by Jason Inman
There’s one Beetle Bailey strip where the reader sees Sergeant Snorkel constantly saluting. When the “camera” pulls out, it’s revealed that Beetle has been walking back and forth past his window holding an American flag. Sarge was forced to salute every time he saw it, and Beetle knew it. Beetle isn’t a dummy. This is a clever prank to pull on your overly patriotic sergeant.
In Iraq, we had several officers who would always try to “hang” with the men, the enlisted men, I mean. These lieutenants and captains who commanded us would try to act like they were our friends. Hemming and hawing about the dirt and the sand on the missions. How tough it was to go outside the wire in full battle rattle. What it was like to not call the wife for over two weeks because the satellite phones were down. Here’s the thing, they could easily have done all of those things I mentioned! They were the brass in charge! The enlisted men in my unit were the ones in the muck with few to no creature comforts, and quite frankly, it was a bit insulting when they would try to act “like one of the boys.”
So, we would “sniper check” them. During the Vietnam War, regulations were implemented so that no enlisted man needed to salute a higher-ranked officer in the field. The Viet Cong snipers would watch the US units and, if they saw a salute, they would shoot the officer. Hence, no more saluting to protect the officers. It’s actually a very smart tactical rule. The term “sniper check” has become something of an inside joke in modern military units. Whenever you have an officer you don’t like, or sometimes one you can joke with, in the field, walk right past them, throw up that salute, and say “sniper check.” (Note of warning for anyone who wants to try this: it’s against regulations, so make sure you have a friendly relationship with the officer you are going to try this on, or else you may quickly find yourself on guard duty for a year.) Moves like “sniper checks” are simple ways to keep soldiers from going crazy in high-stress situations far from home. It also leads to a sort of Animal House-style environment where you love and hate the men you are serving with.
Look at Beetle Bailey and Sgt. Orville’s relationship. Beetle makes it his daily mission to irritate this man (with half a century of grief at this point, I’m surprised Sarge hasn’t dropped because of a heart attack). Sarge returns Beetle’s grief in kind. Sarge gobbles up the cookies from Beetle’s mother. He sometimes beats Beetle within an inch of his life, not to mention the hundreds upon hundreds of windows across Camp Swampy that have been obliterated because Sarge threw Beetle out of them. These two characters need each other; they also spend way too much time with each other. Their gentle pokes at each other alleviate the stress.
One of my sergeants was a man named Graham. (His name has been changed to preserve the legend of our hijinks.) He was a friendly fellow, but when it came right down to it, he wasn’t very smart. He’d order the unit to do several things that would fly completely in the face of logic. Time and time again, if you could name the most complicated way to complete a task, that was how Graham would order you to do it. Across many bases in Iraq, there were walls of graffiti. Units passing in and out of the base would tag their platoon designation. Sports teams and mascots would be painted. It became a rite of passage to spray something on these walls (when I say walls, I’m being quite generous. These were wire tubes filled with gravel to prevent bullets and explosives from hurting anyone inside).
Now, I wasn’t the only soldier who became tired of Graham or his way of running things. Most of the men in my unit thought he was quite annoying, and after three months of shenanigans, I came up with a plan. I told our unit that we should paint “Graham sucks” on every base wall we drove through. (Admittedly, it was not my best work, but I was young and stressed and in a war zone at the time. I ask you to cut me some slack.) The unit liked the idea, and Operation “Graham Sucks” caught fire. Driving into Camp Victory? We painted “Graham sucks.” Crossing the Iraqi border into Kuwait? We tagged “Graham sucks.” Soon there wasn’t a single base we regularly visited that we hadn’t tagged. Months passed, and the missions continued, so we kept tagging the phrase everywhere. It eased our stress. One day, we were assigned to guard a convoy north of Fallujah, a base we had not yet been to. As we drove into the base, on the wall at the entry, we saw a large piece of spray paint that blew our minds! There in bright blue letters: “Graham sucks.” No one in our unit had ever been to this base previously! Who had tagged it? The only possible solution came to me: other units. Other service members had seen our buffet of “Graham sucks” and carried on the tradition. The tagging was spreading! We had created the “Kilroy was here” of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Our Humvee and convoy erupted with laughter. It was an epidemic—belly laughs for hours. We couldn’t stop ourselves.
What did Graham think about the tagging? At first, he hated it, and I don’t blame him. However, over time, he warmed up to it and realized that it was only us trying to blow off steam. He let them go, and he let us have it. Graham could have brought us up on charges. Instead, he realized we needed it. So, he let the tradition continue.
For the record: I’ve read many books and seen many pictures from the years following my time in Iraq. I still see “Graham sucks” to this day. You won’t see them, however, as I changed the name of our sergeant to protect him from further insult.
While Beetle Bailey might be a comic strip character who is more of a slacker than a soldier, he actually might be the most real Army soldier in comics. The Army doesn’t have talking dogs and sergeants who beat their underlings, granted, but it does have an extreme amount of stress and pain. Soldiers currently serving need a way to unleash their inner anguish, and a slight jab at “the man” is a way of letting off steam. In the 1950s, the US military’s official paper banned Beetle Bailey from their publication. They thought it would lead to a wave of soldiers disrespecting their commanding officers. In fact, this comic character would probably be the last piece of media capable of doing that. Every service member is Beetle Bailey at one time or another. Sometimes you hate your commanding officer. Sometimes you hate your work. Sometimes you just want to go home. Beetle Bailey shows us that with a little dose of polite rebellion, you can gain some of your freedom back. You can become a human again and not just a soldier. As well as seeing yourself as a human being again and not a walking, talking uniform. It’s a powerful lesson every service member needs to remind themselves of to keep from going crazy.
Who knew Beetle Bailey’s napping on the side of a tree was not a dereliction of duty, but the proper thing to do for his mental health?
Chapter 13
Nuke
Patriotism Unchecked
There’s nothing wrong with loving your country. You might even say that, for Americans, patriotism is baked into the DNA of our great nation. Our founding fathers grabbed the freedom to help found our country, they flew in the face of the British, and we have never let go since. (They also stole a bunch of land owned by the Native Americans, so their record isn’t spotless.) It’s become our right. It’s become perfectly normal to display a flag outside your house every day (a move that confuses my Canadian wife). It also can go too far. Outward, vocal, and enthusiastic patriotism is an aspect of our culture we tolerate and even encourage (no matter which country you come from). However, patriotism can also be used in an “us against them” way. Or the classic “If you’re not with me, you’re against me” way. A healthy love of country should lead to a sense of unity and common understanding. Instead, human beings often take extreme patriotism down a road of ugliness, hostility, and vitriol against those they deem not patriotic enough. No comic book soldier exemplifies this problematic ideation more than the Marvel Comics character Nuke.
First published in Daredevil #230–233 in 1986, Nuke’s introduction was simple. It was hearing his name spoken in hushed tones. The Kingpin, also known as Wilson Fisk, wanted to call in an agent by that codename. His employee, Wesley, warned Fisk that Nuke had never before been deployed domestically. This trivial detail did n
ot bother the Kingpin. Nuke would be his weapon against a longtime nemesis, and Fisk reveled in his fantasy of being able to control the military. The institution was to become a pawn of his greed and his wealth in the same manner in which legitimate businessmen of New York City had. This is where the story of Nuke first leans into commentary on the modern American military complex.
We meet Nuke seated in a helicopter. For all intents and purposes, he is a perverted and overblown living version of the American dream. He is a blue-eyed, blonde-haired man with the stripes of the American flag painted on his face. He asks his pilot for “a red.” The pilot hands him a red pill. It was very much like watching America’s ever-growing opioid crisis scowl in our faces as readers. This soldier—this Nuke—was a drug addict. Nuke muttered to himself, “Our boys—our boys.” when the pilot informed him they had arrived in Nicaragua, rather than Vietnam. Yet this veteran could not see beyond his past mistakes and his previous missions; he would always be living in that singular war, partially because of the drugs and partially due to how the napalm warfare of that particular conflict had forever changed him. Nuke adjusted his giant rifle (a ginormous weapon which could only ever be found in comic books). Its name was Betsy, presumably for Betsy Ross, the woman widely credited with making the first American flag, and had a digital counter on its side, so Nuke could track his kills. He leaped from the helicopter, ready to wreak havoc.
At this point, I have to be honest. I hate this character, and, because I hate this character, I’m despising writing this chapter. Why, you may ask? Because I find the character Nuke despicable. He’s the cliché of what every peace-loving hippie considers soldiers to be! (I write this with no offense meant, I consider myself to be a peace-loving hippie.) He loves to kill, but he hides this fact behind his drive to save “our boys.” (What about the women, Nuke? What about the genderfluid? They serve too!) This man desperately needs help and many visits to a therapist. However, the trappings of the story are wrapped up in a situation ensuring he can never escape his war. By controlling him with pills and rewarding him with violence, all while he proudly brandishes the flag, Nuke was born a contemptible character. I understand the writer of this story (the great Frank Miller, creator of The Dark Knight Returns and Sin City) is using Nuke to present us with an idea. The theme is showing us how far modern America has been corrupted, sold to the highest bidder, even to scumbags like the terrible Kingpin. The story of Nuke is also to exaggerate what a 1970’s Captain America would actually have been like: a troubled man on drugs who struggled to do the right things, all while being tricked into killing the wrong people. If there’s a better representation of the problematic nature of the Vietnam War distilled into one character, then please tell me. He’s a parody of Rambo, Sylvester Stallone’s action representation of a Vietnam-era soldier. I find Nuke to be completely and totally disgraceful and, to that point, the writer succeeded.
There’s a scene later in the issue where Nuke was flying on a plane back to New York, in the same skies where his eventual battle with Daredevil would take place. He ordered a beer up there, and, when the flight attendant informed him his brand was not in stock, Nuke completely flipped out. It took the colonel, his handler, to assure him that another beer available was made in America to calm Nuke down. He was so obsessively patriotic he could only drink a beer brewed in the United States! That is an insane level of patriotism. (Also, did Nuke never consider that the very plane he’s flying in might have been built in Mexico, Japan, or China? Does he only fly American too? Does he rip up the floorboards to find that confirmation?)
Everything about Nuke reminds me of a mission that I carried out in Iraq. (It involved none of the malicious intent and blatant property damage of Nuke’s stories, true believers. Fear not.) We were delivering food and aid to one of the local villages very near Nasiriyah. It was seen as a gesture of goodwill by our lieutenant colonel, a move he thought would engender good relations with the local civilians and possibly convince them to report any possible IEDs (improvised explosive devices) insurgents may have planted outside our gates. As we were handing out boxes of MREs (meals ready to eat) and water, one of the sergeants in my squad was approached by an Iraqi man. This man spoke no English, but he was trying to obtain something from the sergeant. To this day, I have no idea what this man wanted. However, I could see the sergeant becoming very annoyed, so I sprinted over there and handed the man a giant box of water. I figured if I could bribe him with supplies, maybe this would satisfy the Iraqi. It did. He smiled, patted me on the back, and walked away. I guess we’re all looking for someone to hand us a giant box of water, right? The sergeant was still fuming. “Why don’t they speak American, dammit!” he yelled. Now, when I was deployed to Iraq, I was a very young man, still in the middle of my time at university. I loved to challenge preconceptions and assumptions at every turn. Basically, I was an annoying kid who liked to get a rise out of someone while proving myself right. I thought I knew everything (don’t we all when we’re in our early twenties?). I walked over to him without missing a beat and said, “What language is American?” The sergeant was dumbfounded. It was like I had told him the sky was red or something. He didn’t understand me and clearly didn’t realize I was saying this in jest. “You know, American!” he repeated. I informed him there was no language called “American” and asked whether he understand the very nature of the words coming out of his mouth. “We speak the Queen’s English, not American,” I replied. He chuckled, but quickly left, knowing I had just embarrassed him in front of the whole squad. I’m happy to report the sergeant and I would later go on to become good friends, but he never forgot my “Queen’s English” comment. In fact, he brought it up every time we went out on a mission afterward. I’m just lucky that particular non-commissioned officer was a good man and not a sadist. My enlisted butt could have been in some very hot water.
Speaking of hot water, let’s go back to Nuke, who soon found himself meeting his new employer in his office. It was child’s play for Wilson Fisk to manipulate Nuke’s patriotism. While holding an American flag, Wilson told Nuke a story about how Nuke reminded Wilson of his own son, who also served in Vietnam, and how the noble practice of capitalism was being torn down by the police and their allies—the vigilante superheroes. “I am not a villain. I am a corporation,” Kingpin waxed on. With his rhetoric, he grabbed Nuke’s mind and pointed it like a sniper’s bullet straight at Daredevil. This soldier had become a pawn. Give a great speech, stand next to an American flag, and Nuke the soldier will do your bidding for free and provide readers with the most obvious connection between America’s military forces and private industry.
Following this, Nuke got back on a helicopter and rode straight to Hell’s Kitchen. His battle with Daredevil was about to begin. Nuke tried to get his handler to let him use napalm, but the colonel explained that this was US soil. They could not do that kind of thing here. Nuke didn’t care. Nuke didn’t care about collateral damage. He thought killing an innocent civilian in pursuit of a target is an acceptable loss. His mission gave him the means to do anything he perceived as morally right, a classic version of the ends justifying the means. Daredevil and Nuke traded blow after blow, with Nuke firing wildly in every direction as he tried to hit the acrobatic Daredevil just once. For his part, Daredevil smashed Nuke again and again with his iconic billy club. Ultimately, Daredevil found himself outmatched. Every blow he landed left Nuke feeling no pain. Hits which might normally stop a mortal man had no effect on Nuke. This flag-wearing monster was not what he seemed!
Their fight was so disastrous it created a war zone right in the middle of New York City. Cars were on fire, civilians lay on the ground with bullet wounds, and cops screamed for backup. They had conducted a private little war on American soil, something the United States has been lucky enough to avoid since the Civil War, but this soldier brought it home. The madness, veracity, and anger normally reserved for a far-off battlefield were smashed right down on a normal city s
treet. The terrible battle between Nuke and Daredevil was so detrimental that the superhero team the Avengers showed up on the scene. Iron Man had to threaten to fire on Daredevil in order to stop him from pounding Nuke’s face in. Amid the chaos, Nuke begged Captain America for a white pill—one of his downers. Afterward, the Avengers hauled the monster away.
Later, Captain America broke into the government facility where Nuke was being held after the conflict, only to discover that yet another version of the super soldier serum had been deployed on twenty soldiers, leaving one man alive—Agent Simpson, codename: Nuke. Cap would discover that Nuke was a soldier during the Vietnam War. A soldier forever traumatized by the missions he had performed overseas. His actions had left his psyche damaged. Nuke agreed to the experiments of Project Rebirth—and, like Isaiah Bradley in Chapter 9, the first Captain America—these experiments had altered his life for the worse. His mental condition deteriorated, he tattooed the American flag on his face, and all too soon his superiors realized they had failed to create the new Captain America. They had created an American monster. In reaction, they made Nuke a black-ops soldier and deployed him to foreign countries to hide their patriotic mistake from the American public. In the end, Captain America broke out his fellow soldier and helped him get on his feet. With Daredevil’s help, Cap delivered Nuke to The Daily Bugle and the truth about this tortured soldier finally came to light.
When looking at the overall creation of Nuke, I like to wonder why he wasn’t a character created for Captain America comics. Was it writer Frank Miller’s intention to have Daredevil, a lawyer trained to win battles with only the words and laws of the constitution, battle a physical, military stereotype built to fight battles with only his fist rather than his mind? I think it was. However, as a dark Captain America analogue, Nuke and his perverted sense of patriotism would have been better served in my opinion.
