Reagancomics (7 of 7): Graphing Graphics

[tcampbell1000]

(From Ambush Bug #4.)

Before we wind things up, here are a couple of Reagan portrayals by request, both involving Reagan trying to foster good relations with artificial life-forms.



In Avengers v1 #246 (1984), Reagan is again the victim of a con job, but this one comes from an unexpected source: the suddenly smooth-talking Vision, who's getting way, way too comfortable with the art of manipulation. This would culminate in Vizh trying to rule the world by computer control some months later.



In Transformers UK Annual #5 (1985--so that's ONE from 1985 after all!), Reagan agrees to meet with Optimus Prime...on the front lawn of the White House. That goes about as well as you might expect, but what you won't expect is for Reagan to start using the Britishism "lorry."





(Read in Reagan's voice:) "This Optimus bloke seems like a swell chap, pip pip!"

Also, "Security was absolute! How could the Decepticons have realized we were traveling right through the heart of D.C. and parked on the White House front lawn?" Optimus, you know that "robots in disguise" slogan doesn't apply to enemy forces who've seen your truck form already, right?

EDIT: I lost track of Reagan after this, but alert reader angelophile corrected me. Reagan is said to have been "gotten to safety" and does appear once more at the end of the story, resolving a couple of plot holes and leaving another wide open...



Meantime, Warpath of all Autobots is fleeing alongside Optimus and asking, "Don't you think it's funny how they let us go? Shouldn't we have tried to explain?" to which Optimus replies "sagely," "They'd never have believed us." [Translation: Furman wasn't interested in taking the subplot of U.S.-Cybertron peace summits any further than this.]

(I've never understood the versions of Transformers mythology where human adults cannot grasp the concept that "there are good robots and bad robots," the same concept literal children grasp to get into this franchise in the first place. There are plausible ways you could write things so that the Autobots looked as bad as the Decepticons to rational observers, but that's not what we get here. Instead we get Optimus failing to explain himself to a guy who showed every sign of being willing to listen, and a bunch of Transformers UK military men who manage, somehow, to be even dumber than Marvel Universe civilians. "You monsters! We barely got the president to safety in time! How DARE you BE ATTACKED like this!")

And now, on to the end of Reagan's years in the White House...and the end of his years presiding over DC megacrossovers. After meaty roles in Legends and Millennium, Reagan only had a small, indirect role in DC's fourth crossover series, Invasion, his orders conveyed through Maxwell Lord.



The all-text Invasion Special: Daily Planet pulled a swerve, with a portrayal that starts out looking flattering and ends up satirical.



As he did in Captain America, Reagan delivered mercy and gratitude in the Invasion aftermath of Captain Atom #25. Reagan appeared a handful of times in the course of this series about an atomic superhero whose reputation was built on lies and wishful thinking, but this was his meatiest interaction with the title character.





Reagan's other outgoing appearance at DC isn't really him for the most part--Satan has possessed Mikhail Gorbachev, so Deadman must possess Reagan, and then Satan and Deadman possess the leaders' respective wives, and then the whole thing dissolves into gibbering madness. Mike Baron and Dan Jurgens at least present a clear viewpoint of the occupant of the Oval Office, slurring together an incoherent mishmash of real-life Reagan quotes before the possession game gets underway. (Action Comics (Weekly) #609-610).





After Reagan's administration ran its course, so did most of his active comic-book appearances. He did show up alongside other former presidents in 2000's X-Presidents, based on a Saturday Night Live cartoon. It's kind of "What if Reagan's Raiders were better written and in color, but still badly drawn?"



Reagan got more of a spotlight as an evil zombie, Blackest Night-style, when Deadpool had to stop him from starting a nuclear holocaust (Deadpool v5 #5, 2013). Like other zombie presidents in this storyline, the Reagan seen here is a corrupted version of his "real" self, so it’s hard to say where the evil of the undead ends and more pointed satire begins. He was out to nuke the entire planet, though, which at least resonates with his more critical portrayals.








So where does that put "Reagan in comics," overall? If you aggregated all the portrayals, what would you get? The chart below should show how balanced it all ended up being (for better or worse, depending on your point of view)...though the less favorable portrayals tend to be later in the game.



You might disagree with some of my choices, but I think the overall trends are clear.

"Good" and "Bad" are here defined less by what's in each Reagan's heart--not always an easy thing to judge--and more by the roles they take on within each story. Reagan in Legends is overall mildly antagonistic, even though he has the best of intentions: the Reagan who gives Nick Fury a bigger budget is on the side of the story's good guys, even though it's unclear whether the writer regards him as admirable or not.

The Reagans I couldn't fit in here would tend to skew positive--Transformers Reagan and Booster Gold Reagan both seemed smart-ish and good-ish, and Vision's pal Reagan seems good-ish and dumb-ish, no one representing an extreme.

When I think of the comics of this era, I don't miss their political opinions, exactly--but I do miss the feeling that a political opinion, eloquently expressed, could be part of the creative process. I miss that kind of "frontier excitement," the feeling that writers and artists were actively working out what could and couldn't be done, with presidential renditions as with everything else.

And, of course, I miss having a president about whose goodness and intelligence there was at least room for rational doubt.

Comments

[thanekos]

Should've gone for The Killers (1964) instead, Zombie Reagan.

(Will always remember the one YouTube comment on Reagan's gangster character in that movie: " Years later, Reagan would organize another heist.. ")

[scorntx]

Was going to ask if this was going to cover his cameo in Bongo's Radioactive Man, which was published after his time.
Question never-got-around-to-asking answered.
On the smart-good-evil-dumb scale, it's somewhere on "crotchety".
He snaps at reporters for asking questions at a press conference over an anti-superhero program ("Say NO to capes!"), mainly because they're asking if this is scapegoating to distract from things like unemployment.
Not quite evil, but definitely not good.
(and Radioactive Man, being of the conservative 50s American mindset is aghast. How can his girlfriend not know that as Americans it's their duty to believe what public officials tell them at all times?)


There was also an alternate Ronnie in Avengers #267 (Feb, 1986), introducing the hot new addition to the Avengers, Piotr Rasputin!
And then a Kang kills everyone in New York with a nuke.
(Then some other Kangs kill that Kang for being an idiot.)
Fortunately, it was just Earth-267.


And according to the Right Honourable TFWiki, Optimus figured Reagan would never believe the Autobots, so he ordered everyone to go home.
Only it turned out Reagan had been far smarter than 90% of humans in the Marvel comics - a terrifying notion in itself, but not exactly an impressive accomplishment - and had been willing to listen, but since Optimus was a no-show decided "well, if that's your attitude-!"
The irony!

[tcampbell1000]

Always knew I'd miss a few; thanks for catching these!

[iamrman]

This series was really interesting. Thank you for posting them.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Agreed.

[tcampbell1000]

Appreciate the appreciation!

[tcampbell1000]

You're welcome! This has been a nice distraction...

[metadronos]

I enjoyed this series a lot. Thank you.

And you're right about the "room for rational doubt" thing. Historians will likely debate, for some time to come, the extent to which Reagan knew what he was doing, and by that I don't mean just in the sense of basic cognitive function.

Case in point: was his first-term acceleration of the arms race a damn fool, reckless, possibly evangelically-influenced move that nearly ended human history? Or was it a shrewd long game in which, by egging on the Soviet Union to maintain nuclear parity with the U.S, he drove that country bankrupt and thus engineered the end of the Cold War? Or was it both: a long game to end the Cold War which, nonetheless, could've all too easily spiralled out of control and become a war to end all wars... and everything else? I myself, as a Gen-Xer who experienced both the early 80s anxiety over nuclear war, and the late-80s "watching the world [supposedly] wake up from history," am inclined to the third view.

[tcampbell1000]

Sound theory! And thanks!

[skjam]

As I recall, Reagan also guest-starred in Strontium Dogs, possibly after his death.

[tcampbell1000]

A new one on me! I'll check it out...

[angelophile]

Just to correct you slightly, Reagan did reappear in the epilogue to the second part of the Transformers story, explaining the attitude of the US government to the Autobots going forward:

[tcampbell1000]

Updated!