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Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age
[Part Nine]
It could have been a very bad time to be Marvel Comics character Captain America.
Could have been... and (probably) should have been.
America had just endured one of the most fractious and divisive periods in its (nearly; at the time) two centuries of history, with the memories of an unpopular war which had all but polarized the country into two age-based "camps" still painful and raw; and the steady trickle of revelations in the newspapers concerning something or another by the name of "Watergate" served as unpleasant harbinger of an occurrence which would (ultimately) jigsaw the nation's populace yet again, along political fault lines in the social strata.
For a great many Americans, at the time: the "United States" were anything but "united," in any meaning of the term not larded with heavy irony... if not bitterness or contempt, outright.
Probably not (in other words) the best of all possible eras in which to find oneself positioned as an unabashedly patriotic, red-white-and-blue comic book character by the emotionally-freighted name of "Captain America"; in a medium which was already beginning to lose its (once) all-but-unshakeable grip on the imagination and loyalties of the American child, in turn...
... oh, yeah: and some young, left-leaning, hotshot "hippie" writer
by the name of Steve Englehart was the guy a desperate Marvel Comics
had tapped to serve as your Boswell, going into the Bicentennial. 
"Beware of Serpents!" (CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON #163; July, 1973; Steve Englehart, scripter; Sal Buscema, penciler) opens up -- as was pretty much standard operating procedure for the typical Marvel comic book of the day -- with a strong action sequence "hook""; in this case, a violent daytime prison break by two of the Captain's former foemen -- longtime Marvel felon the Eel; and his younger, more venemous brother, the Viper.
Said escape has been engineered by none other than fellow Cap nemesis, the Cobra, who has liberated the two in order that they might serve as his herpetological henchmen in his villainous "Serpent Squad."
(Marvel Comics baddies were always banding together under such similarly
silly-sounding sobriquets as this, back in the good old days. "Batroc's
Brigade"; "Electro and his Emissaries of Evil"; "The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants";
one always suspected that something along the lines of "The Grand Exalted Order
of Fashion-Challenged Nogoodniks" was just a fill-in issue away from become
some desperate, deadline-challenged scribe's latest addition to the canon.
I'm just sayin', is all.)
Meanwhile: Cap and the Falcon are south
of the Mason-Dixon line, visiting the ancestral home of the former's longtime
romantic interest, Sharon Carter. The trio are accompanied by Sharon's
elder sister, Peggy Carter, who -- until only recently -- had been believed
to have perished, years earlier, and who had (instead) spent several amnesiac
decades in the clutches of one of the Captain's arch-nemeses, the calculating
Doctor Faustus. (No, no; no need for your eyes to glaze over like
that. That's really all the "back story" you're going to need, from here on
in. Scout's honor.)
While strolling through the estate grounds, Peggy and the solicitous Captain encounter an affable young man by the name of Dave Cox ; a former 'Nam P.O.W.
"How'd you lose your arm, son?" Cap inquires, gently.
"Thanks," Dave replies, in kind. "... for not pretending you didn't see it." And -- just that easily -- a bond is formed between the two men.
"I did a lot of thinking -- both before and after I was captured, Cap -- I've become a conscientious objector -- and I want nothing more to do with violence."
It may be difficult for some readers today to comprehend just how startling a scene such as the one detailed above was, back in 1973... with "conscientious objectors" (young men who refused, on either religious or personal principle, to engage in any sort of violence whatsoever) often derided as shameless cowards for electing not to serve in the Viet Nam war; even if said refusal resulted in imprisonment, or exile to another country outright (such as Canada), with accompanying status as a wanted felon and fugitive, in turn.
Simply put: the portrayal of committed anti-war sympathizers simply was not done, back in those days... unless (as was the case in the earlier explicted Brother Power, the Geek) they were depicted as unwashed and hirsute wastrels; or else self-serving cowards, outright. Steve Englehart's compassionate (and nicely understated; at least, in Marvel Comics terms) of the young Dave, then, was nothing short of a minor revelation... and a welcome (to say nothing of long overdue) one, at that.
Later on that evening -- back at the Carter family demesne -- Captain America and the Falcon are attacked by the Serpent Squad, who seek vengeance for earlier defeats (both singly and together) at the hands of the two heroes. [See panel reproduction, below]
Even with the odds seemingly stacked against them (outnumbered, as they are, three-to-two), Cap makes quick, efficient work of the pesky Viper, who -- with little more than poison-tipped darts in his villainous repertoire -- is easily the "weak sister" of the scaly lot; while the Falcon reminds the smug, self-congratulatory Cobra that Captain America has never taken on a pushover as one of his many partners. The Serpent Squad -- mere pages after its cover-heralded debut -- appears on the verge of a total reptilian routing.
An uncharacteristic battlefield misclculation on Cap's part, however (lunging towards the seemingly- dazed Eel -- in an attempt to deliver the knock-out blow -- allows the high-voltage heel to charbroil the hero's hands so severely that the flesh smoulders) allows the trio to slither away, snarling oaths of agonizing reprisal all the while.
The Falcon extorts a solemn oath from a reluctant Captain that the latter will do nothing whatsoever to either track down or engage the still-at-large serpent men, his bandage-swathed hands all but useless for at least a week.
"I just want to make sure," the Falcon mutters, "that when I do go my own way, it's not because my partner's pushing up daisies."
The Captain, along with the aforementioned Peggy, pay a courtesy visit to Dave Cox the next morning...
... where the three of them -- Captain America; Peggy; and the disabled veteran -- are promptly ambushed by...
... well... you know.
Peggy shouts to Dave that the two of them will have to find some way to hold the Serpents at bay, until the patroling Falcon comes looking for them...
... whereupon: Dave... refuses. [See panel reproductions, below]
"I swore to myself and my God, who said: 'Thou Shalt Not Kill!' And: 'Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You!"
"I see what I thought was a man," the furious Peggy retorts, "is a rotten coward! Give me the rifle! I'll defend us!"
"It has no bullets, Miss Carter," the grim-visaged veteran replies. "It is only... a reminder."
Moments later, the door of Dave's cottage is shattered inwards, as the Serpents -- bearing a lethal, cannon-ish device which is (the Cobra sibilantly assures us) "a Cobra Convulsion Pistol"; patent pending, one may presume -- confronts the stolid veteran, and demands that he tell them: "We know you're not alone in here... so where's Captain America?"
In what is easily one of my favorite Captain America-related
lines of all time, an almost eerily calm Dave responds: "That's an interesting
question. I suppose you could say he's in the hearts and
minds of most people in this country."
[NOTE TO STEVE ENGLEHART: please, please, oh pretty please come
back. The comics industry needs you. Really.
You just have no idea.]
It might have been a nice touch, at this moment, if the Viper -- himself,
a former Madison Avenue advertising executive -- had nodded appreciatively and
murmured: "... OOOOooooh... hang on while I find a pencil, 'kay?
That one's a keeper!"
The other two, however -- not being nearly so keen on the prospect of everyone joining in for a quick, refreshing round of "Ask Me Another" -- decide that it's Torture the Only Guy In the Room Not Wearing Any Underoos time, and threaten to "blast your one remaining arm to bits... cripple you completely... unless you TALK!
(Incidentally -- and not to break up the story's brilliantly
executed dramatic "flow," or nothin' -- but: that Sal Buscema guy
sure could draw, couldn't he? This is one sweet-lookin'
comic book; no ungainly, Liefeld-esque shots of men with shoulders jutting in
either direction like twin aircraft carriers, wobbling about on ankles the width
of pipe cleaners; every panel flowing seamlessly and inexorably into the next,
in the service of telling as clear and comprehensible a story as possible.
Yessir: next to the sainted Jack "King" Kirby, Sal Buscema was
[in my humble opinion] pretty much the "definitive" artist for this title,
and no lie.)
Well: the (still) "hands"-less Cap crashes down upon the Serpents, at this point -- having secreted himself in the rafters of Dave's cottage, in order to gain both strategic advantage and the element of surprise -- like God's own judgment, in red-whitte-and-blue leggings.
Even though (temporarily) nearly as "crippled" as the man he is defending -- a nice, subtle "touch," that, by the way -- The Star-Spangled Sentinel manages to occupy the trio's anti-social attentions long enough for the long-absent Falcon to finally show up and open the last can o' industrial strength WhupAss said dirtbags have just been begging and begging for, since Page One.
In the aftermath of the nigh-apocalyptic melee, a puzzled Peggy Carter -- ministering to an unconscious Dave's injuries as best she can -- opines that: "I can't understand why a man like him didn't break!"
"Nailing" the moment with his trademarked craftsmanship and restraint, the good Englehart has the Captain respond -- and, remember: this was in 1973; a period during which time voicing the "wrong" opinion on the whole "anti-war" thing in your local pool hall or bowling alley could still occasion a bloody fist fight, if you weren't careful about it -- with a quiet, confident:
"Because he is a man like he is, Peg."
Okay. So: we've taken careful (if a bit bleary-eyed, on occasion) stock of nine fully representative comics stories from the period; each one dealing with some aspect of the youth-inspired "political dissent" movement of the '60's and early '70's, and the attempts of the two major mainstream comics publishers to incorporate and/or exploit said concerns, re: their various franchises.
I believe we've effectively demonstrated the following "points," in so doing:
1.) While, as a general rule, the "older" writers of the day (Joe Simon; Bob Haney) fared less well in such attempts than their younger industry counterparts (Steve Skeates, on occasion; Dennis O'Neil; Steve Englehart)... the rosy blush of youth on one's cheek was not, in and of itself, sufficient unto the storytelling need, in this regard (Mike Friedrich).
2.) DC Comics' attempts at mining that particular storytelling vein
were (demonstrably) the more concerted of the two, with said efforts
extending to virtually every comics title the company published at the time.
(You'll have a long, fruitless trek ahead of you -- as I did, preparatory
to finalizing the selection of entries for this section -- if you attempt scouring
the pages of THE FANTASTIC FOUR; DR. STRANGE; or THOR for similarly-themed fare,
I assure you.)
(As a matter of fact: the comic publisher of the period which most aggressively
tacked into that particular storytelling headwind was none other than
the oft-[unfairly] maligned Archie comics... but: that's another
entry, for another time. Patience, all you ARCHIE buffs, out there; I'm
getting to it.)
3.) Whether or not such efforts are adjudged, ultimately, as being "good" ones or "bad" -- either as fiction, or brute polemic -- it seems readily enough apparent, in perfect 20/20 hindsight, that they most assuredly did succeed in broadening the meta-fictive "dialogue" of comics overall, allowing for the utilization of even more controversial elements and themes, later on, in turn.
(Try imagining, say, Alan Moore's SWAMP THING; J.M. DeMatteis' MOONSHADOW; or Howard Chaykin's AMERICAN FLAGG -- or even something as "mainstream" as Mark Evanier's BLACKHAWK, with its occasional ruminations on The Morality of Atomic Warfare, and When Does a Soldier Step Over the Ethical "Line" and Become a Murderer?, for that matter -- seeing print in an industry without such as these having blazed the topical "trail," before hand... and the point becomes all but manifest.)
We'll be covering something a bit less "heavy," subject-wise, next time out, here in the friendly confines of the Toy Wonder Home Page. Just so we can all take a little "breather," as it were.
... and: as for the (literally) dozens and dozens of you outraged ARCHIE diehards out there, who've been inundating the ol' e-mailbox with plaintive requests for an examination of how the Riverdale gang handled the onset of "relevance" in the mainstream American comic:
Early part of '99. My solemn oath on it.
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE ONE
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE TWO
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE THREE
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE FOUR
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE FIVE
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE SIX
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE SEVEN
Political Dissent In the Comics of the Silver Age: PAGE EIGHT
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