Pete Hegseth’s remarks this week about improving the Manliness of our Nation’s Fighting Forces made me think of a comic book. Because that’s how my brain works.
I started reading the comic book DAREDEVIL back in the ’80s on a recommendation of a friend,, The book’s writer, artist Frank Miller, had bee doing some exciting things with the comic and it sounded interesting. This was before Frank had morphed into a cranky old man and he was doing a lot of innovative work, such as his graphic novels RONIN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. He was one of the superstars who, for better or worse, ushered in the Grim ‘n’ Gritty Era of comics. As it happened, Frank left DAREDEVIL only a few months after I started reading the book — I was unlucky about catching on to hot titles back then — but I did manage to pick up his final storyline: “Born Again”, a four-part story in which Daredevil’s arch enemy, the Crime Boss Kingpin, learns Daredevil’s secret identity and sets about to systematically destroy Matt Murdock’s life.
At one point, Kingpin uses his contacts as Respectable Businessman Wilson Fisk, to “borrow” a top secret asset from the Pentagon, code-named “Nuke”, part of a failed project to replicate the “Super-Soldier” process which created Captain America. These things never seem to work. Nuke has been augmented with cybernetics and a metal-reinforced skeleton like Wolverine’s, and pumped up with drugs to keep him at peak combat readiness. Oh, and he has a flag tattooed on his face. Because this was the ’80s and Frank Miller doesn’t do subtle.
Nuke had three types of meds that his handlers dosed out as needed. The “Reds” were uppers, to fuel the proper battle rage, and the “Whites” and the “Blues” were intended to calm him down once the mission was over. In researching the character for this piece, I learned that the “Reds” were actually placebos and the Nuke was just a psycho-puppy all the time do to mental conditioning inflicted upon him in a later flashback story, (which makes sense in a comic book). I don’t remember it this was the case in story originally, or if the placebo thing was tacked on later, but in either case, Nuke was definitely portrayed as being addicted to them.
Nuke and Daredevil have a fight in Hell’s Kitchen, the New York neighborhood Daredevil protects and calls home, and nearly burns it down. Daredevil narrowly manages to stop Nuke, but the Avengers show up to control the crisis and government drag Nuke off to dose him with tranquilizers. It turns out that Captain America doesn’t care for brutal thugs wearing the flag killing civilians and burning down American cities. Who knew?
Cap does some investigating on his own. A smarmy general he speaks to tries to stonewall him, and tells Cap that he respects Cap for his loyalty. Cap isn’t having any of this flattery. Standing next to an American flag in the general’s office, he takes a fold of the flag in his had and says, “My only loyalty is to the dream”. In later years, Frank Miller has become more of a right-wing nationalist, but in this DAREDEVIL story, I think he gets Cap right.
Nuke breaks loose from his handlers, scarfs down a fist-full of “Reds” and charges back to Hell’s Kitchen for round two. By this time Nuke is completely out of control, and the Army sends helicopters to take him out. But this time the Government isn’t spiriting him away. Daredevil stuffs Nuke into a car and drives him to the Daily Bugle (Yes, Daredevil is blind, and yes he drives a car. Rule of Cool. Shut up), where he is able to provide evidence of Wilson Fisk’s connection to corrupt Pentagon officials and his responsibility for the destruction in Hell’s Kitchen.
And where was I? Oh yes. I was talking about Pete Hegseth. I looked up the Wikipedia page on Nuke and found the image that I used above. And I thought, Yeah. That’s exactly the soldier Pete wants in His Army.
