The Pro-Team
So I wrote a comic for kids undergoing proton therapy - Proton-Man™ - for a company called Varian. I was psyched to do something like that for kids, but Varian turned out to be way too machine-oriented to understand comics and what they mean to readers. Although Mike Jaszewski and I produced two more issues, at Varian's request, they let all three books languish…and eventually went out of the proton therapy business altogether. But in 2023, Bill Hansen (co-creator of the comics for kids idea) had moved to IBA, a larger and more committed company. He worked with Courtney Itonyo in Marketing, who also saw the benefit in these comics, and she committed to making a go of them this time — so Mike and I went back to work. Proton-Man had shown the therapy being administered by a doctor and a nurse, but this time around I knew that more than just two people were involved. Mike and I created the Pro-Team, consisting of a doctor, a nurse, a dosimetrist, a physicist, and a therapist. The doctor and nurse are obvious, while the dosimetrist calculates how the doctor's treatment will work, the physicist runs the machine that impliments those calculations, and the therapist helps the kid during the process. Every time we've gone to a hospital or a treatment center and interacted with the kids there it's been a magical experience. I hope we can pursue that magic more robustly with the Pro-Team. ![]() | |
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