Captain America’s a Roid Head

Filed Under Comics

I was reading the latest issue of “MAD” magazine last night, the one with Alfred E. Neuman on the cover dressed up like a hypodermic needle sports mascot. The issue takes professional baseball players to task for shooting up with performance enhancing steroids. It’s a subject rife for parody. Contemporary sports heroes’ greatest achievements — like Barry Bonds’ controversial home run record — are dotted with asterisks and largely seen as counterfeit when measured against the accomplishments of athletes who weren’t doping. Whatever extra oomph they’d injected into their veins didn’t help them power through the Congressional hearings and public disgrace that came with being outed as a ‘roid head, either.

But there’s one hero — one enduring American icon –who has never been taken to task for his steroid use. Maybe it’s because he punched Hitler, maybe it’s because he’s dressed in red-white-and-blue (his outfit makes a lapel pin look like the half-hearted attempt at jingoism it is), or maybe it’s because his name is Captain America. Whatever is, once scientists pumped the Super Soldier Serum into frail Steve Rogers’ bloodstream and turned him into an ubermensch, he’s been immune to the sort of bad press that’s plagued today’s overdeveloped ball players.

Captain America’s seen a recent resurgence in popularity, coming on the heels of his shooting death in the wake of Marvel Comics’ epic “Civil War” crossover, and the announcement of the “First Avenger: Captain America” film that’s due in 2011. Will the steroid use in his early career come back to haunt the Star-Spangled Avenger now that he’s been thrust into the mainstream? How might it tarnish his heroic endeavors? Would every defeat he handed the Red Skull, Baron Zemo and Kang the Conqueror be given an asterisk?

Like Superman (an illegal immigrant), Captain America is a post-human whose controversial origins have been swept under the rug. Comics are a four-color prism for young people to view our culture, our morality, our justice system, our scientific advancements, and above all, our humanness. Creators, though, sometimes fail to address issues right in front of their faces, like Cap’s days as a juicer. But is Captain America less of a hero because performance enhancers gave him augmented strength, speed and stamina? Or, is his origin largely inconsequential, unlike a roided-up professional athlete who crushes a long-standing record for personal gain, and not for the good of his country?

-Brad Lohan*

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