Holy Drug War, Batman!

recruiting america's superheroes for a comic battle

In 1998 President Clinton introduced a five-year, $1 billion program aimed at keeping kids off drugs. The program sought to coordinate the efforts of local police, federal agents, advertising executives, school administrators, teachers and parents. It allowed White House officials to insert antidrug rhetoric into TV shows. With that much manpower, you'd think drug czar Barry McCaffrey would feel confident he had everything necessary to end drug abuse. Apparently not. He needed another weapon, one larger than the powers of Washington and schools and the police combined. So who did McCaffrey enlist in the fight against the ultimate evil? Spider-Man.

The webbed wonder leaped at the challenge, and the government provided Marvel Comics with $2.5 million to create a four-part comicbook story aimed at teaching kids to "recognize and resist drug images in the media.'' The Fast Lane series debuted in Marvel Comics this past fall, and in magazines such as Boys' Life, Girls' Life, Contact Kids, React and Scholastic Classroom. McCaffrey and Marvel hoped that their comic crusade would reach 65 percent of the nation's schoolchildren.

What it will teach them is another matter. Subtlety is not a common trait among superheroes, who settle disputes with fists and fury while speaking in high moral tones. In the first Fast Lane episode, Spider-Man uses the superpower he gained from a radioactive spider bite to battle a large green monster named Mysterio. But truer evil lurks nearby. Astute readers quickly discover that the real villain is a surly movie star, Zane Whelan, who wears a T-shirt emblazoned with a large pot leaf. Whelan's dangerous anti-authoritarianism appeals mightily to his impressionable young fans. A newspaper intern soon takes Whelan's cue and begins experimenting with marijuana. His reefer madness leads to several brushes with death (he crashes a van, falls from atop a crane and teeters rebelliously at one edge of the Brooklyn Bridge). At the last minute, Spidey rescues the boy and exposes the dangerous "truth'' about marijuana: Smoking pot can get you killed.

The Fast Lane series wasn't Spider-Man's first foray into the drug war. In 1971, at the behest of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Marvel Comics published a similar Spider-Man series to warn kids about drugs. The controversial subject matter forced Marvel to remove the industry's Comics Code Authority seal of approval. The code--a rating system introduced in 1954 following a moral crusade to clean up comics--tells parents which comics are free of malicious subject matter and forbids any mention of drug use.

In the 1971 series, Spider-Man first encounters drugs when an obviously stoned hippie announces that he can "fly like a bird'' and launches himself off a building. Spider-Man swoops down to save him, using the opportunity to declare drugs "one fight you can't win.'' After storing his costume and reverting to the mild-mannered Peter Parker, he discovers his roommate Harry Osborn popping pills to deal with a girlfriend's rejection and to make himself feel "zingy.'' Three pages later, Harry takes an overdose and barely survives. Spider-Man springs into action, tracks down his room-mate's dope suppliers and beats them senseless. As the story concludes, a newspaper editor is rushing to get news of Harry's overdose into the next edition. In this Seventies-era fantasy, Harry avoids both arrest and a prison sentence. Spider-Man is a good guy to know.

Later that year, the Green Arrow also tackled the drug issue. To emphasize his devotion to the cause, he one-ups Spider-Man by announcing on the cover that narcotics are "more deadly than the atom bomb.'' In the comic's opening scene the straight-arrow hero catches his protégé, Speedy, shooting heroin. He administers a beating and then throws him out of the house. While the Green Arrow goes in search of the dealer, a friend happens upon Speedy's stash. He immediately dies of an overdose, prompting the Green Arrow to track down the dealer and beat him mercilessly.

Once the two have been reunited, Speedy proudly tells the Green Arrow that he has kicked his heroin habit cold turkey (see?--it was just a moral failing). Then, in a plot twist, he delivers a surprisingly insightful analysis of the situation: "Drugs are a symptom, and you, like the rest of society, attack the symptom, not the disease.''

As the drug war intensified, its portrayal in comic books became more distorted. In 1990, the FBI teamed with Marvel to produce a special issue, Captain America Goes to War Against Drugs. Captain America (who, incidentally, gained his power through a failed government drug experiment) opens the story by destroying an alien spaceship equipped with a drug lab and run by suspiciously Colombian-looking thugs, who are systematically beaten and shot.

Drug dealers are not the only targets of violence in drug-war comics. Witness the fate of the story's central character, a high school baseball phenom who takes drugs to alleviate the pressure of the big game. His approach doesn't work. He promptly beans a batter with a fastball and flees. While Captain America delivers a sermon on drugs, the opposing team tracks down the offending pitcher and beats him to a bloody pulp with baseball bats. Chastened by this all-American ass-kicking, the pitcher vows never again to mess with drugs.

But even super-heroes are not immune to the ravages of drug abuse, as Batman demonstrated in a 1991 series. When he fails to save a girl from drowning, the caped crusader decides that his superstrength is insufficient and starts using an unspecified designer drug in order to make himself stronger. He quickly develops enormous muscles and a menacing habit of cackling maniacally whenever evil befalls a good guy. Batman begins the downward spiral into addiction and soon is freeing criminals in exchange for pills. In a rare moment of clarity, he is overcome by self-loathing and turns to his butler, Alfred, for help. Ignoring a suggestion that he seek medical attention, Batman has Alfred lock him in the Bat Cave for a month to break his addiction in true superhero fashion--alone, like a man. He emerges victorious, then beats up his supplier and an army of addicts.

Like most antidrug propaganda, these comics preach the domino theory that every vice leads to disease, madness and death. The unfortunate character in the Daredevil series, published in 1987, is Karen Page, the superhero's girlfriend. When she develops a drug habit, her life deteriorates in a string of moral lapses. Karen betrays her boyfriend's secret identity for a fix, then winds up making porno movies to support her habit. Her woeful tale ends when she discovers she's HIV-positive. Rather than have her die from AIDS, which might seem anticlimactic, the creators of this story have Karen meet a violent end at the hands of Bullseye, Daredevil's nemesis. Nothing underscores a cautionary tale like a drug user dying in a hail of bullets.

This sort of comic exaggeration doesn't teach kids anything useful about the risks of drugs, or explain why people take them, or distinguish relatively benign drugs such as marijuana from narcotics. Invariably, comics portray drug users as threats to the public safety, who, like any worthy villain, rain death and destruction. Because they are bad guys, users are dealt with accordingly--violence solves everything. Tough love isn't support and treatment: It's a baseball bat. The problem of addiction is framed as a shameful moral failure to be dealt with alone and in private. What kid is going to ask for help with drugs if Batman tells him it's for pussies?

Drug-fighting superheroes sell kids the same myths that Barry McCaffrey peddles to grown-ups. But when kids see their peers experiment with drugs and avoid a gory, comic-book fate, they'll ignore what little wisdom may be hidden in these action-packed allegories. And if their ignorance catches up with them, Spider-Man won't be there to save the day.