Random Happenstance

Back when we checked out the Superman/Radio Shack comic, I mentioned the Captain America and the Campbell Kids giveaway, about energy conservation. Here's another educational/promotional giveaway one with Cap, that I'm not sure I had read before: from 1987 (or thereabouts!) Captain America Meets the Asthma Monster! Written by Louise Simonson, pencils by Alex Saviuk, inks by Fred Fredericks.

A young boy dreams of being a hero like Captain America, but figures with his asthma he would probably spend the rest of his life doing nothing; until he meets another kid who had her asthma under control. Their medications protect them, from the sudden attack of the Asthma Monster; who isn't a figurative monster but a guy in a suit with an "aller gun" making people sick, under the rationale if he couldn't breathe, nobody else should either. They call Cap's hotline, and he was in the neighborhood, so...Cap even explains, he himself had asthma when he was a kid. (Cap had a lotta problems as a kid, many of them probably from living conditions at the time.)

The kids help bring down the Asthma Monster, which is an important message in empathy as well: just because something bad happened to you, doesn't mean you want it to happen to somebody else. Still, the Asthma Monster promises to return, and oddly enough, he does! There would be a sequel in 1989, with Mark Bagley art. These were harmless and helpful little larks, unlike recent promotional comics: I swear there was an Avengers/Halliburton one recently...(OK, maybe not; but I did see this Avengers/Visa one, that probably ends with Peter Parker getting denied a card.)