I recently read The Human Fly #15 (Marvel Comics 1978) with its cover line “War in the Washington Monument!”
The Human Fly is a stuntman who fights crime, and it’s apparently based on a real stunt man from the era who did charity events. But that’s neither here nor there.
The plot of this particular issue is that (SPOILER ALERT!) two Vietnam veterans, one confined to a wheel chair and one mentally unstable, have taken over the Washington Monument to protest the conditions at their local VA hospital where the greedy doctors enrich themselves at the expense of the suffering veterans. Don’t worry, the Human Fly prevents them from destroying the monument, but it’s still going to be closed to the public the next time you’re in Washington, D.C.
Thirty years later and many reforms later, and we’re pretty clear now it’s not the doctors who are the problem.
It’s pretty said that these particular plots can be recycled for a quarter of a century when dealing with government programs.
