Prostate Man: New Action Hero Makes Debut

Ask any middle-aged man and he would probably tell you he spent hours as a boy poring over comic books and imagining himself as a superhero. Boys grow up, yet superheroes rarely seem to age…until now.

Prostate Man is the everyman. He’s over 50, but young at heart. He’s still sporting the uniform, but there’s a little more spread around the waist and a little less hair on top.

Like many men over 50, he’s also taking a closer look at his health; waking up multiple times in the night to urinate has him wondering if he should look for more information about prostate health.

This concept is the driver behind the Take It Like a Man awareness campaign, designed to get men thinking about prostate health while using a little humour to guide them in the right direction. You can visit Prostate Man’s website, http://www.prostateman.com, to read his interactive comic book and learn more about prostate cancer and prostate health.

You can also send e-cards to friends, download a Prostate Man desktop background and take a quiz to test your prostate knowledge.

The multimedia campaign unveils a new direction for prostate cancer awareness in Thunder Bay. It is the brainchild of local firm Generator Advertising and Strategy, and developed in partnership by the Northern Cancer Research Foundation (NCRF) and Regional Cancer Care (RCC) at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre.

"The ‘Take It Like a Man’ prostate cancer awareness campaign, developed more than five years ago, still resonates in the community so we wanted to return to that concept and rework it," said Generator’s Barry Smith. "Prostate Man is designed to appeal to the baby boomers who grew up reading comics. They can laugh along with this superhero as he comes to terms with getting older, and in turn start thinking about their own prostate health."

Prostate cancer awareness campaigns have been a priority for RCC and the NCRF, particularly because of high incidence rates and the increased ability to treat the disease when found early. In Canada, prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in men. In Thunder Bay, the incidence of prostate cancer is expected to rise by 67 per cent by 2014.