So many of us who grew up with Micronauts eagerly awaited every issue of the Micronauts comic book from Marvel. Today, many of us are also aware of the sad fate of Bill Mantlo - the writer who brought us an amazing, complex science fiction epic told in the pages of a comic book series that continued long after Micronauts left the toy stores and even after the Mego Corporation closed its doors and left the toy industry. The driven, energetic man's life as a comic book writer and full-time Legal Aid Society lawyer ended when he was struck by hit-and-run driver who left Mantalo with traumatic brain injuries from which his body and intellect has never recovered.A detailed look at Mantlo's life, injury and long, tragic road afterward was surprisingly offered recently by LifeHealthPro - a website and on-line journal for the US health insurance industry:
"Bill Mantlo was a legendary writer for Marvel Comics in the 1970s and 1980s. But today, he inhabits a broken body abandoned by both the health insurance industry and the federal healthcare reform meant to help people like him. This is his story."
Tragic Tale - from LifeHealthPro
Bill Mantlo's tale is indeed tragic and difficult to read, and certainly - under the pen of LifeHealthPro's author - impossible to not consider even more acutely (by myself at least) in the light of the United States' current cultural and political re-assessment of privatized, corporate health care in our society.
Give it a read and some thought - the respect due a man who brought a great deal to many of our childhoods, but who lives now having lost so much.
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