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 comic-book 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 roommate'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 protege, 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 superheroes 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.