474 POLITICS AND POLITICIANS
issues, Howard chooses to run as a “people’s candidate” (#8) who rejects the extremes
of “animalistic conservatism and “jellyfi sh liberalism” (#7) and favors educating and
empowering individual voters to understand and make decisions about matters of
war and economics. His campaign mainly functions as a vehicle for Howard’s scathing
critique of the cheap materialism and consumerism of American life. As one shocked
voter remarks, “My god, he’s telling the truth! He’ll be dead in a week!” (#8). Although
Howard is driven from the race in short order by a phony sex scandal, his candidacy
served as a way for writer Gerber to satirize American politics as shallow, superfi cial,
and ultimately destructive to democracy.
Political questions began to move to the forefront in the superhero comics of the
1970s as well. Costumed adventurers were beginning to fi nd a political voice, and in
most cases they were critical of the status quo in the United States. Writer Dennis
O’Neil brought an earnest political relevance to his run on DC’s Green Lantern / Green
Arrow ; in O’Neil’s hands, the title characters frequently engaged in adventures that
brought them into confl ict over liberal and conservative versions of the American
dream. O’Neil’s premiere issue (#76, 1970) featured liberal gadfl y Green Arrow chiding
his sometime partner, Green Lantern, for his simple-minded approach to law and
order—an approach that neglects the larger social problems underlying crime, includ-
ing political corruption and racism. As an African American man tells Green Lantern,
“I been readin’ about you... How you work for the blue skins... And how on a
planet someplace you helped out the orange skins... and you done considerable for the
purple skins! Only there’s skins you never bothered with—! Th e black skins! I want to
know... How come?!” Th e heroes set out to investigate what Green Arrow calls the
“hideous moral cancer [that] is rotting our very souls,” taking on issues such as indus-
trial pollution, the powers of the mass media, and the plight of Native Americans.
In Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema’s Captain America , the title character vanquishes
a racist, red-baiting 1950s version of himself, a victory which seems to suggest a rejection
of a jingoistic, nationalistic American past (#153–56, 1972). However, Cap’s further
adventures complicated that cautiously optimistic conclusion: the “Secret Empire”
storyline that ran through issues 169–73 (1974) refl ected Watergate-era disillusionment
with the American government and a growing cynicism with the political process itself.
In these issues, Captain America fi nds himself the subject of a vicious smear campaign
by the Committee to Regain America’s Principles. CRAP—a clear allusion to Richard
Nixon’s CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President)—runs advertisements seeking
to convince the public that the Sentinel of Liberty is a dangerous vigilante working in
opposition to America’s principles. As Cap and his partner the Falcon discover, CRAP is
merely a front group for a shadowy cabal known as the Secret Empire, who intend to take
over the United States. In a dramatic fi nal confrontation in the Oval Offi ce of the White
House, Number One reveals himself to Captain America as a high-ranking politician
who hungers for power that would not be “constrained by legalities” (#175). Th e revela-
tion shakes Cap’s faith in the very concept of America and leads him to take on a new
identity, that of Nomad, the Man without a Country, for a short time.
