Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster

First off, I love this title. It's not Captain America versus the Asthma Monster, or Captain America battles the Asthma Monster, it's "meets", as if he ran into the Asthma Monster in the supermarket or something. Unfortunately, you turn to the first page and the headline title is "Attack of the Asthma Monster", so that kind of dashes your expectations. 

This issue is by Louise Simonson, who wrote and edited for both Marvel and DC over the years, and who is notable for helping kill Superman and for introducing the world to Cable. Then again, she also created Power Pack, so I can't hate her too much. 

Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster begins with a boy named John who is so excited about meeting Captain America at a mall that he has an asthma attack. In the nurse's office at school, he meets Ruth, a young charmer with feathered hair who is the captain of the swim team even though she also has asthma. Unfortunately, their budding romance is cut short when Swamp Thing the Asthma Monster attacks the school, bent on giving everyone an asthma attack!

(Above: Miss Grady is awfully provocatively dressed for a school nurse)

The Asthma Monster is an inexplicably teleporting badass who uses his considerable scientific prowess to give asthma attacks to the staff and students of local elementary schools. John and Ruth are immune, though, because of their asthma medicine! Didn't think of that, did you, Asthma Monster? He's so pissed off by this that he goes to destroy the "antidote" to his evil scheme. And who could possibly stop him? Why, Captain America and his unmarked yellow van!

(Above: Batman has his Batmobile, the X-Men have their Blackbird, and Captain America has a sweet van he bought off of a retiring contractor. He's gonna get a unicorn airbrushed on the hood when he's got enough cash)

Turns out Cap himself had asthma when he was a kid, but presumably the Super-Soldier serum that gave him his powers cleared that right up. Anyway, seems that the A.M. read the prescription label on the kids' medicine and has gone to take out their pediatrician, Dr. David. So Captain America takes the kids with him to the epic standoff in the doctor's office, and they're able to help by spraying the monster with their inhalers. But hey! It wasn't a real monster after all! It was a normal adult who felt left out because he had asthma, and who put all of his energy into making a Swamp Thing costume and devising a formula to attack people's lungs, instead of just manning up and taking some common and readily available asthma medication! He wanted everyone to suffer like he did! This all leads up to the best panel in the comic:

(Above: I will never get tired of the "...IN JAIL!" stinger)

So what have we learned from this?

1. Building a teleporting monster suit is easier than purchasing an inhaler

2. Children with asthma will, if left untreated, grow up to be unpleasant and petty supervillains

3. Someone needs to pay to have Cap's logo stenciled on his van

4. I never, ever want to type "asthma" again

Captain America Goes to War Against Drugs

All right, this is more like it. This one's a Peter David-penned comic from 1990, in which no one's favorite superhero, Captain America, teaches kids Not To Use Drugs in a tale that is both surprisingly heartfelt and mind-bogglingly convoluted. High above the Earth, a group of mysterious and warlike aliens are watching humanity in order to decide whether or not to invade. They point out that humans have a love of life and hope and freedom and fighting and would probably not give in easily, but also that they enjoy taking addictive drugs, which could destroy them! Therefore, although they can apparently see what's going on all over the earth, they decide to focus on four teenagers, and if half of them start using drugs, then the invasion will continue.

(Above: There is no way this plan could fail)

The real meat of the story begins with a kid named Keith emailing Captain America, worried that the star pitcher of his baseball team, Mitch Baskin (named so because Mitch rhymes with pitch, and because Peter David was hungry for some delicious Baskin-Robbins ice cream at this point in the script) is hepped up on the drugs. It's actually kind of refreshing to see a cautionary drug story where the user is a popular, talented kid and not a cartoonish bully or the victim of Peer Pressure, but unfortunately, the rest of the story isn't quite as realistic. Anyway, Mitch smokes meth before the Big Game or something and pitches so poorly that the ball somehow scoots up the batter's flank, knocks off his helmet and hits him in the head hard enough to knock him out.

(Above: Mitch disobeys drug laws; laws of physics)

Captain America shows up seemingly out of nowhere and alerts a passing patrol car by hurling his shield at it, and then blurts out to the whole team that Mitch has been mainlining cocaine or snorting pot or who knows what, the comic doesn't make it very clear. Everyone's understandably upset, but Cap points out that that what Mitch needs is treatment and a supportive group of friends and family to help him battle his addiction. Lucky Mitch! If this had been written two years earlier, during the Reagan era, he'd have been sent off to prison for twenty years to dry out among serial killers and crime lords!

Meanwhile, Mitch finds his (alien) pusher and really lets him have it:

(Above: Mitch gets crunk krunk)

The alien's mask cracks! He's not human after all! But the opposing team shows up to beat the shit out of Mitch, and the pusher gets away! Cap shows up out of nowhere again and shows the kind of compassionate understanding for the stresses in Mitch's life that doesn't belong in a story about faceless aliens giving teenagers drugs in order to decide whether or not to invade the earth. Mitch promises to try not to do so many drugs, and Captain America is surprised to find that Mitch's tale of masked alien dealers may not be an acid-fueled hallucination after all! And then the story just kind of... ends. What happened to the other three kids the aliens were selling drugs to? Maybe there were supposed to be three more books in this series?

What we have learned from this book? Anyone offering you drugs is probably an alien in a ceramic mask. Also, Captain America will answer any email you send him; go right ahead and write! He's got nothing else going on!