Some people decide to go to Comic-Con, so they buy tickets.

My friend Becky passed away on Saturday. She’s an actual superhero and it’s important you know her origin story.

So Becky decides that she wants to go to Comic-Con, but also people don’t understand science well enough and that it would be nice to fix gender inequality. So she graduates Bryn Mawr and moves to Texas to get a PhD, which will help with the latter two and probably won’t hurt her chances of going to Comic-Con. To get a PhD you have to make a new scientific discovery and you have to find enough food to eat. Most people find food by teaching bored jocks, but instead Becky creates a magical physics circus because that is more interesting, and because it helps young folk to understand science better, and also because eff the man, and the circus is so good they pay her for it and she has food to eat. She meets a kind wizard named Mike, who is Chaotic Good just like her, and Mike helps her circus and gives her a quest about carbon molecules in thin films. Becky says I’ll do this quest but it will actually be about flowers and lace-making and only pretend be about practical things, because eff the man.

Now you should know that through all this, Becky had a dark side telling her that she was not smart and not good and probably would never go to Comic-Con. But as she quests, she starts to learn that she’s not broken, just crazy, and discovers a weakness of that dark side. If she completes quests that are nearly impossible but neatly quantifiable, then when the crazy part of her brain starts in with the self-doubt and garbage narratives she can banish it with data and Ironman medallions. (Also she helps at least one of her friends start to understand that, turning his life around too). After many years, she sneaks a lot of nerdy jokes and some really good science into a magic scroll, titles it "Flowers in three dimensions and beyond”, and a bunch of wizards are so impressed they add three magic letters to her name and give her a weird hat.

But she still hasn’t gone to Comic-Con, popularized science or solved gender inequality. So she and her bike that she named after a magic broom move to Maryland and break into the castle where the Physics Patriarchy lives, because eff the man: we’re taking this thing down from the inside. Becky also meets many allies, including a gentle man with a superhero name and she marries him. The quest that the folks in the castle send her on is to tell people that physics is cool, so that congress keeps giving them funding. They don’t give her very much money for this quest, and a lot of the wizards don’t think much of her job ... but! those people also don’t give much attention to what she was doing. So — eff the man — it’s time to come public as a superhero and visit Comic-Con. She and a friend hide a mountain of physics puns in a comic book, they print lots of copies, hit up Goodwill for costume parts, and fly (on a plane, as far as you know) to San Diego Comic-Con! All paid for by the castle! Eff the Man!

Also, the whole time the castle is paying her to do outreach about physics to the public (teaching them why physics is important) Becky is secretly also doing outreach about public outreach to the physicists (teaching them why teaching that physics is important is important). She finds out that being underestimable is annoying but can also be a superpower: some of the old dudes who initially misjudge her often then notice the three magic letters after her name, or find out that she can run/bike/swim them into the ground, or just actually listen for a damn moment, and when they do are scientist enough to revise hypotheses in the face of contradiction. Gradually, Becky and her allies awake people inside the castle to see that science depends on past discoveries, but also on present enthusiasm and future scientists. So incredible are her exploits that not only her castle, but a larger one nearby, name her as a Fellow: celebrating that she’s not just one of them, but one of the best of them. (It’s quite impressive for a person to meet the qualifications of a prestigious award; it’s even moreso for the qualifications of a prestigious award to meet that person.) More importantly, she now went to Comic-Con every year; coincidentally, so would Spectra the Laser Superhero, who used Becky’s booth to autograph her comics for young fans.

After some time, Becky focused her quests. The mostly-impossible quest became focused onhelping adults understand how science works — She and the gentle man into a 2-mile wide ring of science, and later to a giant museum of science, combating new dark forces that threaten the progress she helped make.

For her next nearly-impossible/neatly-quantifiable quest, she chose the Triple Crown of Swimming a challenge only four hundred people have met. It involves swimming twenty bridges of Manhattan (30 miles — which she did last year in 9h21m); swimming the English Channel (~30 mi in 60°F water — scheduled for next year); and swimming from Catalina Island to San Diego, a 20-mile open-water swim with challenging tides, temperatures and waves. Fewer than 500 people have accomplished the Catalina swim as she would: no wetsuit, headphones, watch, music, no ability to rest on any support (such as a boat). Just her, the water, and the near-impossilibity. Becky had prepared thoroughly, training body and mind with a professional coach. Last Monday just before midnight she began the 15-20 hour adventure, monitored by an official record observer and trailed by a pilot boat to give her food and water.

“Everything Happens, but not everything Happens for a Reason”. Seventeen hours into the swim, her heart stopped and so did oxygen flow to her wonderful crazy brain. Every precaution had been taken before. Every healing measure has been taken after. But her wonderful crazy brain has gone. The gentle man knew Becky’s superhero work had one more chapter: she will donate her organs to help many other people live.

I am filled with grief but unable to mourn Becky, because she died a superhero. She went to Comic-Con, she discovered new science, she taught people that physics is important, and she made enormous progress on every front of improving equity in science. As Spectra, as ringleader, as prankster, as Ironwoman, as swimmer, as friend, as foil, as wife, as Fellow of the AAAS, as Felllow of the APS, she touched my life and yours and generations to come.