the title and Dr Harper never made another house call...
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