Captain America: Drug War [Comics]

This 1993 one-shot is kinda weird. It has a $ 2.00 cover price, but inside is exactly the type of material that would normally be in a giveaway comic to high school students. A standard anti-drug message is delivered in the comic, but it's carried off in such a blatant way that I can't imagine the book was ever intended to be in continuity. An alien species, the "Tzin", ("sin"?) are orbiting Earth and thinking about invading. The Tzin are worried that mankind might be a difficult species to defeat, so the aliens decide that perhaps drugs could sap the humans' willpower and intelligence and make them easy prey for an invasion. In order to test this theory, the aliens state that they are going to put four humans to the test; if at least two of them succumb to drugs, then the invasion will go forward.

This nefarious experiment begins with a talented high school baseball pitcher named Mitch. Constantly stressed by the pressure of having to perform in big games, Mitch is easy prey to an alien disguised as a drug pusher. During a game, the drug-addled Mitch beans one of the batters with a fastball and then runs off in shame. Fortunately, Captain America is on the scene to help out and gives Mitch a good talking to about the dangers of drugs. The dialogue, written by Peter David, is actually a lot less preachy than it could have been.

After the story involving Mitch, there's a second story (written by George Caragonne) that immediately starts off with Captain America and the New Warriors (a teen super-group popular in the mid-90s) in battle against the alien-backed "Drug Lords." The Drug Lords are a group of super-villains with stunningly-original code names: Weed, Crack, Ice, and Ms. Fix. Suffice it to say the good guys win by sneaking aboard the alien mothership and kicking ass all around. The whole set-up about testing four humans has been forgotten, and a footnote cites the first story as "Captain America Goes to War Against Drugs # 1". More evidence, in my mind, that this was originally planned (or perhaps actually released?) as a freebie comic to schools.

The bottom line about drugs, kids, is that they are bad. Bad because they are the work of aliens. But go ahead and take all you want, because sooner or later Captain America will show up to save you.