Unbagging Captain America Meets The Asthma Monster!

Captain America Meets The Asthma Monster!

Release: Jan 1988

Cover: Jan 1988

Creators

Writer	Louise Simonson
Cover Inker	Al Milgrom
Penciller	Alex Saviuk
Inker	Fred Fredericks
Colorist	Paul Becton
Letterer	Rick Parker

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If I can’t breathe, then no one can breathe!

When I was still doing Spotlight Sunday posts on the main site I did a few posts about what I call PSA comics. Some of them are actual Public Service Announcement comics, but some of them are basically just marketing materials, and many of them are pretty much both. Still, it makes sense to me as a blanket term for comics that are designed to convey some sort of information – Drugs are bad! Nestle Quik is good! – to impressionable children and are given out freely, often in schools.

This one, which marks a repeat appearance from Cap in this type of comic, falls squarely in the pure PSA category and was apparently distributed via doctors’ offices.

This one feels a little slight compared to some others, in that it’s just the sixteen-page story with no filler of any kind. I guess Glaxo, Inc. didn’t want to spring for having any sort of activities to be included inside, though there is one on the back cover.

In any case, given that it is such a quick, uncomplicated story, this probably could have been a Short Box, but I like giving these PSA comics the full treatment.

In my posts about some of the PSA comics made by Marvel’s Distinguished Competition, I noted that they didn’t really feel that different from a typical, off-the-spinner-rack comic of the era, whereas the Marvel versions have seemed much more distinct. This one kind of splits the difference, not really feeling like a contemporary Marvel book, but with some nods to the then-current state of things in the Marvel Universe. Most notably, Captain America’s computerized nationwide telephone hotline system.

In the comics of the time, Cap had established that hotline using some of the money he’d gotten in backpay from the Army.

The comic opens with a brief recap of the origin of Captain America – skipping over the part about being frozen for decades – on the inside front cover.

The main story is written and illustrated by comics veterans Louise “Weezie” Simonson and Alex Saviuk, and, as noted, is rather slight and leans more into its didactic purpose – teaching people about asthma – than into telling an exciting or interesting narrative.

A boy named John is in class where he and his fellow students are busier looking at an announcement from the paper about Captain America making an appearance at their local mall. John is very excited about this, so excited that it causes him to have an asthma attack.

One of the other students mocks him for being unable to breathe, but the others defend him and get the attention of the teacher who sends him to the nurse’s office. It’s clear that this is a common occurrence, and it’s also clear that it’s very upsetting to John.

While resting on a cot in the nurse’s office, John feels sorry for himself and laments the fact that his asthma will keep him from ever being like his idol, Captain America. In fact, he’s certain it will keep him from being anything.

However, his pity party is interrupted when the nurse brings in another student to talk to him, a girl named Ruth.

John is shocked to learn that Ruth also has asthma. After all, she’s captain of the swim team! How can such a thing be possible?

Ruth explains that she used to feel the same way John does, but she went to asthma camp and learned about things like her triggers and how to respond when she feels an attack coming on, and what she can do to prevent it. John realizes that he does get a bit of advanced warning in the form of a tickly throat.

Before they can talk any further, they hear the nurse scream and run out to find her being attacked by…the Asthma Monster!

He’s spraying the nurse with some sort of mist from what he calls his “aller-gun,” which to Ruth sounds like allergen, which is the sort of thing that can trigger an asthma attack, and, indeed, the nurse appears to be having an attack even though she doesn’t have asthma.

He turns his weapon on the two kids, but to no avail. Ruth and John reckon that the aller-gun must somehow trigger asthma in people even if they don’t have it, but it doesn’t work on the two of them because they just took their asthma medication. Foiled by the children having the antidote, the Asthma Monster disappears.

The kids think about giving the nurse their medication, but know that can be dangerous, so they decide to go for help, only to find that the Asthma Monster is attacking the rest of the school, causing all of the students, faculty, and staff to have asthma-like attacks.

John hits on the idea of calling Captain America’s hotline. A computer answers, but John leaves a message, and fortunately for the two of them the computer immediately relayed the message to Cap, who was already on his way to town for his appearance, so he pulls up in his van right away.

…there’s something a bit disturbing about two children running up to an oddly-dressed stranger in a van.

Anyway, the kids explain what’s going on to Cap, who calls the National Guard to bring in asthma medication and doctors, and then just takes the kids off for a ride on his motorbike.

I’m not clear on

1. Why he needed to bring the kids along – he says they’re witnesses, but he already knows what he needs to know
2. He takes his motorbike rather than just continuing in the van

But I guess taking them helped, as John has figured out where the Asthma Monster is headed – when he complained about the kids having the antidote he said that he knows where they get it. So John reasons that he’s going after the doctor who treats him and Ruth.

However, excitement is a trigger for John, so he begins having an attack as they’re speeding along, but Cap tells him a little trick that will help him. It works, leading John to wonder how Cap knew what to do, and he and Ruth are both amazed to learn that before he became a super soldier, he had asthma, just like them!

John’s hunch was right and the Asthma Monster is attacking their doctor, in a quest to find the asthma medication so that he can destroy it.

Even after getting hit with a dose of the aller-gun, Cap fights on and ultimately defeats the Asthma Monster by smashing the helmet he wears that not only protects him from the effects of his gun, but also allows him to breathe normally in general, because it turns out that the Asthma Monster…has asthma!

It turns out that the Asthma Monster is someone who stayed on that same bitter, self-pitying path that we found John on at the beginning of the story, and rather than simply learning how to live with asthma he devoted his time to finding a way to make everyone suffer as he had suffered, all the while breathing easily in a helmet that pumped pure oxygen into his lungs.

Unlike John, he never learned the lessons taught by the examples of Ruth and Captain America, and refuses to learnt hem now, and as the police take him away he vows that he will one day return…

I should note that this exists and I own it.

I said this one didn’t feel like a bit of marketing material the way some others do, but Marvel does shill for itself with a Marvel subscription ad – a special 9-issue subscription only $5.25 – on the inside back cover. (At the time, I probably would have only picked X-Men if I had to pick just one, but also New Mutants if I could pick two.)

And that’s pretty much that. The fight between Cap and the Asthma Monster was pretty anticlimactic, and like I said, the point was mostly to teach people – especially those kids who have it – about asthma and how it doesn’t have to prevent you from living the life you want to live.

I liked that there was also a message to parents in it, as part of John’s problem was that his parents were too cautious, and at the end he resolved to tell them that they could stop babying him.

My older brother suffered from severe asthma when he was young, to the extent that the odds didn’t favor him getting much older, but he did go on to live an active life, just as John intends to as our story ends.

In college I learned that I have mild asthma, which kind of explained why catching a common cold often managed to completely wreck me when I was growing up.

Of course, none of those personal connections made the story any more interesting. This wasn’t really Weezie’s finest work, but it definitely served its purpose, and she did manage to fit in a bit of a character arc in a short span.

Saviuk is a seasoned pro who delivered solid – if rather minimalist – art throughout which did help to add to the feeling of being a “real” comic.

Overall, it’s not a particularly outstanding example of the PSA genre – I’ll take the TRS-80 Whiz Kids over Ruth and John any day – but it’s still a solid entry that was worth Unbagging.

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