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thecomicsnexus · 6 years ago

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NEW TEEN TITANS: DRUG ABUSE AWARENESS (KEEBLER/NSDA) 1983 BY MARV WOLFMAN, GEORGE PEREZ, ROSS ANDRU, DICK GIORDANO, ADRIENNE ROY, JOE GIELLA

SYNOPSIS

These are two of at least three drug abuse awareness specials that came out in 1983.

The first one involves Speedy (a rehabilitated drug addict), helping the Titans (with the help of the Robin look-alike, The Protector). They try to dismantle a drug dealing operation that is affecting the youth.

The second story is pretty much the same, but is more focused on regular kids.

THE PROTECTOR

That is not Nightwing, nor Robin. So who is the Protector? DC FANDOM answers...

Jason Hart was a student that went to a normal high school; he was a good student and good in sports. Everything was okay until the day that he discovered that his little cousin named Ted had tried drugs and apparently he was quickly becoming an addict.

Jason Hart would tell his family about this in an attempt to to get Ted off drugs. Although the family talked to Ted, he did not care about what they said.

Jason Hart remembered that his little cousin was obsessed with comic books, so he took a hero costume and the codename of the "Protector". Hart hoped that as a superhero Ted would listen to him and quit drugs.

However the Protector was forced to battle drug dealers to save his cousin. Soon after that, Nightwing learned about this incident and decided to make Jason Hart an honorary member of the Teen Titans due to his great sense of right and wrong and how he defended the innocents from the criminals. Nightwing didn't stop there though, he also decided to train Jason in terms of hand to hand combat to make him able to become a real superhero if he wanted.

So that is who he is, but why was he in this story and not Robin. Well, it turns out Batfamily characters were licensed to Nabisco. Because these comic boks were sponsored by three companies (Keebler, NSDA and IBM), they couldn’t use the character, and thus, The Protector was created (he was recently killed by Tom King in Heroes in Crisis, just in case you were wondering what happened to him).

CONTEXT

If you were around in the eighties you may remember the catchphrase “Just say no”. This was Nancy Reagan’s pet project, as Wikipedia enlightens us:

The campaign emerged from a substance abuse prevention program supported by the National Institutes of Health, pioneered in the 1970s by University of Houston Social Psychology Professor Richard I. Evans. Evans promoted a social inoculation model, which included teaching student skills to resist peer pressure and other social influences. The campaign involved University projects done by students across the nation. Jordan Zimmerman, then a student at USF, and later an advertising entrepreneur, won the campaign. The anti-drug movement was among the resistance skills recommended in response to low peer pressure, and Nancy Reagan's larger campaign proved to be a useful dissemination of this social inoculation strategy.

Nancy Reagan first became involved during a campaign trip in 1980 to Daytop Village, New York. She recalls feeling impressed by a need to educate the youth about drugs and drug abuse. Upon her husband's election to the presidency, she returned to Daytop Village and outlined how she wished to help educate the youth. She stated in 1981 that her best role would be to bring awareness about the dangers of drug abuse:

Understanding what drugs can do to your children, understanding peer pressure and understanding why they turn to drugs is ... the first step in solving the problem.

The "Just Say No" slogan was the creation of Robert Cox and David Cantor, advertising executives at the New York office of Needham, Harper & Steers/USA in the early 1980s.

In 1982, the phrase "Just Say No" first emerged when Nancy Reagan was visiting Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California. When asked by a schoolgirl what to do if she was offered drugs, the First Lady responded: "Just say no." Just Say No club organizations within schools and school-run anti-drug programs soon became common, in which young people were making pacts not to experiment with drugs.

When asked about her efforts in the campaign, Nancy Reagan said: "If you can save just one child, it's worth it." She traveled throughout the United States and several other nations, totaling over 250,000 miles (400,000 km). Nancy Reagan visited drug rehabilitation centers and abuse prevention programs; with the media attention that the first lady receives, she appeared on television talk shows, recorded public service announcements, and wrote guest articles. By the autumn of 1985, she had appeared on 23 talk shows, co-hosted an October 1983 episode of Good Morning America, and starred in a two-hour PBS documentary on drug abuse.

The campaign and the phrase "Just Say No" made their way into popular American culture when TV shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Punky Brewster produced episodes centered on the campaign. In 1983, Nancy Reagan appeared as herself in the television programs Dynasty and Diff'rent Strokes to garner support for the anti-drug campaign. She participated in a 1985 rock music video "Stop the Madness" as well. La Toya Jackson became spokesperson for the campaign in 1987 and recorded a song titled "Just Say No" with British hit producers Stock/Aitken/Waterman.

In 1985, Nancy Reagan expanded the campaign internationally. She invited the First Ladies of thirty various nations to the White House in Washington, D.C. for a conference entitled the "First Ladies Conference on Drug Abuse". She later became the first First Lady invited to address the United Nations.

She enlisted the help of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, Kiwanis Club International, and the National Federation of Parents for a Drug-Free Youth to promote the cause; the Kiwanis put up over 2000 billboards with Nancy Reagan's likeness and the slogan. Over 5000 Just Say No clubs were founded in schools and youth organizations in the United States and abroad. Many clubs and organizations remain in operation around the country, where they aim to educate children and teenagers about the effects of drugs.

Just Say No crossed over to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, where it was popularized by the BBC's 1986 "Drugwatch" campaign, which revolved around a heroin-addiction storyline in the popular children's TV drama serial Grange Hill. The cast's cover of the original U.S. campaign song, with an added rap, reached the UK top ten. The death of Anna Wood in Sydney, Australia and British teen Leah Betts from Essex in the mid-1990s sparked a media firestorm across both the UK and Australia over the use of illegal drugs. Wood's parents even released her school photograph on a badge with the saying "Just say no to drugs" placed on it to warn society on the dangers of illicit drug use. The photograph was widely circulated in the media. A photo of Betts in a coma in her hospital bed was also circulated in British media. Both teenagers died due to water intoxication as they drank too much water after ingesting ecstasy.

Nancy Reagan's related efforts increased public awareness of drug use, but a direct relationship between reduced drug use and the Just Say No campaign cannot be established. Although the use and abuse of illegal recreational drugs significantly declined during the Reagan presidency, this may be a spurious correlation: a 2009 analysis of 20 controlled studies on enrollment in one of the most popular "Just Say No" programs, DARE, showed no effect on drug use.

The campaign did draw some criticism. Nancy Reagan's approach to promoting drug awareness was labeled simplistic by critics who argued that the solution was reduced to a catch phrase. In fact, two studies suggested that enrollees in DARE-like programs were actually more likely to use alcohol and cigarettes. Critics have also suggested that inflamed fears from "Just Say No" exacerbated mass incarceration and prevented youth from receiving accurate information about dealing with drug abuse. Critics also think that "Just Say No" contributed towards the well seasoned stigma about people who use drugs being labelled as "bad", and the stigma toward those people who are addicted to drugs being labelled as making a cognizant amoral choice to engage in drug use.

REVIEW

I know there are at least three specials, not numbered, and there also seem to be an alternate cover to the second special (the one here has a label that says DC COMICS over the original text (American Soft Drink Industry). This makes me think that it was reprinted.

Of the three I only got to read the first two, but I understand they lose quality as you keep reading them.

The first special is actually good for what it is. The Protector is a bit distracting, but having Speedy there added some legitimacy to the story. I do not think the story is better than the Green Lantern story where he was revealed an addict (even if the solution is a bit magical over there).

The second special is probably where they lost readers. The Titans are almost not there as the story is centered around the Protector’s cousin. It is a better example of peer pressure, but there are just too many bursts of information, sometimes in the unlikeliest moments.

I also feel that, at least in these two episodes, there is little mention of addiction being a lifetime sickness. They do talk about psychological dependency, but it is a bit vague why.

The first one is also drawn by George Perez. That is a big plus in my book, even if the other artist is Ross Andru.

On the second special it feels like Wolfman was trying to make sure certain bits of information were there even if they stopped the action. And in the first special there is too much repetition (some facts are duplicated during the confessionals and during the story).

But, if you compare this to the Famine relief books... these are much better. And to think they happened two years before those. Of course, there is one small difference: these books were sponsored and didn’t need the gimmick of having as many superstars in it as possible. And I suspect that may be the main reason why it doesn’t completely suck.

I give these books a score of 7

#ross andru #dick giordano #george perez #titans #new teen titans #speedy #protector #drugs #war on drugs #just say no #dc comics #comics #review #1983 #modern age

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